The Sorrows of Young Adolphe (and friends)

Throughout Adolphe, Constant characterizes his protagonist as unable or perhaps unwilling to coexist with others in society. This begins early: in Chapter One Constant presents with Adolphe, who can aptly perceive the hostile responses that he receives in response to his actions against those around him, but who refuses to alter his behavior to ameliorate these relationships. Instead, he invents excuses--they do not understand me, they aren't intelligent enough--explaining why they were unworthy of his attention from the beginning. In this way, he is continually ostracized from others and repeats his cycle of insult and alienation.

Only Ellenore enters this solitary world, and only because of Adolphe's jealousy over a rival's romantic conquests. One could even argue that the two of them share a relationship so passionate (or, perhaps more appropriately, so clingy) that their bond transcends the distance between people that Adolphe has found so difficult to cross (perhaps because of his father's "shyness," or perhaps because of his early experiences with death). Although we know little of her internal states, Ellenore may feel as distant from society as Adolphe: her birth is lower than the courtly friends who are forced to be friendly with her due to her relationship with the Count.

What could possibly end this relationship, if not the very society from which it acts as shelter for its two constituents? Although he claims to want to end his relationship, Adolphe's lack of action indicates rhat he truly desires to stay with Ellenore, and that his words towards his father are only hiding this fact. Eventually, the inexorable power of society that, acting through Adolphe's father, that forces them apart, by driving Adolphe's words, effusive in their intent but pointed in their content, as a wedge between the couple, eventually leading to Ellenore's tragic (at least dramatic) death.

We can draw a connection here to The Sorrows of Young Werther, as they are both stories of relationships thwarted by reality, and although it is tempting, I cannot unequivocally say that it is society itself that causes the conflict of both works because it seems untenable to claim that Werther's love for Lotte could be realized in a different sort of society, unlike the Sorrows of Young Adolphe, where one feels that they could be in love in a universe where only Adolphe and Ellenore existed, even if they built their relationship on jealously and alienation.