Line from Maupassant

Can someone tell me what this phrase from Un Coup d'Etat says;

avait attendu que sa femme en eut aussi pour venir trouver le medcin,

Thanks

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Permalink Reply by Siddharth Gurjar on September 9, 2010 at 11:47am

la phrase complète est "le mari, atteint de varices depuis sept ans, avait attendu que sa femme en eût aussi pour venir trouver le médecin"

le sens de cette phrase est que, le marie qui n'avait pas un bon santé n'avait pas visité le médecin jusqu'a sa femme aussi doit y visiter..

The meaning is that the husband who had some disease had not visited the doctor till his wife had to visit him..

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EducatorPermalink Reply by stu harris on September 9, 2010 at 4:18pm

Here's the complete sentence, in "free" translation:

The husband, who had suffered from varicose veins for seven years, waited until his wife also developed them before going to the doctor.

I can't explain why the subjunctive form eût is used here, rather than the perfect tense avait.

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Permalink Reply by Allan Welch on September 13, 2010 at 11:12pm

Thanks, now it makes sense.

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Permalink Reply by Tammy Slavvi on September 28, 2010 at 9:27pm

"I can't explain why the subjunctive form eût is used here, rather than the perfect tense avait."

If a sentence the first part is in the past the "eut" is NOT the passé simple but the imparfait du subjonctif. True that is confusing and they do look similar.

In spoken speech maybe someone could say "avait" but here in français littéraire the imparfait du subjonctif is a prerequisite.

Tamy

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Permalink Reply by Neil Coffey on September 29, 2010 at 12:29am

Are you sure speakers would ever use the indicative (avait) here? The essential difference is that everyday French would use the present subjunctive (...qu'il en ait), but it would still be a subjunctive surely?

In answer to the question of why the subjunctive, there are two kinds of answers:
(1) "just because it is" -- that's what speakers do with attendre que...; why in English do people say "I tried doing it" but not usually "I attempted doing it"...?
(2) if you want to try and be a bit more analytical, you could point to the "snapshotting" function of the subjunctive (like the English constructions "for X to Y", "X Ying") -- although this is philosophising to a large extent -- the bottom line is that speakers do what they do...