Apparently within the tradition of the sentimental novel, Caliste in fact centers around love, its obstacles, and the iniquities of the nobility. But equally, it demonstrates the absurdities of the bourgeois code, thus countering the philosophy of happiness that the sentimental genre exalts. Humiliation totally possesses Caliste as she gives up Vol-taireanreason, wishes to be freed from the constrictions of her personality, and longs for the positive sacrifice denied her by society. Deprived of true religious feeling, Caliste can only then turn to stoic sentimentality and thereby allow a wish for death to undermine her life. This death wish is a precursor of Romantic death as a refuge and as an expression of one's individuality. It reinforces a sense of the infinite rather close to that of the German pietists and pre-Romantics, Herman and Lessing; and calls for the vague des passions, showing Belle de Charrière, without Benjamin Constant, in a somewhat unusual light. (In French)
Hård sentimentalisme og seksualiseret middelalder i Tom Kristensens En Kavaler i Spanien