59 pages • 1 hour read
The Cruelest Month
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Themes
The Human Desire for Community
In The Cruelest Month, Penny explores the human desire to belong through the characters of Gamache and Jeanne Chauvet. She uses the village of Three Pines to emphasize this theme, creating the impression of a magical village that appears to those who need it: “Once found, Three Pines was never forgotten. But it was only ever found by people lost” (2). From the first chapter, Penny establishes Three Pines as a place where people instantly feel at home.
From the first time Gamache visits Three Pines, he recognizes that it is extraordinary: “Gamache had been to Three Pines on previous investigations and each time he’d had the feeling he belonged. It was a powerful feeling. After all, what else did people really want except to belong?” (60). Gamache struggles with his estrangement from the Sûreté; he has always belonged there and been looked at as a hero. Yet now, with his own actions, he places himself outside the ranks. At his lowest point, he considers leaving the Sûreté and Montreal and moving with Reine-Marie to Three Pines. When, at the end of the novel, he and Reine-Marie go to Three Pines to help renovate the Hadley house, they instantly belong with the villagers. Jeanne Chauvet feels this same sense of belonging when she first comes to Three Pines; however, in her case, she is not able to become part of the community.
Jeanne has felt like an outsider since she displayed her psychic abilities as a child. However, when she approaches Three Pines for the first time, she has “seen enough of the world, this and the others, to know a magical place. And Three Pines was one. She felt as though she’d been swimming all her life, but an island had risen” (202). Yet Jeanne’s sense of belonging and home is threatened when she discovers that Madeleine, an old high-school acquaintance, is living there: “All Jeanne had ever wanted was to belong, and all Madeleine had ever done was take that from her” (203). When they were in school together, Jeanne had given up her true self to try to belong and be Madeleine’s friend, and she was rejected. She fears that the same will happen again, and even after Madeleine’s death, she still threatens Jeanne’s sense of belonging in Three Pines.
After the murder, Jeanne struggles to recapture that sense of belonging; in the bistro, she “tried to pretend that she belonged” (202). However, the villagers, normally so welcoming, turn their backs on her. Even though Three Pines residents are an eccentric lot, they whisper about her being a witch and withhold the belonging she craves. Even Gamache notices her ostracization and confronts them about it: “You were all trying to get me to consider Jeanne a suspect. You told me you didn’t trust her, didn’t like her. Were frightened of her. I’d put it down to a kind of hysteria. The stranger among you. The witch. Who else would you want to be guilty?” (283) Clara is shocked by this comment and yet is forced to reconsider her own actions. Although Jeanne longs to belong to Three Pines, the villagers’ perceptions of her keep her on the outside.
While both Gamache and Jeanne feel a sense of belonging immediately upon entering Three Pines, for Gamache, that feeling remains throughout the book. When the villagers invite him to help with the Hadley house, it is clear that he has found the belonging he sought. Jeanne, on the other hand, remains on the outside, as the villagers’ suspicion, and their need to blame someone, causes them to withhold the sense of belonging that they offer so easily to others. Through these two characters, Penny explores what it means to belong and how that sense of community can be withheld.
Love and Attachment
There are two main story threads in The Cruelest Month, and both revolve around jealousy. In the murder-mystery narrative, Hazel’s jealousy taints her love for Madeleine, and in Gamache’s personal narrative, Brébeuf’s jealousy twists his love for Gamache. Yet Myrna, a former psychologist, offers a deeper perspective when she explains the concept of the near enemy to Gamache. What Hazel and Brébeuf are experiencing is more than jealousy—it is attachment. Attachment is the near enemy of love because it “looks like it, acts like it, but is actually the opposite of it [...] It destroys, squeezes out, the nobler emotion” (197). Attachment not only disguises itself as love but pushes love out of the picture. Further, she says, “Love wants the best for others. Attachment takes hostages” (198). In the relationships between Hazel and Madeleine, Brébeuf and Gamache, Penny illustrates the concept of the near enemy and how attachment drives the jealousy that will lead Hazel and Brébeuf to betray the people they claim to love the most.
Hazel has adored Madeleine, who she says “seemed to carry magic with her” since high school (17). When they are reunited, Madeleine is undergoing cancer treatments, and Hazel is in control. Yet when Madeleine goes into remission, regains her health, and begins to make a place for herself in Three Pines, Hazel remembers that being friends with Madeleine always made her feel second best. Although Madeleine is happy with her new relationship with Monsieur Béliveau and her place in Three Pines, Hazel’s jealousy takes over. The final straw is when Sophie kisses Madeleine before Hazel, causing Hazel to begin to plan Madeleine’s murder. What Hazel feels for Madeleine is attachment, not love, otherwise she would be happy that her friend is healthy, in love, and accepted by the community, instead of feeling threatened by it.
With Brébeuf and Gamache, the situation is slightly different. Brébeuf himself notes, “All our lives I’ve been smarter, faster, better at tennis and hockey than you [...] I got better grades and found love first. Had three sons. Five grandchildren to your one. I won seven commendations” (292). However, despite this history, Gamache is the happier of the two men. Brébeuf’s jealousy of Gamache’s happiness grows to the point where he is willing to destroy Gamache’s children’s lives, despite the fact that he has known them all their lives and is godfather to one of them.
Brébeuf blames Gamache for his discontent and jealousy: “I beat you out for Superintendent and became your boss. I watched as you ruined your career. So why are you the happy one?” (292). Brébeuf sees his friend’s happiness as a reminder of his own unhappiness, and his feelings turn to attachment as Gamache seems unaffected by the controversy upending his life. Gamache even seems to understand, quoting Shakespeare when he says, “How bitter a thing it is to look into happiness through another man’s eyes” (297). Once again, this is attachment, not love, and it is complicated by the fact that Brébeuf doesn’t understand why Gamache, who always comes in second to him, is happy at all.
Penny even weaves this theme into Peter and Clara Morrow’s story. Peter is a commercially successful artist, while Clara is still struggling to gain recognition. Yet at the first sign of her possible success, he subtly undermines her confidence in several ways. By the end of the novel, Peter is convinced that he has overcome his feelings, but Penny casts doubt, revealing a “tiny shard of jealousy, which started festering” in Peter (309). Penny makes the point that Peter’s attachment, which is pretending to be love, will continue to feed his jealousy. With each of these narrative threads, Penny shows the reader how attachment can masquerade as love, leading to jealousy and destruction.
Skepticism and Belief
Penny uses Jean Guy Beauvoir’s character to explore skepticism and belief. Beauvoir presents himself as a skeptic and even believes it is true. Yet when he is faced with discussions of spirituality or the supernatural, he reacts emotionally, seeming to espouse the beliefs he has worked so hard to deny. When Gamache and Beauvoir arrive in Three Pines, their conversation immediately turns to the Hadley house. Beauvoir, who has been in Three Pines for other investigations with Gamache, proclaims himself a skeptic: “Normally so rational and driven by facts, he gave no credence to things unseen, like emotions” (56). Yet even he admits that the Hadley house is different: “But if there was ever a case for evil, in Beauvoir’s experience, it was the old Hadley house” (56). In Beauvoir, Penny illustrates a common perspective, that of the skeptic who secretly believes. His interactions with Jeanne Chauvet and Gilles Sandon force him to come to terms with his habit of covering up his true beliefs with superficial skepticism.
When Beauvoir goes into the woods to find and interview Gilles Sandon, he hears the other man, and his first thought is that “it was like the approach of a ghost. Damn, shouldn’t have thought that, [...] I don’t believe in ghosts. I don’t believe in ghosts” (133). This statement, repeated out of desperation, reflects Beauvoir’s struggle to maintain his skeptical persona in the face of his deeper beliefs. He is outwardly scornful of Gilles’s contention that the trees talk, but later, “he was about to chuck the rock into the river but hesitated. He didn’t want to drown it” (155). He recognizes Gilles’s effect on him when he comments, “[O]nce the seed is planted it really screws up your life. How was he supposed to chop down trees or even mow the grass if he was afraid of drowning a rock?” (155). Without even seeming to notice, Beauvoir has incorporated Gilles’s beliefs into his own and is viewing nature with a different perspective. His discussion with Gilles has shaken his skepticism and forced him to reconsider some of Gilles’s beliefs.
Beauvoir’s encounters with Jeanne Chauvet shake his skepticism as well. When Gamache sets off for Jeanne’s initial interview, Beauvoir is convinced that he will need a skeptic there to keep him grounded. Though he is deeply suspicious of Jeanne, referring to her as a “goddamned witch” (155) when she tells him he was born with a caul, he contacts his mother, who confirms the fact. After Gamache explains the significance to him, Beauvoir seems to accept the belief that “those born with cauls were fated to lead unusual lives. Lives filled with spirits, with the dead and dying. And the ability to divine the future” (206). He even wonders if that is why he was drawn to investigative work. Later, when they see Jeanne again, Beauvoir experiences a moment of connection with her: “Her face was so full of understanding, of caring, he almost admitted that he too had never, ever lost his keys. He’d been born with a caul” (204). With his mother’s confirmation of Jeanne’s assertion, Beauvoir’s skepticism is shakier than ever, and his movement toward belief allows him to build relationship with Jeanne.
Finally, it is Gamache who exposes Beauvoir’s skepticism for the false front it is. When Beauvoir insists on playing the skeptic with Jeanne, Gamache laughs before saying, “Who has his lucky belt? And his lucky coin? And his lucky meal before each hockey game?” (255). The gap between Beauvoir’s superficial skepticism and his secret beliefs is revealed in a way he cannot deny by Gamache, a man he loves and respects immensely. Penny explores this very human uncertainty by tracing Beauvoir’s struggles between skepticism and belief and examining how surrendering to belief can strengthen interpersonal relationships.
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