the central traits of the beloved

It is commonly said that loving care for another person requires the lover to try to further the welfare and good of the beloved. To love someone is to will that person's good. The lover must try, in Tov-Ruach's words, ‘to discover what the beloved is really like to determine the best development and exercise of the person's central features’. A lover, she goes on to say, whose ‘attentions are active in forming and crystallizing the beloved's personality… takes care that his constituting attention is appropriate to the real traits and the tonal character of the person whom he loves’. (1980, p. 469) The question is how to interpret and then apply this precept.

In Colette's novel Chéri, for example, Léa, who is twice as old as Chéri, parts from him with the words:

You are breaking away from me very late in the day, my naughty little boy; I've been carrying you next to my heart for too long, and now you have a load of your own to carry: a young wife, perhaps a child… I am to blame for everything you lack… Yes, yes, my pretty, you are, thanks to me, at twenty-five, so lighthearted, so spoilt, and at the same time so sad… I'm very worried about you. You're going to suffer and make others suffer. You who have loved me…; (1955, p. 166)

Here Léa is remarking that she has helped to create in Chéri someone who is inadequate to deal with his own future needs. Her attention has been active in forming his personality, and she certainly knows what he is really like.