Costals

Costals is presented in Simone de Beauvoir’s analysis of Henry de Montherlant as a man whose claims to generosity and superiority depend on keeping women beneath him. He does not seek an equal relationship: he arranges intimacy so that he can appear sovereign, give pleasure without receiving anything in return, and avoid the judgment that an equal might impose. His conduct toward Solange and Rhadidja exposes the vanity beneath this ideal of mastery, while his moments of recognition show that the victories on which he builds his self-image are a farce.

Identity and the image of superiority

Costals belongs to a fictional world in which feminine autonomy is treated not as a possible form of human life but as a threat to a fixed hierarchy. Beauvoir argues that Montherlant’s portrayal of Andrée Hacquebaut makes the point especially starkly: Costals may call her intelligent and claim sympathy for her, but the novel’s treatment of her encourages readers to see her as foolish and repellent. In Beauvoir’s reading, this discrepancy is not a neutral portrait of Andrée. It makes her effort to exist as a person appear to confirm the very stereotype that denies women independent consciousness.

This outlook clarifies the kind of woman Costals prefers. Beauvoir describes his mistresses as selected for their passivity and dependence, and says that he avoids recognizing them as subjects with a point of view of their own. He wants a woman who can serve as a measure of his superiority without becoming an equal capable of challenging it. The relation is therefore organized around a refusal of mutual recognition: the woman is present, but her independent perspective is not allowed to count.

Intimacy as a performance of mastery

Costals casts himself as a giver. He imagines that he supplies joy, peace, warmth, strength, and pleasure, and takes satisfaction in this picture of his own abundance. Beauvoir observes that he can even pay his mistresses to reassure himself that he owes them nothing. Yet the exchange remains unequal in his mind: he describes himself as giving and the woman as merely receiving, even when the relationship might otherwise suggest reciprocity.

His conduct toward Solange makes the performance concrete. He tries to shape her to his own image and treats her first sexual experience without the consideration that would make care mutual. Beauvoir presents these details not as incidental discourtesies but as expressions of a larger rule: Costals expects a woman to yield to what he calls his generosity. When he imagines that Solange does not appreciate his caresses, he turns white with rage. The reaction reveals how conditional his giving is. It is less an offer freely made than a demand for recognition, and the woman is expected to confirm his self-image by responding as he wishes.

Rhadidja serves a similar purpose in a different register. Costals cherishes her because her face lights up when he enters; her evident pleasure allows him to feel at once like a predator and a magnificent prince. Beauvoir identifies the contradiction in this arrangement: if the women he chooses are as inferior and empty as his assumptions require, their responses should scarcely matter to him. Yet he needs their satisfaction and appreciation. His supposed independence therefore relies on the very attention he claims to dispense without dependence.

Avoidance of equals and of reciprocal pleasure

For Costals, a woman is a safer opponent than another man. Beauvoir contrasts his interest in testing strength against women with the risk of confronting male equals, who could return an unpredictable judgment and establish a ranking he did not control. Animals, landscapes, children, and women-children offer an arena in which he can remain his own judge. His attraction to competition is thus qualified by a preference for contests that cannot seriously unsettle his position.

The same asymmetry shapes his understanding of sexual pleasure. Costals speaks readily about desire and the pleasure he gives, but avoids acknowledging his own bodily vulnerability or what he receives. In Beauvoir’s account, receiving would mean dependence; mutual pleasure would require a shared experience in which neither person could remain entirely sovereign. Costals instead seeks cerebral satisfaction in women and keeps sensual reciprocity at a distance. He wants the authority of intimacy without the exposure that intimacy between equals would entail.

His ideal of female passivity also sits uneasily beside the energy he devotes to mastering women. He pays attention to their reactions, wants gratitude, and is angered when he thinks his attention has not been valued. Beauvoir reads this not as evidence of a hidden mutuality but as the mechanism that sustains his vanity: the woman’s response is indispensable as proof of his power, while her independent consciousness remains unwelcome.

The limits of his freedom

Beauvoir’s decisive judgment is that Costals’s triumphs are staged rather than achieved. He imagines himself free because he avoids obligations to women and protects his superiority from challenge; yet, in her analysis, he has made this freedom serve his ego. He retreats into a private image of grandeur, using women as partners who give him his lines while he takes the leading role. Without an aim beyond self-display, his gestures do not amount to meaningful action.

That retreat is not as self-contained as Costals supposes. Beauvoir points out that Alban’s rejection of Dominique is shaped by the image of a fool he sees reflected back at him: even the arrogant man remains responsive to the collective judgment he claims to despise. Costals’s posture of sovereignty likewise depends on other people’s reactions, especially the approval and pleasure of women whose subjectivity he refuses to recognize. The result is a brittle performance, secure only so long as no real encounter tests its claims.

The character’s significance lies in this reversal. Costals seeks to make women’s subordination confirm an indestructible male superiority, but the effort exposes dependence on their response and fear of equality. Beauvoir concludes that the victories over women amount, in Costals’s own moment of lucidity, to a farce. That recognition does not turn him into a participant in an equal relationship; it reveals the emptiness of the heroic role he has constructed and the limits of a freedom devoted only to preserving his image.