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Marguerite Gautier, the most beautiful and expensive courtesan in Paris, who always carries a bouquet of camellias, falls truly in love with Armand Duval, a…
Marguerite Gautier, the most beautiful and expensive courtesan in Paris, who always carries a bouquet of camellias, falls truly in love with Armand Duval, a young man of good family and modest means. She gives up her luxurious life to live quietly with him in the country, until Armand's father comes to her in secret and begs her to give him up for the sake of his family's honour. Already gravely ill with tuberculosis, she makes the sacrifice, and Armand, believing she has betrayed him, takes a cruel revenge.
Context and significance
Alexandre Dumas fils (1824–1895), son of the author of The Three Musketeers, based the novel, published in 1848, on his own affair with the courtesan Marie Duplessis, who died at twenty-three. His stage version inspired Verdi's opera La Traviata. Compare Manon Lescaut.
About the author
Alexandre Dumas (1802–1870) was the grandson of a French nobleman and an enslaved woman of African descent in Saint-Domingue; his father became a general of the Revolution. Arriving in Paris as a clerk with little education, Dumas made his name in the theatre and then, with the collaborator Auguste Maquet, turned history into the most popular adventure novels of the century.
The Three Musketeers and The Count of Monte Cristo were followed by dozens more, earning fortunes that Dumas spent as fast as they came, on travel, newspapers and a fantastic château. In 2002 his remains were moved to the Panthéon in Paris among the great figures of France.