Robert Brun Character Analysis

In the yellow notebook, Robert Brun is the stereotypically pretentious, well-dressed, and adulterous French editor of the magazine Femme et Foyer (meaning Woman and Home, a near-translation of Ella’s magazine Women at Home). Ella meets with him in Paris to try and buy a story for her “editress,” Patricia Brent, but it soon becomes clear that the story is not appropriate for a British audience. Ella spends the rest of the meeting watching Brun gawk at women who pass by until his “captive” fiancée Elise arrives. Ella sees Brun’s relationship with Elise as a failed marriage in the making, since Brun is clearly incapable of respecting or matching Elise’s loyalty.