Paule Rezeau née Pluvignec, best known as Folcoche, is the antagonist of the famous French novel Vipère au poing (Viper in the Fist), written in 1948 by Hervé Bazin, its two movie adaptations and its two sequels.
Folcoche is widely known in France as the epitome of the tyrannical and abusive mother, to the point that her nickname has become a common synonym. Folcoche can also be regarded as a symbol of a woman embittered by a marriage of interest, who hates a family that she never desired.
Personality[]
Folcoche is very bitter, spiteful, selfish, distant, uncaring, irritable, blatantly unfair and downright physically abusive, dictating her rule to all, from the lackeys to her own family.
She does not tolerate displays of affection and dishes out disparaging comments or scathing verbal abuse whenever she can with little to no justification; unsatisfied with even the best achievements and always finding a way to put people down. She cannot stand insubordination or opposition and whenever she cannot prevent it, she is bound to get her revenge in one way or another.
To put it simply, she is simply unable to care for anyone: Even when she does feels genuine affection, she cannot express it normally. It is strongly hinted that Folcoche views her children as reminders of her failed life, and refuses to see them experience the happiness that she herself was denied of.
She is extremely materialistic, avaricious and obstinate, and she is also described as lacking hygiene. The only things she values are her treasured collections, which she always carefully locks away.
Background[]
Viper in the Fist is both a largely autobiographical novel, and a heavy criticism of the bourgeoisie of these times, depicted by Hervé Bazin as blatantly hypocritical, sanctimonious and manipulative, with appearances and interest being more important than the family members' well-being. While Folcoche serves as the villainess of the story, she is not the real target of the author's contempt and somehow appears as a product of said society.
Folcoche comes from a hugely wealthy and influential family, who imposed her a marriage with the respected, yet pauperized, Rezeau family. The Rezeaus live in an ancestral manor in the French countryside, the "Belle Angerie", living on the rent made by many farmer families working for them. However, their wealth has grown thinner, mostly due to their scorn of modern business, hence the marriage of interest between her and Jacques Rezeau.
Folcoche herself may very well never have been truly loved by her parents, and certainly never loved neither her husband nor her sons, with the exception of her last born and favourite child Marcel, the only one for whom she seems to care for a little. When married, Folcoche was endowed three hundred thousand francs, a great fortune that the Rezeau family needed to restore their social standing, but which she has complete control over, one of the reasons why she is the one who actually rules the household.
Viper in the Fist[]
Considering the success of the novel, it was adapted twice as a movie in 1971 and 2004. In each of these adaptations, Folcoche was portrayed by a renowned French actress, namely Alice Sapritch for the first one and Catherine Frot for the second.
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Folcoche portrayed by Alice Sapritch
In the beginning of the novel, Folcoche is living in China with her husband and her last son Marcel, who was probably born there. Jean Rezeau and his slightly dimwitted older brother Ferdinand live a happy childhood in the "Belle Angerie", cared for by their loving grandmother. The story really starts when the seven-year-old Jean catches and strangles a viper, comparing himself to Hercules strangling the snakes sent to kill him.
Some time later, their grandmother dies and their parents return home. Both boys happily welcome their mother, but she violently slaps them, irked by their noisy behavior, and their nightmare begins.
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Folcoche portrayed by Catherine Frot
Their mother immediately confiscates all their toys, before setting very strict rules for her three children to follow. They no longer have any leisure time, their activities being divided between their studies under the direction of the family's clergyman and preceptor, and taking care of the house and park. She also fires almost every employee, including the children's nanny Ernestine, who tried to protect them.
Moreover, she hits them and humiliates them on a regular basis for little to no reason, and has them confessing their "wrongdoings" before her each night before going to bed. All this happening before their father's eyes, as the man is too meek to stand against his wife and devotes his entire time to his studies.
One night, she severely beats Ferdinand, deeming his confession not honest enough. Such blatant unfairness prompts him to rant curses the whole night long, calling her "folle" (mad) and "cochonne" (colloquial word for "sow") and contracting it into Folcoche.
A domestic war soon breaks out between Folcoche and her children (including Marcel, who while favoured and rarely struck also suffers from her unfairness) who starts resisting, mostly by disobeying behind her back and writing VF ("Vengeance against Folcoche") wherever they can. Jean, who hates Folcoche the most, eventually becomes the de facto leader. As such, he defies her by any mean he can, staring at her insistently at dinner, which the boys call "pistolétade" (a childish term for gunfight); and she retaliates by concentrating her efforts on him. This lasts for several years, eventually concentrating on Jean's and Folcoche's personal feud, with the other characters being more and more reduced to the side-lines.
When a very ill Folcoche is sent to the hospital, the boys welcome their newfound freedom, openly wishing she would never return, to the point of dancing and yelling "Folcoche's gonna die!" over and over.But she comes back healthier than ever, immediately restarting her unfair rule to re-establish her fragilized hold over the house.
Because of this, the boys go as far as making two attempts on her life, but to no avail. First, they increase her medicine dose to poison her, but she has developed an immunity over time; and later by making her "accidentally" fall from a boat hoping she drowns, but she manages to swim to safety and viciously retaliates.
With the boys having grown too much to fear Folcoche’s blows nor to work in the park any longer, she is forced to change her tactics. She tries to separate the three brothers, by keeping Marcel by her side and favouring him even more, or by punishing Ferdinand alone for a common "wrongdoing", but Jean sees her coming and she fails.
Folcoche's attempts become increasingly ludicrous but Jean keeps opposing her, having become addicted to his hatred for his mother. He flees and goes to her parents after she restrict him to his room, and later foils her attempt to frame him for stealing her wallet. This makes them both realize that their feud has gone too far to last, and she is forced to grant him what they both desire: his departure for a boarding school.
Such victory unfortunately proves hollow in the long run, as their feud left lasting damages. Jean is painfully aware that she broke something in him, leaving him unable to love or even trust a woman ever again, nor even to enjoy a truly peaceful life. He ends the novel with this ironic sentence: "Thank you mother, I am the one who walks with a viper in the fist." By this reference to his childhood feat, he states that from then on, he will be forced to bear the burden of his hatred…
The Death of the Little Horse[]
In the novel La mort du petit cheval (The Death of the Little Horse) Jean and his brothers are now attending a boarding school, but even distance does little to protect them from Folcoche’s hatred and tyranny. She keeps attacking Ferdinand and Jean as viciously as ever; doing everything she can to make them fail their studies, their love affairs and their life as a whole.
Folcoche manages to ruin one of Jean's love affair and enrols him in a university that he does not want, prompting him to run away to Paris, where he starts the studies he desires, being forced to sever ties with his entire family to gain his freedom. The death of his father only estranges him more than he already was, and he has to struggle to gain the success that Folcoche is denying him, and more importantly to become able to truly love a woman.
At 20 years old, Jean eventually manages to gain a situation and a loving wife and family, breaking free at last from his mother's grasp, while the unfortunate Ferdinand fails miserably and sunks into poverty. The death of the "little horse" mentioned in the title apparently represents the end of both Jean's childhood (the word "little") and the power that Folcoche had over him. (Horses being mostly domestic animals.) However, Ferdinand's gloomy fate means that once again, Folcoche is only partially defeated.
The Cry of the Owl[]
Folcoche is seen in a much different, and sympathetic, light in the third novel Le cri de la chouette (The Cry of the Owl) being reduced to an old widow with nothing to her name but her bitterness and regrets. The "cry of the owl" being in fact her sorrowful cry of agony, somehow referring to the superstition according to which an owl’s cry foretells someone's death, and also being a pun, the French expression "vieille chouette" meaning literally "old owl" and figuratively "old hag".
Jean is now a successful, 45-year-old widower, who got remarried with a woman called Bertille, raising Bertille's daughter Salomé alongside his own children. Then one day, Folcoche in person comes to his place. She comes in peace, asking for a place to finish her life, having ironically been betrayed and robbed of all her possessions by Marcel, the only son she cared for. Jean initially refuses to have anything to do with the mother he hated so fiercely, but his wife and children take pity on Folcoche and convince him to let her stay.
Folcoche soon develops for Salomé the motherly love she always lacked, but Folcoche always being Folcoche, she disturbs the family life and causes much discord and mistrust. Even her genuine attempts to be likeable end up badly, as she never knew nothing but hatred and bitterness, leaving her unable to correctly express her affection. She covers Salomé with gifts and presents, but the young woman does not really care about it and ends up eloping with her lover Gonzague. Distraught, Folcoche relinquishes the ownership of the "Belle Angerie" to Jean and tries to leave searching for Salomé, only to drop dead because of an embolism, with Jean as the only witness.
"When I'm buried, it might cause some wet cheeks, if it rains! The old hag was doubtless mistaken when she made this desperate cry." In this sentence, Jean quotes his mother's regrets about her loveless life (the titular "cry of the owl") and at the same times indicates that he is now finally able to come to terms with their hateful history. He goes as far as to express genuine grief for this unfortunate woman, seeing her as a victim just as he was.