Book excerpt: Histoire d'une Grecque moderne is a masterpiece of ambiguity. Through the narrator's own bias and hypocrisy and through his "doubles" in the story who mirror or contrast with his character, Abbe Prevost deflates the patriarchal figures of eighteenth-century European society. The Oriental heroine's quest for intellectual and physical autonomy challenges such traditional authority figures as the aristocratic hero/narrator, the European imperialist, the "philosophe," and the writer who reflect Western sexual and cultural prejudices. Like the other novels of Prevost's 1740 trilogy (and even to a greater extent than in "Manon Lescaut"), "La Greque moderne" conveys a disturbing moral pessimism and indeterminancy that, in the end, the heroine's courage and determination cannot overcome. In an age of skepticism and increasing individualism, "La Greque moderne" seems to question the existence of any trustworthy model of moral authority.