Novel of François Mauriac, published in 1941 by the ED. Grasset, and carried to the screen in 1980 (Paul Crauchet, Nathalie Roussel).

Summary

The young person Louis Pian, orphan by his mother, is subject to the heavy influence of the second wife of his father, Brigitte, the " Pharisienne". This woman has a design of the catholic faith which pushes it to seek the holiness in all the acts of its life. However, not satisfies to inflict the rigors of an ascetic religious practice , it oppresses its entourage by its concern for Perfection. Known évêché for his enthusiastic zeal, one entrusted the task to him to reintegrate people who, having known the tribulation , return towards the Church (sometimes simply to find a lodging and a cover!). Brigitte Pian is thus with the head of a small institution which it directs hard with the clear conscience of one elected of God: she breaks by denunciation a idylle between two parishioners however devoted, puts at the door the poor which do not yield with his authority. Louis, the narrator, in delicacy with the school and his family, but which actually suffers from the absence of a father hardly foreseen during the account, ends up being sent by this mother-in-law in a religious pension. There, a priest takes it in pity and the assistance to take again the way of the studies.

Topics approached

• the aspiration to religious perfection is a expensive topic with Mauriac, which wrote much on the Jansénisme. This novel has surprised because the author, itself known like enthusiastic catholic, shows here excesses and the character almost deviating of an extreme religious practice.

• the world of the religious pensions, or that (also confined, gathering to him also often teenagers) sanatoria, inspired much at the XXe century: unity of place, theater of one passage at the adulthood ( Bildungsroman ).
• the place of the women in the French company, and in particular the operation of prohibited on their behavior, is treated in this work through the destiny of several heroins: parish separated from its co-religionist, the mother of a comrade of Louis, and Brigitte Pian itself. perhaps
• the act of denunciation of heroin returns to the context of the Occupation (see the date of composition of work).