The Importance of Hygiene in Perfume: Patrick Süskind’s novel Perfume

In eighteenth-century France, the standard of hygiene was at an all-time low. In Patrick Süskind’s novel, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, hygiene plays a key role in developing character behavior. Süskind portrays a setting of poor hygiene in order to conceal character motives. This is evident through several main characters and several other minor characters such as Grenouille’s mother, Father Terrier, Grenouille, Grimal and Taillade-Espinasse. Understanding how Süskind manipulates hygiene to disguise character aims enables the reader to have a better knowledge of the human values and morals of the time period.

Initially, the odor and conditions near Grenouille’s birthplace desensitize his mother’s cruelty. First, Süskind sets the scene as, “Millions of bones and skulls were shoveled into the catacombs of Montmartre and in its place a food market was erected” (4). The graphic idea of death that accompanies the setting description dulls the reader’s perception of Grenouille’s mother and her actions. Süskind repeatedly references the disheveled cemetery located next to the food market as a way of distracting the reader from what Grenouille’s mother plans to do. Then, Süskind depicts the fish stall scene as horribly unhygienic in order to detract from Grenouille’s mother’s inhumane decision to kill her own son. Süskind describes the setting with, “The fish, ostensibly taken that morning from the Seine, already stank so violently that the smell masked the odor of corpses” (4-5). The explicit and disgusting description and detail of the filthy landscape numbs the reader and distracts from Grenouille’s murderous mother.

Likewise, Süskind emphasizes Father Terrier’s personal hygiene in order to explain his disgust of and moti...

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...le, he realizes his potential for demonstrating the fluidum letale theory. Süskind confirms this new revelation via, “And now, his former healthy condition could be restored only by the wholesale expulsion of the fluidum, using a vital ventilation machine devised by Taillade-Espinasse himself”, proving that helping Grenouille is in Taillade-Espinasse’s main interests to cameo his true aspirations of becoming famous and rich among the scientific community of the time (140). Through Grenouille’s unkempt and unhygienic conditions, Taillade-Espinasse achieves his lesser-known goal of acknowledgement and popularity in the scientific world.

In summary, Süskind successfully hides the intentions of five different characters under a setting of poor hygiene by various methods.

Works Cited

Suskind, Patrick. Perfume. Washington Square Press, 1985.

Internet. Yahoo. 2000