Claudie question

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

Can anyone with more knowledge of French than me (mine being confined to an A-level long ago) explain to me why Claudie addresses Patrick as vous in The Attic Term? With all the playing with his hair and other familiarity, I'd have expected her to call him tu.

Comments

[white_hart]

I always thought it was to signify that she thought of him as an adult (a child would automatically be addressed as tu). But that's based on a long-ago A-level of my own and an even longer-ago reading of the book!

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

Thanks! As I was saying to melandraanne (having fired off the question halfway through a re-read) it switches later on, so maybe it's meant to show them getting on better. I remember being told to tutoyer everybody when I was a French Exchange, but maybe they were pandering to my rather low standards of French, or maybe Claudie comes from more formal people.

[melandraanne.livejournal.com]

I can't lay my hands on my copy at the moment (massive reorganisation ongoing..) but I seem to remember her saying 'Mais comme tu es bébé...' to which he replied 'yes, terribly, terribly backwards..' or have I mis-remembered ?

[ankaret.livejournal.com]

Thanks! It seems to be vous at the beginnning ('Elle est mignonne, votre petit chou?') and 'tu' by the end, so maybe it's just meant to represent them getting better acquainted.

[smellingbottle.livejournal.com]

There's also the issue of the Incredible Sliding Timescale of the novels - when is Attic Term set? If Claudie were au-pairing in London in 2007, she would automatically use 'tu' to Patrick, as someone her own age or younger in a non-professional situation (and probably be immediately invited to use it with Anthony and Helena), but it was certainly far more hierarchical until fairly recently, particularly among the French upper classes. I agree with other people that Claudie is being politely formal initially (and is in any case, as a language-student semi-domestic friend-of-the-family, in a slightly odd relation to Patrick who is neither her child charge nor her employer), but that their relationship becomes less formal, and more sexually-charged, by the end.

Or it could be that she decided she cannot continue to address as 'vous' someone who weeps at classical music...?