This article explores the ways in which the characters of Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette's La Princesse de Clèves manipulate the conventions surrounding death in seventeenth-century France. It argues that Mme de Chartres prevents her daughter from participating in the traditional ceremonies surrounding death that were intended to comfort the living as much as the dying. In so doing, Mme de Chartres creates a sort of psychic ghost. One such manifestation of this ghost is the term ‘devoir,’ one that Mme de Chartres herself used in life. M. de Clèves's later death functions as a rewriting of Mme de Chartres's; it provides an opportunity for the princess to assert herself as an active participant in her husband's deathbed scene, a role which her mother had not previously allowed her to assume. This motivates the princess to retreat to a convent, where no one, not even the narrator, bears witness to her passing.

本文探讨了玛丽·马德琳·拉斐特（Marie-Madeleine de Lafayette）的《拉克公主》（Claraves deClèves）中的人物在17世纪的法国操纵有关死亡的惯例。它争辩说，沙特尔夫人阻止她的女儿参加围绕死亡的传统仪式，这些仪式旨在给死者提供尽可能多的生活。这样，沙特尔夫人创建了一种心理幽灵。这种鬼魂的这种体现之一就是“德瓦”一词，沙特尔夫人自己在生活中曾使用过。德克莱夫斯先生的去世是对沙特尔夫人的重写。它为公主提供了一个机会，让自己成为丈夫病床现场的积极参与者，而母亲此前从未允许她担任这个角色。这促使公主退居女修道院，在那里没有人，甚至是叙述者，都不为她的逝世作见证。