Concealed within Maureen Gibbon’s novel Paris Red is a story about womanhood and innocence. It explores the concepts of power and sex through the intellectual lens of a young girl navigating through her youth and coming to terms with what it means to be a woman.
It begins with the premise of Victorine and her friend Denise as they live and work together in Paris. That is, until one day they come across a man that we soon learn to be the renounced and famous painter, Edouard Manet. Although at first, the readers know little about this man other than what both Victorine and Denise know of him– he is a mysterious and overtly seductive man whom shows great interest in the both of them for his own artistic and sexual pleasure. However, Victorine begins to pursue him outside of the three’s relationship and ultimately abandons her friend to follow Manet down a path consisting of a relationship dependent on sex and art. This hunger that Victorine feels can only be quenched by Manet as she leaves behind her old life to follow him into his own.
She becomes his muse, and in doing so is able to alter the way he commits himself to his art. Yet she is self-aware enough about their situation to understand the power dynamic between the two of them, and fundamentally refuses to be perceived as someone being taken advantage of. She refuses to be perceived as his object, although whether or not this is actually the case is ultimately left for the reader to decide. She is very young, as depicted in the narrator’s voice, which oftentimes feels naive and childish. This can be effectively showcased in the way that Gibbon chooses to write– her words are often conveyed in a broken-up and fractured way. This is seen in the way that the shorter chapters end, with typically lyrical phrases.
“Then It come with its threadlike feet and delicate wings. It drinks our sweat and tears, and once again we believe things are possible.”
I like how you said she refuses to be perceived as someone being taken advantage of. It is difficult to know, since we can only see the story from her perspective, and no one who is being taken advantage ever thinks that they are. The age gap and his financial power over her raises red flags for me, but we can’t really know his intentions or how their relationship would continue to develop past the end of the novel.