The appearance of woman in literature as conscious intelligence is a first step towards her appearance as genius. We already see Mme. de Staël's turban appearing on the horizon. The woman who shares man's passions and struggles will soon share his genius and his renown. Yet a little while and the struggle ends in victory, the same woman who succumbs under the name of Eléonore is crowned at the Capitol as Corinne.
It only now remains to direct attention to the accurate psychological observation in Adolphe, and to show the results arrived at. The hero starts, as we have seen, with the idea that the conquest of Eléonore is a task worthy of him; he imagines that he will be able coldly to study her character, and calmly to lay his plan of campaign; but, his susceptibility being quite as great as his egoism, he soon succumbs to a fascination which completely overmasters him, and which so increases his natural timidity that he cannot summon up courage to make the declaration which he had promised his vanity to arrive at very speedily. He writes, but Eléonore will have nothing to say to him, and avoids him. Her resistance and coldness produce in him a submission and devotion which soon become a species of worship. Never before has Eléonore been thus loved, for however much true devotion her protector has shown her, there has always been a touch of condescension in it. He could have made a more honourable alliance; he has never said so, but what is unsaid may quite well make itself felt. It is this reverence of Adolphe for her which wins Eléonore. She gives herself to him, and he is almost dazed with rapture and happiness. What first jars upon him is her not being able (when the Count has gone from home for a day or two) to let him out of her sight even for a few hours. She detains him when he attempts to leave her; when he goes, she asks when he will return. Pleased and flattered at first by this boundless devotion, he soon finds that his time is so absorbed by her that he has not an hour at his own disposal. He is compelled to refuse all invitations and break off with all his acquaintances. This is no great loss to him, but he would prefer being able to come and go as he pleases to being obliged to put in an appearance at the stroke of the clock. She who had been his aim and object in life is now a tie upon him.
Where are ye now, O touching romances, in which the lover never had anything to do but to love, in which he rose up early to love, loved all day, and for love passed sleepless nights! It is a wonderfully naturalistic touch in Adolphe that the lover feels his loss of time to be indeed a loss.
It avails not that he asserts his right to dispose of his time as he will, for the thought of the grief she endures when he fails to appear, prevents his making any satisfactory use of the time gained, especially as he is also tormented by a feeling of shame that another human being should have such an ascendency over him. Then when he returns to her, annoyed with himself for having come back much sooner than was prudent for the sake of her reputation or his own work, he finds her miserable because he has stayed away so long. For two hours he has been suffering from the knowledge that she is longing, and now he must suffer two more before he can pacify her. In spite of all this he feels happy; he tells himself that it is sweet to be thus loved; nevertheless, he is unconsciously consoling himself with the thought that the peculiarities of their position must, sooner or later, put an end to the situation.
The Count returns, and Adolphe first suffers from being compelled to deceive him, and then endures the torture of seeing Eléonore sacrifice everything for his own sake, give up at one and the same time her home and her fortune. It is a double grief, partly selfish, for he mourns over the inevitable restriction of his own liberty by the sacrifice she is so happy in making for him, and partly compassionate, for he knows with what hyena-like fury society will tear her reputation to pieces. All she has won by years of irreproachable behaviour she loses in one day. Her pride suffers agonies, and his devotion becomes a duty. From henceforth each has a secret suffering which is not confided to the other.
Adolphe's character begins to deteriorate. He fights a duel with a man who has spoken slightingly of Eléonore, but himself unintentionally injures her reputation by the incessant mockery of women and the men who live in subjection to them in which he indulges as a kind of relief from the feeling of his own dependence; men put their own interpretation on his jests and jeers. He who cannot resist a tear, makes a point of speaking of women with callous contempt.
Many have suffered the misery of loving without return; Adolphe's torment consists in being loved after he has ceased to love. Eléonore sees through his efforts to appear overjoyed when they meet, and one of those terrible scenes ensues with which Mme. de Staël had made Constant familiar; the exasperation of her passionate nature resembles hatred. An attempt is made by Adolphe's relations, who disapprove of his wasting his youth on such a connection, to get rid of Eléonore. Adolphe's chivalrous feeling impels him to run away with her, and for a time their tender feeling towards each other resembles love. Eléonore makes fresh sacrifices which it galls Adolphe to accept. At one time she suffers as much from not being loved as he from not loving; at another she so intoxicates herself with her own passion that she sees it double and believes that it is returned. Both live in the memory of their former happiness, which is vivid enough to make parting seem painful, even impossible, but not strong enough to impart any happiness to their daily life. The tender but faint protestations of love made now and again by Adolphe to Eléonore resemble the weak, colourless leaves put forth from the branches of some uprooted tree.
He fails to make the being happy who is the cause of so much unhappiness to himself. Every time she feels that she has won new rights, he feels that he is bound by new fetters. Her passionateness makes their daily life one incessant storm. In a biography of Constant we find the following significant sentence: "This year Constant was happy; Mme. de Staël was in Russia."
Eléonore inherits her father's fortune and is no longer dependent upon Adolphe's protection. The world now suspects him of deriving pecuniary advantage from the friendship; he is blamed for injuring her reputation by being always in her company, and it is of course impossible for him to explain that it is she who will not live without him.
His life is slipping away between his fingers; he is fulfilling none of the promises of his youth; for, as he is not allowed to forget, there is an insurmountable barrier between him and any possible future, and that barrier is Eléonore. He determines to break off with her, but this very determination makes his position more hopeless, for the moment he resolves upon the death sentence (which he is too weak not to postpone) all bitterness leaves him, and he feels such tender compassion for her that she misunderstands and believes that all is well.