The Lesson

Fiction | Play | Adult | Published in 1951

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Summary

Background

Act Summaries & Analyses

Act 1, Part 1

Act 1, Part 2

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Act 1, Part 1Act Summaries & Analyses

Act 1, Part 1 Summary

The Lesson is presented in one act with no scene breaks or intermissions. The play opens in the professor’s home office/dining room, which looks quite ordinary. The doorbell rings and the maid, Marie, scurries in to answer it. Marie, aged 45 to 50, greets the young pupil, an 18-year-old woman who has come for a private lesson. Marie invites the pupil to sit and calls for the professor as she exits hastily. In a weak, “rather reedy” (45) voice, the professor promises his presence momentarily. The student, who “seems to be a well-brought-up girl, polite, but lively, gay, dynamic” (45) takes out a notebook as if studying. As the stage directions dictate, throughout the play, the young pupil becomes increasingly inhibited and withdrawn until she is “almost a mute and inert object in the professor’s hands” (46). The professor, aged 50 to 60, enters. He is inhibited and quiet, his timidity occasionally interrupted when “a lewd gleam comes into his eyes and is quickly repressed” (46).

Like the pupil, his demeanor changes over the course of the play as if he absorbs her liveliness, becoming aggressively confident and loud. Both shifts occur so subtly as to be imperceptible. The student greets the professor assuredly, and he stammers an apology for his lateness. She found the house easily, explaining, “I just asked the way. Everybody knows you around here” (47). He has lived there for 30 years. As they chat about the town, the professor is impressed when he quizzes her about the location of Paris, and she, after a moment of thought, knows that it is the capital of France. Their conversation turns to the weather, which the professor notes is “nice” as it is “not raining and it’s not snowing either” (48). The student points out that it is summer, which would make snow unlikely, and he responds, “We can’t be sure of anything, young lady, in this world” (48).

The student names the seasons (with a bit of prompting for autumn), and the professor announces that she is very smart and will make a good student. Pleased, the student explains that her parents have urged her to pursue education. She has degrees in science and arts, and her parents are hoping that she can qualify in three weeks for a total doctorate. Commending her for her ambition and for her obviously advanced knowledge (based on geography and seasons), the professor asks for her consent to sit across from her to begin studying, and she readily agrees. He asks if they can begin, and she replies, “Yes, indeed, Professor, I am at your disposal” (50). The professor repeats, “At my disposal?” (50), and a wicked gleam appears in his eyes briefly before it is repressed.

Marie enters and then lingers, which irks the professor, who tells her to run along. Before exiting, Marie urges him “to remain calm” (50), which offends him greatly. He tells her hotly not to worry, and Marie replies, “That’s what you always say” (51). She pleads with the professor to not begin arithmetic with the girl, but he huffily sends Marie away. With the student, he starts quizzing her arithmetic, beginning with addition. He marvels at her ability to add one plus one, followed by a series of equations adding numbers—all under 10. When he repeats the same equation, he praises the student for repeating the same answer, although after several repetitions of eight, she adds that seven plus one is sometimes nine. But then he moves on to subtraction, at which she fails spectacularly. She is befuddled by four minus three, and he attempts to break down the process of subtracting.

The student struggles to count and cannot understand subtraction, unfamiliar with the notion of smaller and larger numbers. On an unseen chalkboard with invisible chalk—Ionesco specifies that all objects in the play are imaginary—the professor draws matches to demonstrate taking away. She responds by adding, and he replies, “[O]ne must be able to subtract too. It’s not enough to integrate, you must also disintegrate. That’s the way life is” (55). He questions how many ears or noses she would have if he pulled one off her head, but she cannot grasp the idea, grappling even with the concept of objects representing numbers. The student asks why subtraction is structured as one number taken away from another, and the professor states, “That’s the way it is, miss. It can’t be explained. That is only comprehensible through internal mathematical reasoning. Either you have it or you don’t” (58). He lectures her that she must understand these concepts if she ever wishes to become a scholar.

Continuing, he asks an absurdly large multiplication problem (3,755,998,251 multiplied by 5,162,303,508). Without hesitation, she gives an answer that he is at first certain must be wrong but then is astonished to pronounce it correct. The student explains that since she could not understand the reasoning of multiplication, she had memorized every possible multiplication problem. The professor asserts that although that is impressive, reasoning is the most important part of mathematics. As Marie enters, he tells the student that he can try to help her achieve a partial doctorate, but she will not be able to pass the oral exams for a total doctorate. Marie tries to get the professor’s attention, but he sends her out, annoyed. Marie begs the professor not to start teaching philology. He snaps at the maid, and she exits.

Act 1, Part 1 Analysis

At the beginning of the play, the professor, his maid, and the young girl seem quite “normal.” The girl has come to the professor for tutoring. When the lesson begins, their interaction shifts out of harmony into absurdism as the professor praises the girl as an excellent candidate for a total doctorate for knowing (as a French girl) that Paris is located in France, and for naming (with prompting) the seasons. He marvels at her ability to add single-digit numbers, although he is equally surprised that she cannot subtract them. And while she cannot do basic subtraction, she is able to produce a correct answer when multiplying two, multi-digit numbers—and yet, she only accomplishes this because she has somehow memorized an infinite combination of mathematical possibilities, rather than learn how to multiply. The student gradually reveals her weakness under his interrogation, just as he begins to assume some authority with each passing test.

One of the first stage directions describes the foreshadowing that will occur throughout the text that hints toward the professor’s menace. He will grow stronger, and she will grow weaker, and he will occasionally let a lascivious gleam shine momentarily in his eyes. But for the audience, this foreshadowing is likely far more subtle, depending on the choices of the actors, and the threat creeps in gradually. To the unassuming audience, as well as the girl, the professor is well-known in the neighborhood, which implies respect, and he also seems physically weak, which makes him seem harmless. Even Marie’s warnings are ignored and treated as hysterical, and neither the girl nor the professor is concerned enough to stop.

The first half of the play also puts forth the larger systemic hierarchies that the girl and the professor represent. Notably, they do not have names. Their identities are slippery both in terms of the ways that they change and reveal themselves throughout the play, and the way they serve as stand-ins for every person caught in this hierarchy. Even when he seems weak, the professor is powerful. Alongside the gender and age power hierarchies of an older man over a young girl, the professor is the gatekeeper of the patriarchal academy, which the girl is vying to join. Marie interjects at moments when the professor shifts to a higher level of teaching, suggesting that it is not simply the presence of a vulnerable girl but teaching that brings out his inner predator. His lascivious gleams suggest that he looks at her and thinks about not simply violence but violation.

In contrast, the girl is agreeable and eager to please, particularly with this male gatekeeper, believing that hard work and determination are enough for a young woman to succeed (especially a young woman from a privileged background who is fulfilling her parents’ expectations). She accepts his decision that she cannot pursue a total doctorate, as if his word settles the matter. At the beginning of the lesson, she tells the professor that she is “at his disposal” (50), eliciting a brief lewd gleam. Her innuendo suggests that she expects and is complicit in at least a level of flirtation and exchange of sexual energy, as she is likely aware that her attractiveness and feminine wiles are a useful tool in a patriarchal world. By the end of the first half, there is momentum in their lesson, although the professor has not yet lost control. But, as Marie says (and the student doubts), “philology leads to calamity” (60), and a philology lesson is next on the professor’s agenda.