Piety & Cruelty

WOMAN OF THE PHARISEES (241 pp.)--Francois Mauriac, translated by Gerard Hopkins--Henry Holt ($2.50).

This French novel, economical, quiet and painful in its insights, concerns the old Catholic bourgeois society of France before World War I. The central figure in the story is Brigitte Pian, a woman whose intense religious life is a mask for her pride and will to dominate others. The scruples with which she torments those dependent on her may seem fantastic to casual readers, but they are logical consequences of a false and formal Christianity.

Stern Brigitte cannot abide love in others. When a poor schoolmaster and a plain little seamstress wish to marry, she does her best to prevent it--then watches their poverty and sorrow with pretended concern but real satisfaction.

Soon she has a second and better opportunity for mischief in the guise of piety. A country boy entrusted to a saintly and intelligent priest for schooling falls in love with Brigitte's stepdaughter. The woman separates them to punish their "sin," and sends the girl to a convent where she is even forbidden to write to her lover.

When the priest connives with the girl to get her letters to him, Brigitte discovers it and brings a complaint against the priest. Sickened by loneliness and by the discovery that his adored mother is an adulteress (a masterly story in itself), the boy steals money from his tutor and runs away. It looks like a triumph for Brigitte's self-righteousness. But the priest, though apparently defeated, finally wins her half-mad and remorseful soul.

The penetration and subtlety with which these characters are handled will be moving even to readers who share none of the background. The author, Franc,ois Mauriac, 61, has as great an international reputation as his fellow Catholic, Georges Bernanos (TIME, Oct. 14). A collected edition of his novels is being brought out in England, and several U.S. publishers are thinking it over.

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