PERFUME+-+MADAME+GAILLARD

=Madam Gaillard (Chapters 4 & 5)= Simple woman with no passion for life and lacks emotion: - "Madame Gaillard's life already lay behind her" - "on the inside she was long since dead" - "She felt nothing when later she slept with a man, and just as little when she bore her children" (can indicate a lacking of maternal instead which may have affected Grenouille as he has never had the opportunity to be cared for by anyone remotely close to being a motherly figure) - "She did not grieve over those that die, nor rejoice over those that remained to her" - a "numbed woman" - She is like a less ambitious Grenouille

She is a strong woman: - "When her husband beat her, she did not flinch"

She is practical and therefore well suited to Grenouille's needs: - "Madame Gaillard had a merciless sense of order and justice" - "She showed no preference for any one of the children entrusted to her nor discriminated against any one of them" - "Exactly one half of the boarding fees were spent for her wards, exactly one half she retained for herself" - "For little Grenouille, Madame Gaillard's establishment was a blessing"

Has no sense of smell (can symbolise her disinterest in other people): - "she had lost for good all sense of smell and every sense of human warmth and human coldness - indeed, every human passion" - "tenderness had become as foreign to her as enmity, joy as strange as despair"

She had only one goal: - "she wanted to buy an annuity, with just enough beyond that so that she could afford to die at home" - "she dreaded a communal, public death among hundreds of strangers" - "She wanted to afford a private death"

However, the revolution has led her to a public death anyway: - "she could raise not a word of protest as they carted her off to Hotel-Dieu" - "they...let her die in public view" - It can be seen that a rational lifestyle does not work - The revolution bore ill fate for the traditional hardworking people - This presents a strange idea that can contradict other points that Suskind may be making