Mouchette: Analysis of Major Characters
"Mouchette" is a poignant exploration of the struggles faced by a sensitive fourteen-year-old peasant girl living in rural northern France. The narrative follows Mouchette as she navigates a life filled with brutality and neglect, marked by a traumatic experience of rape at the hands of Arsène, a troubled poacher. Despite her desperate search for connection and understanding, Mouchette finds herself isolated and friendless, grappling with overwhelming feelings of despair and disgust. The characters surrounding her, including her tormented mother and emotionally distant father, further illustrate the cycle of poverty and abuse that defines her existence.
The adult figures in Mouchette's life, such as the indifferent game warden Mathieu and the sadistic music teacher, reflect a broader societal failure to protect and nurture vulnerable individuals like her. As Mouchette's tragic circumstances unfold, her internal struggle culminates in a heartbreaking decision to end her life. Through her story, "Mouchette" sheds light on the harsh realities faced by marginalized youth, evoking compassion and prompting reflection on the impact of social neglect and familial dysfunction.
Mouchette: Analysis of Major Characters
Author: Georges Bernanos
First published: Nouvelle Histoire de Mouchette, 1937 (English translation, 1966)
Genre: Novel
Locale: The Artois region of northern France
Plot: Philosophical realism
Time: Unspecified
Mouchette (mew-SHEHT), a fourteen-year-old peasant girl living in northern France. She is a highly sensitive and perceptive young girl who is desperate for attention and exhausted with being brutalized by the adults in her life. She is raped by the drunken poacher Arsène and tries unsuccessfully to tell those in authority about the experience. Isolated and completely friendless, she is overwhelmed with feelings of disgust but finds a strange kind of consolation even in the brutal rape. She announces to Mathieu that she is Arsène's lover. The growing consciousness of the depth of her despair drives her to suicide by drowning.
Arsène (ahr-SEHN), a young, alcoholic, epileptic poacher. He warns Mouchette that there is a devastating cyclone destroying the countryside; the fabrication is his means of getting her to stay with him in his forest hut. He also tells her that he may have killed the game warden, Monsieur Mathieu, thus gaining her trust and loyalty. As he becomes progressively more intoxicated, he has an epileptic seizure, after which Mouchette tenderly cradles his head and sings to him. After coming to, he brutally rapes her.
Mouchette's mother, a middle-aged woman dying of tuberculosis. She is from a family of alcoholics and is dying an early death because of her weakened hereditary background. She is emaciated, malnourished, and in severe pain, because her lungs have virtually ceased to function. A bitter woman whose life has been nothing but grinding poverty and abuse from her family, she endures her last moments by drinking as much gin as possible to anesthetize the pain. Just as Mouchette begins to tell her of the rape, the mother dies. Mouchette cannot remember even one affectionate touch from her mother.
Mouchette's father, a smuggler and sometime poacher in his mid-fifties. The product of an alcoholic lineage, he shows little feeling when he learns of his wife's death, having just come home from an extended drunk with his equally unmoved sons. He upbraids Mouchette, though, for staring at him. He has beaten her regularly throughout most of her childhood.
Philomène, an ancient woman of indeterminate age who keeps watch over the dead and prepares them for burial. She comes from far up in the mountains and is a mysterious yet compassionate crone who intuitively understands Mouchette's plight. Although weakened with tuberculosis when she was young, she became a servant of a beautiful, young, and healthy woman who immediately declined into early illness and death. As her mistress' health declined, Philomène's physical condition improved.
Monsieur Camille Mathieu (maht-YUH), a game warden in his thirties. After Mouchette is raped, she wanders into the village and is shocked to see Mathieu alive and well. After she tells him of the rape and then calls Arsène her lover, Mathieu deftly attempts to calm her and disengage himself from any association with the situation, even though he admits to having a drunken fight with Arsène. He instructs her to come back the next day when she is in more control of herself.
Madame Mathieu, the wife of the game warden, who feels pity for Mouchette. Having lived in Amiens for most of her life, she is shaken by the battered appearance of Mouchette and gets an unnerving insight into the damage that rural poverty can do to sensitive young girls.
The music teacher, an aging woman, increasingly debilitated with rheumatism, who sadistically abuses Mouchette by humiliating her in front of the entire class. Even though Mouchette is the senior girl in the class, the teacher calls her singing disgusting and violently forces her face down on the keys of the harmonium, while the other students laugh derisively at her poverty, awkwardness, and rural Picard accent.
Madame Derain (deh-RAYN), a middle-aged grocer. She initially takes pity on Mouchette because of her battered appearance, even though she half believes old stories that Mouchette has taken revenge on local farmers by killing their livestock. She offers the famished girl some three-day-old croissants that Mouchette quickly devours. Because of her nerves, Mouchette accidentally breaks Madame Derain's bowl; Madame Derain then verbally abuses her and chases her out of the store.