The World of the Thibaults by Roger Martin du Gard

First published:Les Thibault, 1922-1940; includes Le Cahier gris, 1922; Le Pénitencier, 1922; La Belle Saison, 1923; La Consultation, 1928; La Sorellina, 1928; La Mort dupère, 1929; L’Été 1914, 1936; Épilogue, 1940 (English translation, 1939-1941)

Type of work: Novels

Type of plot: Social realism

Time of plot: Early twentieth century

Locale: France

Principal characters

• Monsieur Thibault, the father
• Antoine, his older son
• Jacques, his younger son
• Gise, an orphan girl reared by the Thibaults
• Madame de Fontanin, a Protestant woman
• Jérome de Fontanin, her husband
• Daniel, her son
• Jenny, her daughter
• Meynestrel, a Socialist leader

The Story:

Monsieur Thibault is furious when he learns that Jacques lied to him and had run away with young Daniel de Fontanin. The Abbé Binot, Jacques’s teacher, has even more disquieting news. From a copybook that fell into the abbé’s hands, it is apparent that Jacques, not yet fourteen years old, formed an unnatural friendship with Daniel. What is worse, the de Fontanins are Protestants.

Antoine Thibault, already a doctor, goes to see Madame de Fontanin to learn what he can about Daniel and his friendship with Jacques. Antoine finds her a very attractive, sensible woman, who rejects Antoine’s hints of an improper relationship between the boys. They question Jenny, Daniel’s younger sister, who has a fever. To Antoine’s practiced eye, Jenny is suffering from meningitis. When neither Antoine nor the other doctors can help Jenny, Madame de Fontanin calls in her minister, Pastor Gregory. He effects a miraculous cure of the girl by faith healing.

Jacques and Daniel get as far as Marseilles. Although Jacques is the younger of the two boys, he is the moving spirit in the escapade. He is rebelling against the smug respectability of his father and the dull Thibault household. Monsieur Thibault is such an eminent social worker that he has no time to try to understand his own family. The suspicions of the Thibaults, however, are unfounded; Jacques’s feelings for Daniel are no more than a schoolboy crush.

When the runaways are returned by the police, Daniel is scolded and forgiven by his mother. Jacques, on the other hand, is put in a reformatory founded by his father. There, the boy’s spirit is nearly broken by brutal guards and solitary confinement. Only by devious means is Antoine able to get his brother away from his father’s stern discipline. He takes a separate flat and has Jacques live with him, assuming responsibility for his younger brother’s upbringing.

When Jérome de Fontanin, Daniel’s father, runs away with Noémie, a cousin, Noémie’s daughter, Nicole, comes to live with the de Fontanins. Nicole is very attractive, and Daniel tries to seduce her. Nicole, however, has before her the unhappy example of her mother, and she resists him.

Under Antoine’s care, Jacques slowly recovers his mental health. During the summer vacation he is greatly attracted to Jenny. Just as Jenny is beginning to care for him and to overcome her aversion to physical contact, Jacques disappears.

For three years the Thibaults think Jacques is dead. Only Gise, an orphan girl reared by the Thibaults, hopes that he is still alive. One day, she receives from England a box of rosebuds like those she sprinkled on Jacques just before his disappearance. Convinced that Jacques is alive, Gise goes to school in England, where she hopes to find him.

Antoine follows a different course. By chance, he discovers a Swiss magazine with a story entitled Sorellina or Little Sister. Antoine thinks he recognizes both the Thibault and the de Fontanin families thinly disguised in the story. Disquieted, Antoine hires a detective agency in Geneva to trace the author.

Antoine’s own life is quite unhappy. On an emergency case one night, he meets Rachel, an adventuress, and they become lovers. Little by little, Rachel tells him the story of her sordid past, a story that strangely endears her to Antoine.

She was once the mistress of the ferocious Hirst, a fifty-year-old man who having incestuous relations with his daughter, Clara. Rachel’s brother married Clara, and they went to Italy on their honeymoon. A few days later, Clara wrote to her father, asking him to join them. After his arrival, the young husband learned the true relationship between father and daughter. To avoid a scandal, Hirst strangled Clara and her husband and threw their bodies into a lake.

Rachel says she is through with Hirst. One day, she says she has to make a trip to the Congo to see about some investments. When Antoine does not believe her, she admits that she is going back to Hirst, who sent for her. Antoine sadly accompanies Rachel to Le Havre and helps her embark.

According to a report from the detective agency, Jacques is an international socialist and an influential writer in Geneva. Monsieur Thibault develops a serious illness. Fearing that his father will die, Antoine goes to Geneva and asks Jacques to return, but Monsieur Thibault dies without recognizing his errant son. At the funeral, Gise sees Jacques again and realizes that she still loves him. Jacques, however, loses all his affection for her. Jenny is still afraid of Jacques, and in her frigidity she even comes to hate him. Daniel is busy as a successful artist.

Jacques feels no ties in Paris and returns to Geneva. He works there during the fateful summer of 1914. Under the leadership of Meynestrel, a group of socialists are involved in trying to unite the workers of England, France, and Germany in an effort to stop the impending war with paralyzing strikes. Jacques is frequently sent on secret missions. One such trip is to Paris just before general mobilization is decreed. By chance, Jacques sees Jenny again. The new Jacques, mature and valuable to the pacifist movement, soon converts Jenny to his views. They fall in love.

Madame de Fontanin’s husband dies in Vienna, where he is suspected of embezzlement. In an attempt to clear his name, she goes to Austria despite the imminence of war. While she is gone, Jacques becomes a frequent visitor to the de Fontanin flat. When Madame de Fontanin returns early one morning, she is shocked to find Jacques and Jenny sleeping together.

Jenny plans to leave for Geneva with Jacques. At the last moment, however, she decides to remain at home. Jacques is free to leave on his humanitarian mission. He and Meynestrel have their own plan for ending the war. Jacques takes off from Switzerland in a light plane piloted by Meynestrel. He has with him several million pamphlets that call on both Germans and French to lay down their arms. The plane crashes near the French lines, and Meynestrel burns to death. Jacques, severely wounded, is captured by the French as a spy. While he is being carried to headquarters on a stretcher, one of the orderlies shoots him in the temple.

Gassed severely during the war, Antoine realizes that his recovery is impossible. On leave, he visits his old country home near Paris, where he finds Madame de Fontanin a competent hospital administrator and Nicole a good nurse. Jenny is happy, rearing her and Jacques’s son, Jean-Paul. Daniel comes back from the front a changed man, for a shell splinter unsexed him. Now he spends his time looking after Jean-Paul and helping the nurses.

Back at the hospital in southern France, Antoine receives a necklace from Rachel, who died of yellow fever in Africa. He tries to keep notes on the deteriorating condition of his lungs. He lives until November 18, 1918, but he never knows that the Armistice was signed before his death.

Bibliography

Boak, Denis. Roger Martin du Gard. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1963. Discusses Martin du Gard’s cyclical novel within the context of humanist philosophy. Boak compares Martin du Gard to existentialist writers and sees this work as symphonic with tragic overtones. Reinforces the connection to Pierre Corneille on the basis of related transcendental qualities.

Brosman, Catharine Savage. Roger Martin du Gard. Boston: Twayne, 1968. Analyzes Martin du Gard’s artistic vision and places him squarely in the nineteenth century tradition because of his use of omniscient narration and authorial interjections, by which he produces a literature of ideas. Calls attention to Martin du Gard’s style for its naturalness, simplicity, and spontaneity.

Gilbert, John. “Symbols of Continuity and the Unity of Les Thibault.” In Image and Theme: Studies in Modern French Fiction, edited by W. M. Frohock. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1969. Gilbert discusses the structural unity of The World of the Thibaults and makes a compelling case for the coherence of the cyclical novel, which has elsewhere been judged to be formless.

O’Nan, Martha, ed. Roger Martin du Gard Centennial, 1881-1981. Brockport: State University of New York Press, 1981. This special edition of nine essays is wide-ranging and comprehensive. Almost all articles refer extensively to The World of the Thibaults. The themes discussed include the writer as phoenix, the ethics of ambiguity, the psychology of revolution, and fiction as testimony.

Ru, Yi-Ling. The Family Novel: Toward a Generic Definition. New York: Peter Lang, 1992. Ru argues that the family novel is a distinct literary genre, proving her contention by analyzing The World of the Thibaults, The Forsyte Saga by John Galsworthy, and The Turbulent Trilogy by Chinese author Pa Chin.

Schalk, David. Roger Martin du Gard: The Novelist and History. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1967. Schalk investigates the sudden change in Martin du Gard’s literary objectives that led him to incorporate contemporary history into fiction. Includes an impressive collection of critical comments from other scholars.