I mean real people--readers. A silly question really, since it's next to impossible to come up with an answer that would satisfy all/any skeptics. Just the same, there's by now an institutionalized French critical view of Stendhal--as of Gide--and to a limited extent I'm willing to treat that view as if it were an accurate reading. I'm completely ignorant of French litcrit except for some Sainte-Beuve that I read as a youngster, so I need all the help I can get.I'm not sure quite how you're going to link the literary depiction and external cultural disapproval -- OK, I'm not quite sure what the question is. Are you asking whether if this happened "in real life", French people would approve (etc.)? It seems you think you can't simply infer that from literary depiction, yet literature is (presumably) inextricably linked to "real world" culture (and it's literature you want to focus on here).
Norman Miller
