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the Complete Review
the complete review - fiction



Domesticity

by
Joris-Karl Huysmans


general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author

To purchase Domesticity


Title: Domesticity
Author: Joris-Karl Huysmans
Genre: Novel
Written: 1881 (Eng. 2025)
Length: 303 pages
Original in: French
Availability: Domesticity - US
Domesticity - UK
Domesticity - Canada
En ménage - Canada
En ménage - France
Vite di coppia - Italia
from: Bookshop.org (US)
directly from: Wakefield Press
  • French title: En ménage
  • Translated and with an Afterword by George MacLennan
  • Previously translated as Living Together by J.W.G. Sandiford-Pellé (1969)

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Our Assessment:

B : doesn't completely work, but an interesting effort

See our review for fuller assessment.



Review Summaries
Source Rating Date Reviewer
Le Figaro . 23/2/1881 Philippe Gille
French Studies . (60:2) 4/2006 Christopher Lloyd
Le Livre . 10/3/1881 L.D.V.
Revue litt. et artistique . 1/3/1881 Henri Mornand


  From the Reviews:
  • "En Ménage est un roman réaliste plus qu'on ne peut l'imaginer, mais qui n'est certes pas sans intérêt." - Philippe Gille, Le Figaro

  • "En Ménage probably features on few if any university degree programmes, for its blend of Zola's naturalism, the Goncourts' aestheticism and Flaubert's pessimism is likely to make it seem both derivative and inaccessible to all but the most dedicated readers. Its static, circular plot and bleak account of the sexual politics of domestic life and the predictable failure of relationships and ambitions are partly counteracted by the author's caustic black humour and bravura passages of descriptive writing, though it lacks the zestful inventiveness or stylized concision which make its successors A rebours and A vau-l'eau far more appealing. (...) (O)ne suspects En Ménage is likely to remain a half-forgotten novel." - Christopher Lloyd, French Studies

  • "En Ménage est donc un livre qui se ressent de la dualité de l'écrivain, -- on ne saurait voir là qu'une série de photographies littéraires très exactes, reliées par une mince affabulation. (...) C'est peu de chose, on le voit; mais cette pauvreté de canevas importe peu à l'auteur qui dresse son objectif de photographe sur tout ce qu'il voit et que nous voyons tous les jours, et il nous faut, bon gré mal gré, contempler cet album de provincial aussi ennuyeux que la réalité nue; -- en toute franchise M. Huysmans n'est qu'un croquiste de natures mortes, -- c'est la chair et non l'esprit de piètres héros qui parle (.....) Pour tous les amis du naturalisme, En Ménage sera évidemment une œuvre remarquable et applaudie, un chef-d'œuvre d'optique; pour nous, cette littérature marque zéro au thermomètre des belles-lettres, car, si jamais un Edison quelconque inventaitt une machine à décrire, une daguéréotypie de la rue et des bouges, un phonographe spécial, l'art de MM. Huysmans et consorts cesserait d'être (.....) Toute littérature qui part de l'œil et non du cerveau ou du cœur n'est pas plus une littérature, que la sténographie n'est un style." - L.D.V., Le Livre

  • "Il est très curieux ce livre avec son allure paradoxale à outrance et sa forme exacte et précise. Cette forme, ainsi que la moralité qui se dégage de l’action, est très naturaliste; Mais on y sent comme un parfum de paradoxe romantique (...) Quoi qu'il en soit le livre est sérieux. C’est une de ces études de demi teintes que je réclame si instamment : le détail de la vie; ces choses qui nous restent fixées dans la cervelle aux circonstances même les plus critiques, et dont la peinture donne aux œuvres réalistes un aspect si saisissant, -- est soigné et amoureusement rendu. C’est un livre consciencieux, sincère, avec de très belles qualités déformé, et sans tapage, un travail sérieux et original." - Henri Mornand, Revue littéraire et artistique
  Quotes:
  • "Les Sœurs Vatard and En Ménage, which followed, are both sordid studies in the most sordid side of life; it is with all the dull persistence of hate that they detail, gloatingly, the long and dreary chronicle of insignificant, disagreeable, daily distresses." - Arthur Symons, 'M.. Huysmans as a Mystic', in Studies in Two Literatures (1897)

  • "The best of Huysmans' early novels is undoubtedly En Ménage. (...) This picture of a studious man who goes away with his books to fight over again the petty battles of bachelorhood with the bonne and the concierge and his own cravings for womanly love and companionship, reveals clearly for the first time Huysmans' power of analysing states of mind that are at once simple and subtle. Perhaps no writer surprises us more by his revealing insight into the commonplace experiences which all a novelist's traditions lead him to idealise or ignore. As a whole, however, En Ménage is scarcely yet a master's work, a little laboured, with labour which cannot yet achieve splendour of effect." - Havelock Ellis, Affirmations (1898)

  • "The novel is careful in workmanship; it is like Goncourt and Flaubert, both gray and masterful. But it leaves a bad taste in the mouth." - James Huneker, North American Review (Vol. 186, No. 622; 9/1907)

  • "Possibly no works have been more abused for ugliness than Huysman's novel En Ménage and his book of descriptive essays De Tout. Both reproduce with exasperation what is generally regarded as the sordid ugliness of commonplace daily life. Yet both exercise a unique charm (and will surely be read when La Cathédrale is forgotten). And it is inconceivable that Huysmans -- whatever he may have said -- was not ravished by the secret beauty of his subjects and did not exult in it." - Arnold Bennett, The Author's Craft (1914)

  • "(T)he most important of his Naturalistic novels (.....) The pessimism, latent in Zola, here asserts itself. Huysmans does declare, in places, that modern life contains unknown beauties. This remains a profession of theoretical faith. What oozes from the whole book is misanthropy, hatred for this incurably vulgar, ugly, stupid world" - Rene Lalou, Contemporary French Literature (1924)

  • "(I)n En Ménage the dreary tedium of existence is chronicled in all its insignificance with a kind of weary and aching hate." - Arthur Symons, 'The Later Huysmans', in Studies in Two Literatures (1924)

Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.

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The complete review's Review:

       Domesticity opens with writer André Jayant and painter Cyprien Tibaille out late at night, with Cyprien egging André on to stay out longer. André begs off; among other things, he's: "supposed to go see what a slaughterhouse is like at the crack of dawn for the sake of my novel".
       Thirty-year-old André is married while Cyprien is single, and André has been extolling the advantages of marriage; unfortunately, when he arrives home, he finds another man with his wife. So much for a happy domestic life. André doesn't make too much of a scene, but he does walk out, resolved to leave his wife and start anew, alone: "It's back to the bachelor life for me; enough is enough !"
       If the circumstances of the break-up hit André quite hard, it doesn't seem the worst of outcomes. We learn early on that: "He had married his wife half-heartedly, without enthusiasm", and, after a few chapters describing the initial aftermath there's one that goes back and relates the circumstances and upbringing of the woman in question, Berthe. Marriage, to André, also didn't live up to her expectations -- not least because:

André was absorbed by literature, a circumstance disdained by all the families she knew, an occupation that consisted of twiddling his thumbs and writing at a rate of two words a day. Besides, he couldn't have much talent, as the few books he'd written hardly sold any copies.
       It became clear that things were on a bad course when André invited "his oldest and best friend, Cyprien Tibaille", for supper, with Berthe showing her disdain and displeasure from the moment the guest arrives. Disparaged by her friends -- whom André had forbidden her to see -- and egged on by them, things only got worse, leading Berthe then also into the arms of another.
       André is hit hard by what happened, but also focused on moving on -- and he does so reasonably well. For one, he: "took a childlike delight in his new place of residence" and in furnishing it -- though since: "he could only work in an environment that was thoroughly well known to him" it takes him quite a while to acclimate himself to the new order and arrangement of things and he can even just try to get down to work. Set in his ways, he re-employs Mélanie, who had already been the housemaid in the household he had shared with Berthe, immediately seeking her out to handle things in his new home as well. She has her faults, but he's comfortable with her, and she's a welcome daily presence. (Married to a policeman, she doesn't live in.)
       Not everything goes entirely smoothly. For one, he struggles with his writing:
(H)owever much he tried to get into harness, his efforts failed. He would seat himself in front of his desk, visualize the scene he wanted to describe, seize his pen and remain there, listless, like those people who, after having waited a long time for supper, can only swallow a mouthful when finally seated at the table.
       And then there's .... well: "The admission slipped out: he wanted a woman". He indulges in the readily-available relief for a time but soon: "his depressions became even more pronounced and peremptory, with the mental lethargy that follows carnal excess".
       Weighing on him all the while is also the memory of a girl -- "a girl he hadn't loved in the way that, by common consent, one loves in novels, but who had pleased him, who had been the first to charm him after he'd left school". He assumes that this: "Jeanne must be dead" -- but then gets word that not only is she alive but that she wants to meet him (amusingly, when they do meet, she also admits: "I thought you were dead").
       The couple reünites and they rekindle their relationship -- though she has a boyfriend (who is conveniently busy elsewhere for the time being -- but, even more conveniently, still sends her some money for support). Soon, they're like an old married couple -- down to the fact that sex doesn't play a big role any longer (eating well soon becoming their preferred sensual pleasure) --, enjoying a: "cozy domesticity". But it too can't last -- not least because André offers too little financial security. (It's unclear how André has any financial security, as for the entire span of the novel he doesn't seem to be earning anything.)
       Cyprien also falls into a relationship with a woman, Mélie, and does varieties of hackwork -- soon at best dreaming of the ambitious large-scale works he'd like to paint. And André reünites with Berthe and soon enough they are a couple again. (As pointed out in an endnote, divorce -- illegal until 1884 -- had never been an option.) By the end, both would-be artists have resigned themselves to reasonably comfortable domesticity -- with Cyprien summing up philosophically:
Being hollowed out as we are isn't so bad, because now that all the compromises have been made, maybe humanity's eternal stupidity will make us welcome, and, just like our fellow countrymen, we'll have the right to finally live respectable and stupid lives.
       So there's not that much story to Domesticity, and it's a bit awkwardly put together. For a novel featuring two artists, there's also relatively little about their creative work -- and more about Cyprien's various commercial efforts than any of André's writing (as, among much else, he never seems to get to that slaughterhouse he was headed to at the outset, "for the sake of my novel" (about which we hear pretty much nothing as well)). As André sums up at the end:
When it comes to actually realizing a work we've conceived, forget it. So you see, where art is concerned we've played the part of those poor devils of lovers who, having desired a woman for God knows how long, can't get it up when they've finally got her.
       There's little description of any of their art -- though we're told they were: "both smitten by naturalism and modernity". Domesticity is generally seen -- and criticized -- as a novel in which Huysmans was still under the sway of Zolaesque naturalism, but part of the appeal is in its detailed descriptions, such as André's newly furnished rooms or the Désableau household of Berthe's aunt and uncle, or the window of café:
     Rows of bottles, each with lead caps on their tops and stars shining in the middle of their bellies, formed the half-circle surrounding two tiers of little, round, blue cheeses, vinaigrettes veined with cold beef, dubious ragouts of turnip congealed in fat, sponge cakes with burnt black splotches puckering their yellow sludge.
     A remaining portion of rice pudding was collapsed in a pewter dish; eggs the color of wine filled a floral salad bowl; a rabbit, spread open on a platter, four paws in the air, spilled viscous violet of its liver onto a carcass washed in very pale vermillion. A mural of bowls fitted into each other, blue-rimmed saucers raised up in a tower, were preceded, in front of the glass of the shopfront, by an old plum brandy jar full of water, where the stems of wilting gladioli were soaking.
       Fortunately, such over-rich descriptions are carefully dosed, with Huysmans only occasionally getting carried away in this manner -- infrequently enough that it makes a nice contrast to what is often otherwise a bit of a gray tale. There are smaller, more frequent flourishes along the way as well, enough to make Domesticity an engaging read throughout, despite its flaws -- and while not steeped in rich decadence as completely as some of Huysmans' later works are, it certainly still drips with it.
       A bit rough, plot- and presentation-wise, and ultra-polished elsewhere -- in some of the description --, there's enough to Domesticity for it to be of interest (not least as a significant station in Huysmans' unusual arc of work), and this new translation is certainly welcome.

- M.A.Orthofer, 11 January 2026

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Links:

Domesticity: Reviews: Joris-Karl Huysmans: Other books of interest under review:

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About the Author:

       French author Joris-Karl Huysmans lived 1848 to 1907.

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© 2026 the complete review

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