ROBERT LAMB
“How proper!”
‘Comme il Faut’ is a dramatic monologue in the form of a letter, leading to confrontation and a departure from family life; the story examines themes of obsession and paralysis, its protagonist blinded by obsession with propriety.The titular phrase becomes a mantra the protagonist accepts willingly without appreciating its irony or even understanding what it means, namely that he is anything other than proper during the course of events.The use of this technique is similar to the universal adjective “nice” in Joyce’s ‘Clay’, the lack of meaningful epithets suggesting mental paralysis through physical inarticulacy.
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