# XXXII explained — Germinie Lacerteux

> Chapter companion for Germinie Lacerteux by Edmond de Goncourt.

## What happens

Germinie's nervous disorder amplifies her joys and sorrows to extremes. She finally confirms her suspicion that Jupillon is involved with another woman—his cousin. Following them, she witnesses their intimacy and becomes consumed by a violent fantasy of using vitriol to disfigure the woman, but she fails to actually purchase the acid.

## Themes in this chapter

### Love and Obsession

Germinie's obsessive surveillance of Jupillon and her violent fantasy of disfiguring his cousin illustrate the destructive extreme of her love.

### Female Suffering and Sacrifice

Germinie endures emotional torment, financial ruin, and a pregnancy met with cruelty, culminating in a murderous fantasy born of despair.

### Death and Decay

The vitriol fantasy envisions the searing and destruction of the rival's youthful beauty, symbolizing decay and violence.

## Character check-ins

### Germinie Lacerteux

Experiences extreme emotional swings due to nervous disorder; follows Jupillon and his cousin, then fantasizes about attacking them with vitriol.

### Mademoiselle de Varandeuil

Remarks on Germinie's drunken-seeming joy, but is otherwise absent from the chapter's main action.

### Madame Jupillon

Not directly present, but Jupillon's actions are central; she is the mother of the man Germinie loves.

## Key lines

> Disorders of the nervous system frequently result in disarranging the natural sequence of human joys and sorrows, in destroying their proportion and equilibrium, and in carrying them to the greatest possible excess.

Nervous disorders disrupt the normal balance of emotions, making both happiness and misery extreme.

_Opening passage explaining Germinie's heightened emotional state._

> She saw that she had failed to lay hold of Jupillon by the devotion her love had manifested, by stripping herself of all she possessed, by all the pecuniary sacrifices which involved her life in the toils and embarrassment of a debt it was impossible for her to pay.

Germinie realized that her sacrifices and debts had not secured Jupillon's love.

_Germinie's painful recognition of her failed efforts._

> She conceived the ideas, the suspicions that come to genuine love when it is betrayed, the presentiments of the heart that tell women they are no longer in undisputed possession of their lovers, and that there is another because there is likely to be another.

She began to suspect that Jupillon was unfaithful, as betrayed lovers often do.

_Germinie's growing jealousy and intuition._

> And, in her frightful dream, her body also dreaming, her feet began to move. She walked unconsciously down the passage, into the street and to a grocer’s shop.

In her violent fantasy, she began to walk automatically toward a shop to buy vitriol.

_Germinie's near-enactment of her murderous plan._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/germinie_lacerteux_se/chapters/xxxii
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- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/germinie_lacerteux_se/chapters