Dumas, Alexandre (Son)

DUMAS, Alexandre (Son). - Novelist and playwright, b. 27 July 1824 in Paris, d. 27 Nov. 1895 at Marly-le-Roi. The natural son of the author of The Three Musketeers, he found the doors of the society of his time closed to him and therefore had to seek out less rigorous circles, plunging at a very young age into the equivocal world of pleasure-seekers, which he rechristened the demi-monde and about which he wrote a play of that title. It is understandable, therefore, how, at the age of twenty-three, he chose as the plot of one of his novels the story of a courtesan, whom he portrayed as redeemed by a so-called sincere love, and how the crowds, already prepared by Romanticism, were moved on reading 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 of La Traviata.

The titles of his later works share a kind of common air among themselves, and there always recurs the problem that seemed to D. most urgent: that of the family to be safeguarded against spreading vice, against infidelity in marriage. The remedies he suggests are: to respect the laws of nature, to banish marriages of interest, to protect children against the crimes of fathers, etc. At times he draws near to Christianity, for example in the Idées de M.me Aubray: indeed, only this could now and then give D.'s words that accent of profound evidentness that convinces; however, these fleeting hints are not enough to redeem him from the numerous episodes of crude verism.

Placed on the Index are, by D.: "Omnes fabulae amatoriae" (Decree of 22 June 1863); La question du divorce (Decree of 21 June 1880).

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