The Lesson

Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1951

A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.

Download PDF

Summary

Background

Act Summaries & Analyses

Act 1, Part 1

Act 1, Part 2

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Tools

Beta

Discussion Questions

Character Analysis

The Professor

The professor, aged 50 to 60, seems at first to be a stereotype of an elder academic. He is timid and overly polite, stammering anxiously in a tentative voice. But “occasionally, a lewd gleam comes into his eyes and is quickly repressed” (46). Over the course of the play, he gradually shifts to become powerful and aggressive, his voice growing resonant and booming, either transforming or unmasking. Because the play is absurdist, the characters are inconsistent and illogical, meaning that the shift from one extreme temperament to the opposite does not have to make logical sense. He seems harmless at the beginning of the play, but at the end, he kills the student and is revealed to have killed 39 others. What seems to feed his murderous side and bring it out is his own teaching, as Marie warns. The professor has credibility and respect, having lived in the town—in the same house, in fact—for 30 years. When the young pupil arrives, he seems happy to help her, lavishing praise when she offers up basic knowledge. Then, upon teaching arithmetic, he becomes the gatekeeper of the academy, deciding unilaterally that she can only attempt a partial doctorate. Then, moving on to reciting a nonsensical lecture in philology, the professor becomes so full of his own power that he kills the student, teaching her a lesson for attempting to join the academy in the first place. The professor represents academia’s monopoly on the creation of knowledge and shaping of language, especially in France, where the Académie Française has meticulously maintained language and culture since the 17th century. He also represents the masculine domination of the academy and all Western power structures, and not only the subjugation of women in academia but the subjugation and violence perpetrated by women at the hands of men. The professor has no remorse for killing the girl, and he is even willing to kill Marie to stop her chastising, just as he has no interest in preventing its repetition. Rather, these systems are self-sustaining cycles, perhaps unstoppable unless those who benefit from them decide to end them.

The Young Pupil

The young pupil is an 18-year-old girl who goes to the professor for tutoring to prepare for the oral exams to achieve a total doctorate, which seems to absurdly refer to a doctorate in all areas of study. She is bright, energetic, and eager to please, the child of parents who have raised her well and planned her path into higher education. She already has degrees in science and the arts and tells the professor that she has “a great thirst for knowledge” (48). Over the course of the play, she is slowly drained of energy until she is in pain and barely able to speak, as if the professor absorbs her youthful vitality before killing her. She represents fresh, youthful curiosity and unrefined intelligence that turns to the academy for education, only to be crushed. As such, she is a young woman who becomes the victim of male violence, paralleling gendered and academic power structures and emphasizing the intersection of the two. She cannot subtract or divide, although she can add and multiply (in a sense), which the professor frames as a fundamental lacking. She cannot “disintegrate” which, he asserts, is “progress, civilization” (55), suggesting that the ability to diminish is essential to the role of the academic. Within the professor’s bizarre academic parameters, the pupil is not without talent and intelligence. But the professor bombards her with academic-sounding nonsense and punishes her for failing to keep up. Killing her and putting her in a coffin is symbolic for the death of her unique potential and slotting her into a box that is identical to the next, without even the courtesy of flowers. The professor refers to the stabbing as teaching her. The student is nameless, and another student arrives immediately behind her, suggesting that this killing-as-education practice is an endless cycle, turning academia into a machine for conformity and spirit-murdering.

The Maid

The maid, who the professor calls Marie, is between 45 and 50, and she is the only one of the three characters to have a name. Of course, in an absurdist play, this detail does not necessarily have meaning. She is, however, the only stable character in the play, in the sense that she does not undergo a transformation. By contrast, both the professor and the student change dramatically from who they are at the beginning of the play. The student is obviously unsuspecting of the cycle she is entering, but the professor also seems to be surprised at what he has done at the end of the play. Marie sees the cycle repeating and attempts to stop it, only to be brushed off by the professor over and over. In the original 1951 production in Paris, Marie was played by a male actor, to push the play further away from realism. Although this choice would be recognized as problematic today, it highlights the sexlessness of Marie in contrast to the bright young student. It also turns their struggle over the knife into wrestling between men, pitting physical strength against social and intellectual power. Marie may easily bully the professor into dropping the knife by twisting his wrist, just as he did to the student, but he still has power because she venerates him. Her concerns are not for the students he is killing, but for the way he is risking his health through the exertion of murder. She speaks about him affectionately, calling him “a good boy” (77) as if she is his mother, even though she is younger and an employee. She even uses her own sexuality to his advantage by enlisting her lover, Father Auguste, in the cover-up of the professor’s crimes—a subtle dig at the church and a wider societal complicity. Marie may be uneducated and outside of the academic system, but her adoration of the professor suggests that his stature in the academy and ability to manipulate have worked to control her anyways. Even as a woman, she participates in the sacrifice of other women by prioritizing the protection of a privileged man.