 Author of one of the most major theatrical triumph of
the nineteenth century, Dumas junior (1824-1895) was a successful writer,
just like his father. Legitimated son of Alexandre Dumas and his mistress
Laure Labay, Alexandre junior spend all his childhood and adolescence torn
between his mother and his father. As an adult, he built up a very complicated
relationship with his father, mixing complicity in the Parisian literary
circles and their brilliant and gallant life, and repulsion for his father's
dissolute way of life. The latter was wasteful, Dumas junior conscientiously
saved his money ; the author of Monte-Cristo was a debauched person, his
son became a moralist ; Dumas senior spent his whole life cut off from the
high society because of his eccentricity and bad taste ; Dumas Junior entered
the Académie française... While the great Dumas created works
of pure imagination, his son - though deeply admiring his father's works
- claimed himself as a realist, psychological and social writer. His most
important work is La Dame aux camélias,
first written as a novel and then adapted for the stage. Dumas junior has
written numerous other novels and plays, some of which inspired by his own
relationship with his father, such as Le Fils
naturel (The Illegitimate son) or
Un Père prodigue (A
Prodigal father), in which the author keenly criticizes the fate
reserved by society for abandoned women and illegitimate children. |
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