Fear and Confrontation in Prosper Mérimée's Narrative Fiction

Fear in Prosper Mérimée's narrative fiction operates in many ways as desire does in René Girard's Mensonge romantique et vérité romanesque. Fear of another can create, augment, or even help to overcome a greater fear. Warnings and threats explore much more than their surface meaning, and confrontation motivated by mutual fear reveals the delicate balance people strive to maintain though such an equilibrium can destroy them. Dominating Mérimée's fiction is an obsessive fear of public derision. Life is not only reflected through the eyes of another, it is, in a sense, generated through fear by a spectator. (EBS)