The mystery behind the family. On Mauriac’s The Frontenac Mystery.
Endings alert. Read the book if you haven’t.
I know very little about François Mauriac, his life and his works. I picked up this book from one of those old booksellers by the Seine in Paris, just to fulfill the cliché of buying a French book from an old French dude wearing a beret, but the bookseller was kind and he recommended some books I’ve never heard of and even recommended some wrong things. For him, the book sales was just a business and this was his living, I don’t think he was a lover of literature. But he was kind, and that’s all that matters.
Mauriac, from the little that I have read of him, is not crash hot on the institution of the family. He views it with a suspicious eye, where personalities clash and the bonds of family is a restraint against one’s self-interest. The Frontenac Mystery, on the other hand, looks upon family matters a bit more kindly. The mystery of the Frontenac is how each family members relate to one another, despite their differences and still love one another (or at least tolerate one another). The Frontenac mystery is the mystery of every family.
And unless I miss something, I don’t think it is that deep of a mystery. The Frontenac Mystery is a record of a short family saga in less than 250 pages, from the time the children were children, to the time they are working adults and to some, to their deaths. And in all honesty, the problems with the book begins with the title, because I personally don’t think that the mystery is anymore profound than any filial bond. Is there a mystery on why a mother loves her son? Or why a brother loves another brother?
Enter the Frontenacs — a pretty banal family if you ask me
When we meet the Frontenacs, we see a family almost lost at sea: a widow trying to raise five children in a large estate, an uncle who comes to visit every fortnight and also responsible for handling the affairs of his nephews and nieces, but who may or may not be cracking into his dead brother’s wife, and the children messing around on their own, hanging out and having conversations about life under a massive oak tree.
The mother, Blanche, is concerned about her children’s future, and it seems that the uncle, Xavier, isn’t doing enough. The children, in their adolescence, have ambitions of their own. The oldest, Jean-Louis wanted to be an academic philosopher but he was seeded by the family to take over the family business. Yves, the second, had always wanted to be a poet. José is ephemeral, fanciful, but with a lot of promise (as any children are when they were children).
Through the passage of time, Jean-Louis becomes a very capable entrepreneur and manager, handling the family business with some difficulty, but this is only natural. Yves became a renowned poet, as he intended, but at the same time his personal life is a mess, tortured in unrequited love. José, well he got a bit too fanciful and spent all his money on a woman and other hedonistic tendencies. His debt soared. But he redeemed himself by taking up a career in the military. Did I mention that there were five children? Well, yes. There were two other daughters but we don’t hear shit from them.
Uncle Xavier got old and his health deteriorates, but his “kept” woman Josefa continued to nurse and love him, much, much better than Xavier’s snooty nephews and nieces. For those who got old would deteriorate would also die, either in their physical or mental wellbeing. Sounds just like life doesn’t it?
Am I missing the mystery?
The cover of the book, with its macabre mansion doused in generous amounts of black and grey promises a haunting murder mystery which may expose our human flaws. Instead, the mystery is not criminal in nature, but a general question to the audience why does a family stay together despite their differences.
And it’s not a question that I ask often, and a question that I don’t think profound. Families stay because of the bond of blood, we put our differences aside because we have to. I am not going to dig deep to answer why I love my mother, my sisters, my grandma, or any of my immediate family. I don’t feel obliged to. But props for Mauriac to try and answer this question (yet still falling short).
Mauriac, though the book is brief in its pages, was ambitious in the scope of his questions of family matters. What are our obligations to the institution of the family? And like each family, there is no universal answer and depends on the character, the nature and the temperance of the family. Jean-Louis sacrificed a humble ambition of being a philosopher-teacher to be a somewhat successful businessman, so that he can ensure his family’s sustenance. Yves, who had not much of an obligation to the family, moved to Paris and lives on his whims to continue writing his poetry. José, well, we don’t hear much from José.
Then there is the commercial side of the family business, where Dussol, as a manager was the tenured until one of the children was ready to take over. We view Dussol suspiciously at first, perhaps, but he is a good manager despite his differences with Jean-Louis and he claims that the workers trust him more. But the business ticks over, and we can’t say that the Frontenacs are too hard up. The balance between sentiments and logical necessity is part of the question of this mystery.
We see this in the beginning when Blanche cornered her brother-in-law Xavier on the question of her children’s estate. She rightfully did not want to bear the cost of living in a mansion with a small family when the only other remaining Frontenac, Xavier himself, is not living with them. Xavier also had to balance the books with his mistress Josefa, practically a lowly housemaid, but one of which have potential claims to the family wealth. He feels a weight of guilt for anything that he gives to Josefa, thinking that whatever he gives her comes out of the wealth of his nephews and nieces.
The throngs of wars ever closing to the Hexagon
The Frontenac Mystery had the hindsight of the first great war without the presage of the second, having been published in 1933. I can’t help to think that the Frontenacs may be a microcosm of France before the war, Jean-Louis, the entrepreneur holds the commercial side; Yves, a poet, is the artistic side while José, as fleetful as he was, held the military. These facets must also co-exist and flourish for France to stand. The dynamics between the brothers and their bond with each other is a testament to this balance.
The story was also directed by the breath and the gossips of war. The Frontenac children were growing up in a delicate time, where Germany was merely a benign neighbour and the military duties of the hexagon were dedicated to keeping their colonies in check. José stationed in Morocco, won’t know that he would perish in the artillery battle in the trenches of the Western front thinking of his mother’s embrace.
War, naturally would change everything, and the deaths of José and Yves were representative of the decay of the country’s military and artistic facets during the period. Some of the nation’s most talented artists gave their lives during this war, those who could have been literary giants had they survived (Henri Alain-Fournier, who wrote Le Grand Méaulnes comes to mind). But the Frontenacs are not without their seeds, and Jean-Louis’s offspring may germinate the seeds of the nation, to a stronger state. It is fitting perhaps, that the commercial pillar of the Frontenac provides the foundations for the next generation.
The mystery of Mauriac
As a first time reader of Mauriac and having read this book in its original language, which is not my original language, I felt lukewarm towards the author. But perhaps I missed some of the significance of the book because of the gaps in my reading (and shallow researches). But it is not a book that I would dive deeply into. My purpose of the book was a stepping stone to improving my grasp of the language. Though not the most complex, Mauriac may be a little difficult to follow at times.
Still, I did not care much about the characters. The Mauriac children, I felt, were spoiled children with mostly superficial problems much like anybody else. Even though this is supposed to resonate, when there is nothing to like about their persons, the connection with characters ring hollow. I couldn’t care any less about the mystery of the Frontenacs. They’re just like any other families with more money than most other families.
Still, I want to read more Mauriac. Though I don’t feel that he really cut deep into that perennial question of literature of what makes us human, he writes beautiful and enjoyable prose, and his other works, such as Thérese Desqueyroux, promises more.
