SOURCE: Johnson, Warren. “Capricious Exuberance: Gender and Mediation in Musset's Comedies.” Dalhousie French Studies 33 (winter 1995): 27-34.

In the following essay, Johnson cites the relationship between language and desire portrayed in such works as Fantasio, Les caprices de Marianne, and On ne badine pas avec l'amour.

When Count Almaviva disguises himself as the music teacher in Le barbier de Séville, his mask allows him to penetrate a space previously interdicted. The role reversal of Le jeu de l'amour et du hasard likewise permits entry into a privileged space of observation. The mask in these two eighteenth-century precursors of Musset creates the possibility of contact between spheres that have been socially constructed as separate, whether they be physical places or social classes.

Musset's reworking of the master-servant inversion in Fantasio exemplifies his shift in emphasis from the transgression of social obstacles to a questioning of the nature and value...