Les Belles Soeurs

All 15 characters in Les Belles-Soeurs are women, and the play focuses on the behavior of these women—particularly those of Germaine’s generation—in the private, domestic arena. These women are in their forties and fifties and mostly housewives. They see the path to respectability and a proper life as clear and based on the tenets of Catholicism: get married and obey their husbands, or don’t marry and stay celibate. For those with husbands, “obeying” means accepting the endless cycle of housework and drudgery, taking care of the kids, providing sex (without birth control) when the husband wants it, and performing any variation on these duties that arises at any time of the day or week. For instance, Thérèse must care for her mother-in-law, Olivine, because caretaking falls within the realm of women’s domestic responsibilities. The unmarried characters show that the life of a spinster is not pleasant either. Des-Neiges is lonely and desperate for the attention of a man. Angéline has found the first pleasure of her life by making friends at the nightclub and drinking occasionally. Rhéauna has preoccupied herself with piety and chastity but stoops to stealing for the sake of a dustpan.

The play’s last vestige of the older generation is Olivine, Thérèse’s mother-in-law.