SUMMARY
The book begins with a lavish celebration, Shrove Tuesday, which is another way to say Mardi Gras. Vianne Rocher , her daughter Anouk. and her pet rabbit Pantoufle have entered the village of Lansquenet-sous-Tannes, an extremely small village that is not very well known. Vianne has managed to purchase a lease on an abandoned bakery and is now trying to renovate it. On Ash Wednesday, Francis Reynaud, the country priest visits the family and asks how come they didn’t attend church that morning. The reason is because Vianne does not practice the Christian faith. It is the beginning of the rivalry between Vianne and Reynaud. But it is very discrete, as neither are openly expressing their feelings of contempt between one another. On Saturday, Vianne officially opens the La Celeste Praline, her very own small chocolate shop. She then takes a break from her business and travels down to Les Marauds, the tiny slum of Lansquenet. There she meets Amrande Voizin, a very interesting old lady.
In one chapter, we find out a little more about Vianne’s childhood. It turns out that her mother had been a gypsy, and was always traveling. She was a reckless mother in some ways, forging work permits, traveling to different countries illegally, having relationships with many men, and always getting into trouble financially. As a result, Vianne never really got the chance to live a normal and permanent life. She vows to not let the same thing happen to her own daughter. Vianne is also worried that one day she will lose her daughter.
At first the shop is not popular, as people pass by the shop without passing a single glance. It is obvious that everyone in the village is dying to come inside and indulge themselves. But unfortunately, they cannot, because they are in the midst of the Lent holiday, where they must fast to cleanse themselves. The story then shifts perspectives and we enter the mind of the priest himself. He lets us in on the confessions and observations of some of these townfolk. Paul-Marie Muscat beats his wife, his wife Josephine Muscat steals, and Charlotte Edouard thinks her husband has a mistress.
Eventually, the townspeople warm up to Vianne, and she gets her first customer, a man named Guillaume Duplessis who owns a dog named Charly. Then George Clairmont came to help hang up the store sign and a man named Narcisse came to bring some geraniums for her store. After a few people come and go, Josephine Muscat stands outside the store. Vianne tries to welcome her into the store and even gives her free samples, but Josephine flees. It is clear that there is much opposition to Vianne’s chocolate shop. Reynaud the priest and his supporters, Joline Drou, Caroline Clairmonth ( Armande Voizin’s daughter) and Paul-Marie Muscat are instilling fear in people like Josephine for breaking their Lenten vows.
Back to Francis Reynaud’s perspective. One day he ventured down to Les Marauds and found a group of boats with river gypsies living inside. He is mad at the townspeople for not taking more action, because he said that the gypsies have wreaked havoc on Lansquenet last summer before. He attempted to tell them to leave, but one of the gypsies, a man named Roux, said that they meant no harm. The next day, Caroline Clairmont told Vianne to forbid any of the gypsies from entering her shop, but Vianne refused, thinking that everyone should have service if they had the money. Later in the day, Armande Voizin came into the shop and talked with Vianne about Caroline. She is mad at Caroline for not letting her grandson, Luc have any fun and freedom.
When Vianne closed the shop for the day, she strolled down to the Café de la Republique to hopefully find Josephine. As she sat down and drank some coffee, Roux and his people walked towards the café. But Paul-Marie Muscat didn’t let them in. This angered Vianne and she stormed out of the store and after the gypsies, saying that they were welcome in her shop anytime. Then she caught up with Josephine, who began spilling all of her feelings to Vianne. She says that she is not in love with her husband Paul-Marie Muscat and wants to leave him and that she is sick of him always comparing her to Caroline. The section ends with Vianne telling Josephine that she has a friend to talk to whenever she needed to.
QUOTE
“ In a place like Lansquenet it sometimes happens that one person-schoolteacher, café proprietor, or priest –forms the linchpin of the community. That this single individual is the essential core of the machinery that turns lives…” (Harris 32).
REACTION
One of the first things that I noticed in the reading of this book is the prevalence of decorum. I am glad that I learned about this or else I would have not noticed it so quickly. For example, on the page 18, it says, “ This is always the case when a new shop opens in such a small village; there is a strict code of behavior governing such situations, and people are reserved, pretending indifference though inwardly they burn with curiosity. To add on to this notion of false indifference, on page 3 Vianne notes that,
“ The people of Lansquenet have learned the art of observation without eye contact.”
This usage of perphiferal vision reminds me of myself, and how sometimes when I want to look at something or someone, I do not want to seem overly obvious and nosy. But overall, even in a quaint village such as this, there is a lot of etiquette and decorum. But unlike To Kill a Mockingbird , where in Maycomb, they don’t talk about decorum, in Chocolat, at one point in the story, Josephine Muscat actually says what the unofficial rules of the village were.
When I was reading this section, I was wondering where the father was. Because although the book says that Vianne is unmarried, I was unsure as to whether or not the father passed away or he left the family. In addition, Vianne always mentions this man known as the Black Man. She mentions how they are always trying to get away from him, but this time around, she says that she is done running. It made me wonder if the father is an evil man who is trying to catch Vianne and Anouk. However, on page 75 it was revealed that the Black Man was Reynaud, so that put my predictions to rest. Also on page 75, Vianne said that Reyanud was “like a bad card. Again and again.” This relates to Viannes history with gypsies in the past and the context of this card allusion was that her mother kept on packet of divination cards that would predict the future, and it predicted a terrible omen of death. I was afraid that these cards might forshadow the death of a character in this book, but was relieved when I continued reading. Vianne said that her mother said that the death card could also predict the death of a way of life.
In terms of the writing style, it is very good. In the first chapter, I was totally drowning in figurative language, when Joanne Harris was describing the Mardi Gras carnival celebration. I did encounter difficulty in figuring out exactly what she was describing because there were a lot of French terms, although I did look up some words.
On page 36, Vianne describes the furniture in her shop as being “ cheerily kitsch”. This immediately lit a lightbulb in my head, because I knew that I heard that term somewhere. I remembered kitsch from reading about critical reception of the Disney movie “Fantasia”. Critics said that the movie was kitsch, meaning that it put together a lot of cultural icons and made an unoriginal piece of art. Usually it has a bad connotation, but how Vianne uses it Chocolat, she makes the term seem good, which is interesting.
Another nice example of Harris’s writing style is on page 73, when Armande Voizin says, “ Sodom and Gomorrah through a straw. Mmmmm ”. I found this line very amusing and clever, because it was clearly alluding to forbidden cities in the Bible and comparing it to the evils and temptations of chocolate during Lent.
