The Square

The Square (1955), a novella by French writer Marguerite Duras, consists solely of dialogue between a young woman and man—both unnamed, poor, and on the verge of desperation—as they meet in a public park. The story's lack of overt narration, character information, and names places the emphasis on the nature of the conversation between the woman and man, which seems, on the surface, to be about very little, but speaks to the hopelessness and absurdity not only of the characters but of all of humanity.

In a small public garden somewhere in Paris, the young woman and man sit. She is a 20-year-old maid who babysits a little boy named Jacques and also takes care of his overweight, senile old grandmother. Jacques plays nearby throughout most of the story, only putting in occasional appearances to express basic human needs, like asserting that he's hungry, or thirsty, or tired.

The man is an older traveling salesman whose life is a nomadic one. He goes by train from town to town, selling enough goods from his suitcase to pay for food and for the inexpensive hotels he calls home.



The woman and man watch Jacques play. He is a charming child, and his antics are the subject that triggers the conversation between the woman and man.

As they talk, the man's words reveal that he is largely comfortable with his life, even though he has no permanent roof over his head and his labors are menial. His comfort stems less from satisfaction and more from a resignation that this is just how things are and that they will never change. The sum total of his life experiences has resulted in a loss of ambition and a general disinterest in society and its norms and values.

By contrast, the young woman adamantly does not like her life. She lives with the family she works for, and her status as a servant forces her to eat all her meals in the kitchen. She resents what she views as the degradation of her job, especially the daily washing and grooming of the malodorous grandmother. She has worked as a domestic servant since the age of 16 and has had no secondary education or upward mobility in either her job or social standing. As a result, the conditions of her life have robbed the young woman of her identity, and this is a tragedy of which she is acutely aware.



Nevertheless, unlike the man, the young woman still holds onto a sense of hope. She dreams of someday finding a man who will sweep her off her feet, marry her, and take her away from the drudgery of her life and work. Every Saturday, she attends singles dances at Croix-Nivert in an attempt to find her Prince Charming. Though she makes it clear that he has not yet entered her life, she is certain that one day, he will. So, from her perspective, her current dissatisfaction and hardship are only temporary circumstances; she has not reconciled herself to the meaningless fate the man has.

The conversation between them never deviates from the polite. They refer to one another as monsieur and mademoiselle, using the formal vous. With that said, an undercurrent of romantic or sexual tension grows between them. Their discussion comes to an end when Jacques, ready to go home, begs the young woman to leave. She asks the man if he will come to Croix-Nivert on Saturday to dance with her. He tells her that maybe he will. This answer does not satisfy her; she wants him to commit to attending or not. But to do so would require the man to make a bold move, releasing his tight grip on the weakness and accepted despair with which he lives his life. And he simply cannot do that.

This ending—or lack of an ending—leaves the fate of the central characters open to interpretation by the reader. The scene captured in the story might just be a single, chance encounter between two strangers in a park, a simple conversation between two ships passing in the night. But it might also be the beginning of a happily-ever-after. Maybe the man attends the dance at Croix-Nivert and asks her to dance, and they fall in love and marry, and he becomes the one she has been searching for. Either outcome is equally possible. As the man himself says when she asks if he'll be attending the dance: "Perhaps."



In 1957, Duras adapted The Square into a stage play. Like the book, the entire narrative reveals itself through the dialogue between the woman and man. Most of the dialogue from the book remains intact in the stage version, with only the insertion of stage directions differentiating the two texts.