One of the more intriguing parts of The Stranger is its portrayal of its female characters. The story opens with the death of Maman, an event that does not seem to affect Meursault much at all. If anything, he finds it inconvenient. At his mother's funeral, Meursault appears perturbed by the heartbroken elderly women who attend it. His relationship with his lover Marie unfolds throughout the rest of the book, but without much development between the two.
Meursault follows a common pattern in the way he sees women- he is either annoyed by them, or feels attracted to them. Before he later stated that he found his mother's death inconvenient, Meursault described her death with surprising nonchalance. "Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know." (Camus 1) At the funeral, he appears to find the elderly womens' grief annoying. The way he views Marie is very obvious when he sees her during his trial. "Marie entered. . .From where I was sitting I could just make out the light fullness of her breasts, and I recognized the little pout of her lower lip." (Camus 93) Although his staring at the parts of her body that are the most sexualized could be excused as normal part of their relationship, it is also likely that he was used to sexualizing women he did not find annoying.
This lack of female characters that do not possess stereotypical characteristics may be reflective of the mindset of the period Camus wrote this book in. Even now it is nearly impossible to find a "strong female character" that breaks away from the sexualization and objectification of women in media, so it is not surprising that there is no presence of strong female characters in The Stranger.
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