La Pharisienne (1941) (English translation: A Woman of Pharisees 1946). We read of the text in a review that it:
'is a penetrating evocation of the moral and religious values of a Bordeaux community. In Brigitte, we see how the ideals of love and companionship are stifled in the presence of a self-righteous woman whose austere religious principals lead her to interfere—disastrously—in the lives of others. One by one the unwitting victims fall prey to the bleakness of her “perfection.” A conscientious schoolteacher, a saintly priest, her husband and stepdaughter and an innocent schoolboy are all confronted with tragedy and upheaval. But the author’s extraordinary gift for psychological insight goes on to show how redeeming features inevitably surface from disaster.'
Here is a passage:
'I have a cat here with me in the house', noted Monsieur Calou in his diary that summer.'
The "cat" is a boy put in the care of abbe Calou by a callous relative.
Mauriac goes on:
...'a cat that slinks in and out of the library without so much as moving a chair, sniffs round the books, pads into the dining-room' and gobbles soup.
Who was Francois Mauriac? He was in 1933 elected a member of the Académie française. Although once a supporter of reactionary groups, Mauriac was critical of the Catholic church
when it supported Franco. Mauriac joined the resistance after France was occupied by Germany. Of all the members of the Academie Francaise, (there were 40) only Mauriac continued to publish his writing, in defiance of the German censors. Editions de Minuit was the press which clandestinely produced forbidden books. The volumes by Mauriac (pseudonymously of course) and others were distributed person to person. More famous names wrote underground texts for the press: Camus, Gide, Paul Éluard, Louis Aragon, Jacques Maritain. Some of these people later became members of the Academie francaise, but only Mauriac was a member at the time the occupation began.
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