French Exit

Joan’s apartment in Paris is nice, but not as luxurious as their own former apartment. On their first morning in Paris, Frances and Malcolm go to Frances’s favorite church, Saint-Sulpice. She isn’t religious, but since her mother’s funeral, at which Frances thanked god for killing her, she occasionally went to church to “share her darker thoughts” (90). When Franklin died, Frances was barred from the funeral but snuck in and revealed herself by raising her veil at the front of the church.

Inside the church, Frances says her “two-part plan” out loud for the first time. Although the plan is not revealed to the reader at this point, it involves Frances spending all her money and then dying by suicide. Frances finds saying her plan out loud a relief but also scary because it feels like a commitment. She decides to start the first part of her plan and takes Malcolm shopping. She buys him a Burberry raincoat and herself a red silk Chanel dress.

They eat dinner at a bistro, where the waiter is beyond their expected standards of what they deem “French rudeness”. Rather than leave, they decide to endure it, but when he ignores their attempts to pay their bill, Frances takes action.