DUMAS, ALEXANDRE (son). — Novelist and playwright, b. July 27, 1824 in Paris, d. Nov. 27, 1895 at Marly-le-Roi. The natural son of the author of *The Three Musketeers*, he found the doors of contemporary society closed to him and therefore sought out less rigid environments, throwing himself at an early age into the dubious world of the pleasure-seekers, which he rechristened the *de-mi-monde* and on which he wrote a drama of that title. It is thus understandable that, at the age of twenty-three, he chose as the plot of one of his novels the story of a fallen woman, whom he portrayed as redeemed by a so-called sincere love; and how the masses, already prepared by Romanticism, were moved to tears by the sad vicissitudes of Marie Duplessis in *La Dame aux camélias* (1847), later adapted into a play, translated into various languages, and set to music by Verdi under the new title *La Traviata*.
The titles of his later works share a common theme, and the problem that seems most urgent to D. always recurs: that of safeguarding the family against the encroaching vice, against infidelity in marriage. The remedies he suggests, while respecting the laws of nature, include forbidding marriages of convenience and protecting children from the crimes of their fathers, etc. At times he approaches Christianity, as, for example, in *Idées de M. me Aubray*: only this, in fact, could occasionally lend his words that accent of profound evidence which convinces; yet these fleeting allusions are not enough to redeem him from the numerous episodes of stark realism.
Among D.’s works placed on the Index are: *Omnes fabulae amatoriae* (Decree June 22, 1863); *La question du divorce* (Decree June 21, 1880).