French Exit

Malcolm is Frances’s son, he is “thirty-two, […] looking his usual broody and unkempt self” (3). Malcolm doesn’t try at anything, which frustrates his fiancée, Susan, who can’t get him to meaningfully commit to her if it means confronting his mother. At the beginning of the novel, Malcolm is afflicted by a Failure to Become Independent into adulthood. Throughout the novel, he journeys toward a deeper engagement in his own life and a more authentic connection to other people. This characteristic is further exemplified in his arm wrestling with Tom, in which he repeatedly refuses to try until Tom leaves in disgust. Malcolm has learned that if one doesn’t try, one can’t fail, or lose, and in fact, in this case, he wins.

Every story that Malcolm tells throughout the novel, from his interactions with his father to stories about school, illustrates his essential loneliness. He articulates this feeling, specifically the lack of connection with other men when he observes the relationships of the men in the park. Malcolm’s loneliness was an indelible part of his childhood and only changed after his father’s death when Frances took him away from school. To Susan, he describes himself before this rescue as “[a] lump of heartbroken clay” (38)—in other words, unformed, and yet deeply impressed by his parents’ neglect. Over time, Frances molds Malcolm into somewhat of a man, but he is still not fully formed.

Small Frank is a cat, but a cat possessed by the spirit of Frances’s dead husband, Franklin. When alive, Franklin was a “dashing man, poised, stylishly attired; but this was offset by the needed amount of menace, a tactile pulse of psychic violence” (22). He was a lawyer, but one who specialized in defending indefensible clients, taking “one repugnant case after another […] so that his own persona became indivisible from that of those he worked for” (22). Twice in his life, Franklin nearly died by suicide, and yet never spoke to anyone about it.

Franklin’s relationships with Frances and Malcolm, during his life, are dominated by the force of his personality. However, those relationships shift when, after Franklin’s death, his spirit possesses “the cat, that antique oddity called Small Frank” (4). As Small Frank, he is powerless and ineffectual, and once he escapes the house and is living by his abilities, Franklin finally seems to understand his own powerlessness, and represents The Circular Nature of Life’s Stages.

Although Small Frank is a character, he is also a symbol of both Frances and Malcolm’s inability to leave their pasts behind. Even though Franklin is dead, he is still a constant presence in their lives. Even when he runs away, Frances and Malcolm search for him and go to great lengths to contact him. However, by doing so, they achieve closure with Franklin.

Mme Reynard invites Frances and Malcolm to a private dinner party, even though they’ve never met, and this combination of pushiness and vulnerability remains characteristic of Mme Reynard throughout the novel. She is Mme Reynard is disarming in her honesty, and it is what gains her entry into Frances’s world. At their first meeting, she confronts Frances with her own bad behavior, imploring, “Please don’t be cruel to me, […] It was difficult to get up the nerve to invite you over” (100). This openness disarms even Frances, and after a rocky beginning, Mme Reynard connects with Frances through a story from their shared youth in New York. Although Mme Reynard superficially brings Frances back into contact with Manhattan society, it is not in the present context of what people must be saying about her bankruptcy, but what they said of her, admiringly, when she was at her most powerful.

Mme Reynard herself is lonely, and with Frances and Malcolm, she finds the belonging and connection she needs. She unofficially moves into their apartment, pretending to leave each night, and then going out early in the morning to return with pastries as if she’s just arriving from her house. Soon, she has taken over the cooking and management of the house, and when Joan arrives, is proprietary about it. Although she is a comical character, Mme Reynard is also thoughtful, self-aware, and willing to make herself vulnerable to gain an intimate connection with another. In this way, she serves as a model of behavior to Frances. In addition, Frances’s apology to Mme Reynard, the first time they meet, is uncharacteristic and shows some acceptance of Mme Reynard as an equal.

Mme Reynard’s first name is never given during the novel, as if some part of her, as an American expatriate, feels the need to identify with her husband’s nationality/cultural identity. This can also be read as how Mme Reynard, despite her openness and vulnerability, retains some measure of protection against hurt.

Susan is Malcolm’s fiancée, although she breaks up with him at the beginning of the novel. She ends their relationship not because she isn’t in love, but because she has realized that Malcolm will never choose her over Frances, and in fact will avoid any forward movement in their relationship that threatens to cause conflict with Frances. In addition, she endures Frances’s insulting behavior, and “seemingly benign taunt[s]” (15). At the beginning of the novel, she has, mostly by force, moved her relationship with Malcolm into engagement, but quickly realizes that it cannot go any further until something changes.

Susan is patient and understands the origins of Malcolm’s behavior—as such, she endures it for longer than even she understands. It takes an international separation for her to break up with Malcolm, but even so, she flies to Paris after one phone call from Malcolm after a month of silence. She is consistently conflicted throughout the novel, recognizing that Malcolm “was a pile of American garbage and she feared she would love him forever” (20). Although at the end of the novel, Malcolm seems committed to his relationship with Susan, his pattern of behavior leaves that in question.