Roland’s abuse of students and Rosalie at the school

Roland’s abuse of students and Rosalie at the school reveals that the institution’s lessons and punishments are instruments of Roland’s exploitation, not safeguards for its pupils. Through Thérèse’s witnessing and Rosalie’s account, the episode moves from an observed punishment to evidence of a longstanding pattern: children and household women are subjected to abuse, while religious instruction is deliberately withheld or undermined. The school’s language of correction gives violence a public disguise, even as the scenes expose the corruption within the household.

The Classroom as an Instrument of Control

Thérèse witnesses Roland punish Julie and then bring a fifteen-year-old pupil from the boys’ class for what he calls a correction. He alternates reprimands with attention that crosses the boundaries of ordinary teaching, then returns to punishment. The sequence makes the school’s hierarchy visible: Roland determines what counts as misconduct, controls the children’s movements, and presents his own violence as discipline. Julie is released with a warning and returns to class; the boy, too, is sent back to his class after Roland cautions him against repeating the supposed offense.

The incident does not remain confined to these two pupils. Roland proceeds to punish nine children—five boys and four girls—before releasing a fourteen-year-old boy who has resisted him. Thérèse emphasizes that these are scenes she personally witnessed. The repeated changes of pupil make the abuse appear systematic rather than exceptional, while the routine return to class restores the outward order of the school without addressing the harm done to those under Roland’s authority.

Rosalie’s Account of the Pattern

After Thérèse asks how anyone could take pleasure in tormenting others, Rosalie explains that what she has seen is only part of Roland’s conduct. She says that he abuses girls as well as boys, and presents this method of abuse as one that avoids pregnancy and leaves the girls, in his view, able to marry. Her explanation reveals the calculating structure behind the school’s apparent correction: the absence of pregnancy is treated as a means of concealing and perpetuating exploitation, not as evidence that the girls are safe.

Rosalie gives the pattern a scale and a history. Of fourteen girls Thérèse has seen, she says, eight have already been abused in this way; she also reports that Roland has abused nine boys. According to Rosalie, nearly all the boys and at least half the other children are corrupted each year, and the two women who serve in the household are subjected to the same abuse. The figures turn Thérèse’s observation of repeated punishments into evidence of a continuing practice extending through the school and into its domestic staff.

Rosalie also discloses that Roland abused her when she was barely eleven. Her confession changes the meaning of what Thérèse has witnessed: the household’s violence is not limited to current pupils or to isolated acts of punishment, but reaches Roland’s own daughter and began when she was a child. Rosalie’s account connects her present position in the household to a childhood in which she says she could not defend herself against her father.

Religious Instruction and Concealment

Rosalie tells Thérèse that Roland suppresses religious devotion as he abuses the children. She says that he forbids religious practices and has kept her so poorly instructed that she had never gone to confession or received First Communion. What little he taught about religion, she says, was shaped by fear that her ignorance might expose his irreligion; he also ridiculed religious duties and discouraged belief among those he suborned. Religious neglect therefore functions within Rosalie’s account as part of the same control that enables the abuse: the children are deprived not only of protection but also of the knowledge and practices through which they might seek counsel.

Rosalie invites Thérèse to verify her account by returning to a closet from which they can observe the room where Roland punishes the pupils. She identifies it as the same room in which he abuses the women of the household. Thérèse accepts the risk of watching because being discovered with Rosalie during lessons might arouse suspicion. The shared location makes the school’s two modes of operation impossible to separate: the room used for official correction is also the setting for private violence.

Rosalie and the Household Women

From the closet, Thérèse sees Roland bring Rosalie into the room after the lessons. The two women who serve in the house arrive as well. Roland subjects them to violence, and Rosalie is bound in the same way as the pupils; the household women participate in the scene around her, one wielding the whip while the other is also drawn into the violence. Rosalie is thus placed in the role of a victim in the same room where Thérèse has just watched children being punished, while the servants’ presence shows that the abuse reaches across the household rather than stopping at the classroom door.

The episode’s central reversal lies in the meaning of discipline. Roland’s position as father and schoolmaster gives him authority over Rosalie and the pupils, but the term correction conceals the exploitation carried out under that authority. The repeated punishments, Rosalie’s account of the numbers affected, and Thérèse’s second act of witnessing build a progression from apparent misconduct to a larger system of coercion. By making Thérèse both observer and listener, the narrative sets the visible routine of the school against the hidden history that Rosalie is finally able to disclose.