SOURCE: "The Letter of Repression in Stendhal's Armance," in Nineteenth Century French Studies, Vol. 18, No. 1, Fall-Winter, 1989-90, pp. 41-55.

In the following essay, Diamond discusses Oedipal symbolism in Armance.

Armance is a tantalizing text. Its dominant protagonist, Octave de Malivert, is tormented by some terrible secret, something "unspeakable," the nature of which he hints at and continually promises to reveal to his loving cousin Armance de Zohiloff. Finally married to Armance and on the point of death by his own hand, he writes her a letter naming what he has never dared say. However, his secret is not revealed to the reader. Armance withdraws into a cloister, and the reader is similarly closed off from any fulfilling sexual/textual resolution. It is hardly surprising, then, that the critics, confronted by the closed door of Octave's secret, should have looked for a key. One was readily at hand. Stendhal's...