Poisoned Relations (Simenon novel)
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Les Sœurs Lacroix (1938) is a 'roman dur' by Georges Simenon, the story of a dysfunctional family.
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Plot
The Lacroix sisters live in a bourgeois house in Bayeux.
Mathilde Lacroix married Emmanuel Vernes and had two children: Jacques and Geneviève. This marriage, which was loveless from the start, has led to an untenable situation since Mathilde learned that her husband had once cheated on her with her sister, Poldine, and that Sophie was born of their affair. Each character lives with their grudges and spies on the other through daily, almost ritualistic gestures.
The children have the impression of suffocating in the family crab basket: Jacques threatens to leave with Blanche, the daughter of a notary; Geneviève confines herself in a piety mixed with anxiety and languor; Sophie reacts like an unbearable spoiled child.
Poldine realizes that arsenic is mixed daily with the soup. Geneviève falls sick and cannot walk anymore. Mathilde, entering inadvertently in her sister's room, discovers her handling test tubes and deduces that she wants to poison someone. She soon learns that her husband wanted to do the same and, after a stormy explanation, Emmanuel hangs himself in the attic where he had spent most of his days for the past eighteen years. The Lacroix sisters are free from the one who had been sowing discord between them. However, they wonder why Emmanuel left what he had to Geneviève, who is growing weaker by the day. Before she dies, the young girl frees herself from a terrible presentiment: "When I am gone, you will all be alone."
Indeed, Jacques and Sophie each make a self-serving marriage on their own, the maid leaves, too, and the Lacroix sisters remain confronted with each other, prisoners now of the hatred that unites them.
Special aspects of the novel
A kind of mise en abyme of family poisoning.
Description of the work
Space and time
Space
Time
Before World War II.
The characters
Main character
The role is split: the Lacroix sisters, namely:
- Léopoldine, known as Poldine, widow of Roland Desborniaux, a daughter
- Mathilde, her younger sister, married, two children
Both of them of mature age.
Other characters
- Emmanuel Vernes, painter, husband of Mathilde, mature age
- Jacques Vernes, notary clerk, 22 years old
- Geneviève Vernes, 17 years old
- Sophie Desborniaux, 20 years old.
Source
- Maurice Piron, Michel Lemoine, L'Univers de Simenon, guide des romans et nouvelles (1931-1972) de Georges Simenon, Presses de la Cité, 1983, p. 80-81
See also
