Short Fiction · Chapter
Madame Hermet explained
The narrator reflects on the fascination of madness, describing how the insane live in a world freed from reason and reality.
What happens
The narrator reflects on the fascination of madness, describing how the insane live in a world freed from reason and reality. He visits an asylum where a doctor shows him a patient, Madame Hermet, who believes her face is covered with pockmarks, though it is perfectly clear. The doctor pretends to treat her with a brush. The story then reveals her past: she was a beautiful, coquettish widow who obsessively feared aging. When her son contracted smallpox, her terror of infection prevented her from visiting him on his deathbed. She later convinced herself that she contracted the disease from nursing him and was disfigured, though she was not. Her guilt and fear of losing her beauty transformed into a fixed delusion.
Themes in this chapter
Obsession and Delusion
Madame Hermet's obsessive fear of aging and loss of beauty leads to a fixed delusion that her face is disfigured, despite having no marks.
Illusion vs. Reality
The contrast between Madame Hermet's perceived disfigurement and her actual unmarked face highlights the power of illusion over reality.
Isolation and Loneliness
Her delusion isolates her from her son and society, as she hides her face and refuses to be seen, even by those who love her.
Gender and Power
The story critiques the societal pressure on women to maintain beauty as a source of power, and the psychological devastation when that power fades.
Characters to notice
- Madame Hermet
The central figure, a once-beautiful widow who develops a delusion that her face is covered with pockmarks after her son's illness, reflecting her obsessive fear of aging and loss of beauty.
- Guy de Maupassant
The narrator who visits the asylum and recounts Madame Hermet's story, expressing his fascination with madness.
Key passages
“Madmen fascinate me. These beings live in a mysterious land of fantastic dreams, in that impenetrable cloud of insanity where all that they have seen on earth, all that they have loved, all that they have done, lives again for them in an imaginary existence outside all the laws that govern the world and order human thought.”
The narrator is captivated by the insane, who inhabit a dreamlike realm where reality and imagination blend, free from the constraints of logic and reason.
Opening reflection on the nature of madness.
“She took up her glass, gazed at herself for a long time with a searching intensity, a harrowing intensity, a savagely concentrated mental effort to discover something, then she sighed: 'No. There's very little to see now. Thank you very much indeed.'”
After the doctor's fake treatment, she examined her face intensely in the mirror, still believing she saw marks, but reluctantly thanked him.
Illustrates her persistent delusion despite the doctor's reassurance.
“Did she endure the torture, the abominable torture, of the looking-glass, of the small silver hand-glass that she could not resolve to leave on the table, then threw down in anger, and a moment later picked up again, to see once more, ever nearer and nearer, the hateful silent ravages of approaching age?”
The narrator imagines her obsessive, painful ritual of repeatedly checking the mirror to watch the gradual signs of aging.
Highlights her obsessive fear of aging.