The aim of this essay is to get deeper into the mysteries of love as they manifest themselves as most open: in literature. I have studied the two French writers Claire Etcherelli and Françoise Sagan, both writing about love in the 50’s Paris. While Etcherelli’s love takes place between factory workers, Sagan’s scene is the upper middle class. My question is how love manifests itself in such similar but yet different surroundings: is love a class question?

Looking at the structure present in the novels and how the love story proceeds, I have discovered that although the conditions are fundamentally different, the structure is almost identical. This is itself an ideological fact. The structure shows that in both cases, love appears as a solution to an unsatisfactory situation. The man enters the novel when the heroine knows she needs change. With him, she then embarks on a project for change. This project implies for Sagan a journey towards nature and the dissolution of the Self, whereas for Etcherelli it means a greater involvement in the political struggle and the constitution of an identity. The journeys undertaken are therefore diametrically opposed, yet the way they are taken about, is the same. Both authors present a vision of love that is comparable to many of 20th century theorists. Whereas some theorists, e.g. Denis de Rougemont and Slavoj Žižek, claim that love essentially is a lie: it says one thing and wants another, it is actually the want of suffering or a power game, others such as Erich Fromm and Francesco Alberoni speak about it as a revolutionary movement towards social change and knowledge of the human soul. Both Sagan and Etcherelli support the latter view. Love is in their novels a metaphor for hope, it comes forth as a firm belief in the possibility of change, social as well as existential.