By STEVEN ERLANGER NANTERRE

France - Marine Le Pen tried her best to flee her father and politics, she says, oppressed by the infamy of her inheritance, which followed her everywhere. But now she is expected to succeed Jean-Marie Le Pen as leader of the National Front, France’s farright party preaching French purity and exceptionalism, opposing immigration and the European Union.

“I find myself there, in politics, when most of my life I tried to escape from that,” she said. She sees herself as having a destiny now, if not one so lofty as that of the party’s emblem, Joan of Arc . “I was born and raised with politics, ate politics, slept politics,” she said.

“I tried to escape from it because I wanted to have my own job, but in the end it was the only thing that thrilled me.” With her father, 81, set to retire early next year, Ms. Le Pen, 41, intends to carry the banner of the National Front into the 21st century, fighting a new host of enemies - including Islam - that supposedly threaten holy France. It is hard to see Marine Le Pen as a victim, but the National Front thrives on the sense of victimhood of its voters, who see a noble people trampled by supranational forces, impoverished by globalization and overrun by immigrants .

But her own childhood, she says, was a misery. The youngest of three daughters of a reviled politician who happily pressed buttons of xenophobia, anxiety and anti-Semitism, Marine often found herself ostracized. She wanted a lawyer’s career, but again, she says, the widespread hatred of her father interfered.

In 1976, when she was 8, her family’s house was blown up. “I suddenly realized the dangers weighing on me, on my father, on my family,” she said. Another shock was her parents’ divorce eight years later, when her mother, Pierrette, moved to America with her father’s biographer and posed for Playboy .

Marine Le Pen is the party’s “executive vice president for training, communication and propaganda”; she has been an elected member of the European Parliament since 2004. Twice divorced, she has three children . Jean-Yves Camus, a political scientist , said Ms. Le Pen wants to change the party but her father is an impediment . “It’s a burden, and she probably can’t get rid of it until he dies,” Mr. Camus said. She does not share her father’s anti-Semitism or deny the Holocaust, he said. “She incarnates a younger generation; she wants to ‘deringardiser’ the party,” or make it less tacky, said Nonna Mayer, a political scientist .

President Nicolas Sarkozy has tried to absorb the National Front’s voters , taking stands against the full facial veil and restricting immigration. But Mr. Camus said many National Front supporters who voted for Mr. Sarkozy returned to the National Front in the regional elections. Ms. Le Pen shares her father’s core beliefs. Immigration should stop and citizenship by birthplace should not be automatic, she said. “When you go see French people of immigrant descent in the suburbs and ask, ‘Are you French?’ he says, ‘No, I’m a Muslim.’ “There has been a withdrawal into non-French identities because we sapped French nationality of its content,” she said.

“So how can someone be proud? We spend all our lives saying, ‘We are bastards, colonizers, slavery promoters.’ ” France, she said, has given much to civilization. “If the French model disappears, it would be a loss for the entire world,” she said.