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Self-Differentiation and the Marginalized Idol
of Love in Patrick Süskind’s Perfume
Najah A. Alzoubi
Department of English, The Hashemite University
P. O. Box 330127, Zarqa 13133, Jordan
Email: najaha@hu.edu.jo
Sumaya S. Al-Shawabkieh
Language Center, University of Jordan
P. O. Box 11942, Amman, Jordan
Email: sumayash@ju.edu.jo
Shadi S. Neimneh
Corresponding Author: Department of English, The Hashemite University
P. O. Box 330127, Zarqa 13133, Jordan
Email: shadin@hu.edu.jo
Abstract The German writer Patrick Süskind symbolically projects the power
of scents in his historical fantasy novel, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer. The
protagonist, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, has a supernatural ability to identify the
odors of almost everything around him, yet he remains an undifferentiated self in
psychiatric terms, seeking love, inuence, and acceptance. Using Murray Bowen’s
concept of self-differentiation, this article investigates the theme of marginalization
in Süskind’s Perfume by examining emotional webs of interrelationships between
Grenouille and those around him in different social, institutional, and cultural
capacities. In his quest to have a unique personal scent, Grenouille becomes an
obsessed murderer of twenty-five girls. However, he ends up tragically by being
devoured with lust rather than love, ironically because of his special concocted
perfume. Adopting a psychiatric approach, the article examines the functional
level of Grenouille’s differentiation in three emotional systems and relationship
processes: with Madame Gaillard, the tanner Grimal, and the perfumer Giuseppe
Baldini. Grenouille, it is concluded, has a low level of self-differentiation, i.e. a
weak range of self development. Accordingly, he is guided by his emotions in
his contact with others and not autonomous in his thinking. His life goal is to be
loved as an idol. However, his level of self-differentiation does not allow him to
600 Forum for World Literature Studies / Vol.12 No.4 December 2020
be an idol; instead, he remains in the margin, and his life remains ephemeral, as
evanescent as “perfume.”
Key words Patrick Süskind; Perfume; Bowen family systems theory; self-
differentiation; marginalization
Authors Najah A. Alzoubi, Lectures on American literature in the English
Department at The Hashemite University, Jordan. Her research area includes
modern American drama and Bowen Family Systems Theory. Sumaya S. Al-
Shawabkieh is Professor of modern Arabic literature and criticism in the language
center at the University of Jordan. Her research interests include modern Arabic
literature and criticism, techniques of Arabic novel, and communication skills in
Arabic. Shadi S. Neimneh is Associate professor of literary and cultural studies
in the English Department at The Hashemite University, Jordan. He specializes in
modernity and theory.
Introduction
Literary scholars have not paid adequate attention to Murray Bowen’s family
systems theory, specifically the concept of self-differentiation, for understanding
the dynamics and interpersonal interactions among an emotional system. In this
regard, the protagonist Jean-Baptiste Grenouille in Patrick Süskind’s horror,
historical fantasy novel Perfume: The Story of a Murderer (1985) can make an
interesting case for analysis. Bowen’s psychiatric theory, it is argued, can be used
to examine an individual’s satisfaction in life, maturity, decisions, managing stress,
and balancing one’s position with relation to others. Striking a balance between
one’s individual identity and relation to society and leading an orderly successful
life are the main challenges faced by Süskind’s protagonist in Perfume, and this
is attributed to lack of self-differentiation in Bowen’s theory. Grenouille’s gift of
smell and his life ambitions, we are told, “were restricted to a domain that leaves
no traces in history: to the fleeting realm of scent” (3). Accordingly, he is both
insignificant and marginalized. As Bowen maintains, differentiation of self, as a
system for categorizing people, “denes people according to the degree of fusion,
or differentiation, between emotional and intellectual functioning” (362; emphasis
original). Ephemerality, marginality, emotionality, and dissatisfaction are indicators
of Grenouille’s undifferentiated self. An undeveloped self entails more dependence
on others for approval and acceptance, more emotionality, anxious behavior, and
apparent self-contradictions. For Bowen, those at the low extreme of the self-
differentiation scale fuse emotions and intellect and have their lives dominated
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by emotional functioning: “Whatever intellect they have is dominated by the
emotional system. These are the people who are less exible, less adaptable, and
more emotionally dependent on those about them. They are easily stressed into
dysfunction, and it is difcult for them to recover from dysfunction. They inherit
a high percentage of all human problems” (362). Such a definition of the less
differentiated people (who fuse emotional and intellectual functioning) is essential
for our discussion of Grenouille’s character, especially emotional dependence and
lack of adaptation.
Previous readings of the novel have not employed Bowen’s theory on self-
differentiation to analyze Grenouille’s character, although they have covered
significant psychoanalytic, feminist, social, and existential perspectives. Critics
have studied issues like homicide, patriarchy, and gothic elements in the novel.
Unfortunately, much criticism available on the novel was published in German
and is unavailable to most English readers. Some studies available on the novel in
English include graduation projects or unpublished MA theses. Hence, this article
is both legitimate and original. In one study, Edith Krause associates Grenouille’s
existential conflict with the theme of the absent mother and brings in a feminist
discourse to reect the circumstances and path of his life. Krause argues that “born
in the overlapping space of a cemetery turned market square, Grenouille’s entrance
into being instantly evokes the poles of life and death associated with the feminine”
(349). Furthermore, Grenouille’s early childhood, Krause claims, is marked by “the
crucial lack of the maternal care necessary to stabilize the physical and emotional
growth of a child” (352). Krause concludes that “growing up speechless, disgured,
and unnoticed, Grenouille is a figure on the social margins” (356). On the other
hand, Jeffrey Adams remarks that Perfume focuses on an emotionally and physically
abused orphan “whose supernatural sense of smell guides him in a perverse search
for the lost origin of his identity” (259). In Adams’s opinion, Grenouille’s deciency
of a personal scent implies an absent identity and individuality. In a psychoanalytic
study, Tamer Lokman introduces Grenouille as a psychopathic murderer “who
usually constitutes a threat to his social surroundings” and is likely “to bring severe
damage and ruin the life of those who cross path with him” (82). Significantly,
Lokman contends that Grenouille becomes “a love seeking self-centered monster
using his olfactory gift to achieve his goal of a glowing social acceptance” (81).
However, Lokman never attempts a psychiatric understanding of Grenouille’s
motivation or nature as we intend to do in this article.
Yanna Popova provides a non-traditional reading of the novel, examining the
novel’s representation of smell based on a study of perception verbs and a general
602 Forum for World Literature Studies / Vol.12 No.4 December 2020
cognitive-linguistic principle of metaphorical “embodiment” (135). Popova argues
that Grenouille’s discernment of the objects (through smell) offers a different
“cognitive model of the external world” we often construct through the sense of
vision, which thus requires “alternative ways of expression” (135). Abby Hodge
compares and contrasts the novel and the lm adaptations in terms of themes and
medium limitations (novelistic graphic description vs. camera’s eye): “Though
both deal with identity, humanity’s flaws, and death, Süskind’s Grenouille shows
the absolute evil that exists in an absolutely evil world, while Tykwer’s [film]
interpretation shows how a world of absolute evil can pervert the naïve people
who inhabit it” (95). Fulvio Marone presents a psychoanalytic Lacanian reading
of the novel with Grenouille’s lack of personal odor taken to represent “the lack
of the phallic signifier” and “an olfactory other” (113). However, this current
article pursues neither the traditional psychoanalysis of Freud nor the Lacanian
interpretations of the French school of psychoanalysis. Instead, it employs
psychiatric theories, in particular those of Bowen and Kerr, to unravel the role of
emotional, family units in individual behavior and development.
Despite these signicant, theoretically oriented readings of Perfume, no literary
study has examined Grenouille’s level of self-differentiation and its role in his
marginality. Consequently, this article argues that Grenouille, with a low functional
level of self-differentiation, has a high level of chronic anxiety and, therefore, his
dysfunction is emotional, physical, and social. Moreover, smelling and odors will
be mainly equivalent to feelings and emotions because they are connected with
love rather than objective reason. Thus, Grenouille−as an unloved solitary orphan−
seeks love, acceptance, and happiness. However, he remains depressed, frustrated,
and suicidal because of what he lacks at the level of personality. The result is a
low level of self- differentiation, as indicated by his lack of personal scent contra
his gifted nose, a critical perspective which available readings of the novel have
not addressed. According to Kerr and Bowen, “The more differentiated a self, the
more a person can be an individual while in emotional contact with the group”
(94; emphasis original). This means that Grenouille’s lack of solid self impacts
his individuality and relations with others. He remains an anxious pauper who is
exploited and emotionally dependent on others for satisfaction.
Perfume depicts the story of the gifted Grenouille who is marginalized in his
society of eighteenth century France. After his birth, his mother is found guilty of
four previous infanticides and decapitated accordingly. Grenouille’s lack of personal
scent originates from his mother’s lack of love to her infants. The circumstances of
Grenouille’s birth are surrounded by heat and suffocating odors of decay coming
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from the nearby graveyard. From the beginning of the novel, the reader perceives
the events by the dominant sense of smell. Süskind emphasizes this point to
designate that odors have a powerful effect on us. Furthermore, odors are more
connected to different types of feelings: love, hatred, happiness, sadness, joy, fear,
and disgust. Perfume is divided into fifty-one chapters in four parts regarding
Grenouille’s psychological and moral development. Grenouille’s life can be traced
to his birth in squalid surroundings; attending church; meeting the nurse Jeanne
Bussie; going to the orphanage with Madame Gaillard; working for a tanner named
Grimal; assisting Giuseppe Baldini (a master perfumer who grants Grenouille
journeyman perfumer papers); getting imprisoned for seven years in a cave; being
taken in by a nobleman; returning back to Grasse where once again he encounters
a fragrance like the one of the girl he murdered in Paris; and nally ingloriously
dying in the neighborhood of his birth in Paris. Grenouille’s self-differentiation will
be examined according to these life stages, especially the early formative ones.
Self-Differentiation and the Marginalized Idol
Self-differentiation is the main concept in Murray Bowen’s Family Systems Theory.
The theory consists of eight interlocking concepts: differentiation of self, triangles,
family projection process, the nuclear family emotional system, multigenerational
emotional process, sibling position, emotional cutoff, and societal emotional
regression. Self-differentiation is defined by Kerr and Bowen as the individual’s
ability to differentiate between thoughts and feelings in order to guide his or her
functioning in the family system (100). The function of any individual in the
family system is not related to culture, social class, ethnic differences, or being
normal, neurotic, and schizophrenic. Self-differentiation applies to every individual
regardless of one’s religious principles, cultural ideals, and social values. Cultural
behavior is not totally ignored in this concept, but the individual’s function in the
emotional system depends on thoughts and emotions (Bowen 364). Grenouille’s
level of self-differentiation will be examined according to his thoughts and
feelings regardless of his cultural and social beliefs. Furthermore, Grenouille’s
level of anxiety or emotional reactivity (to a real or imagined threat) will also be
examined in order to assign him a specic level of self-differentiation. Generally
speaking, however, when anxiety is intense, “people become more reactive and less
thoughtful” (Kerr and Bowen 99). This decline in system functioning leads to a
lower level of self-differentiation.
Early in the novel, Grenouille is dened by the wet nurse to the monk in terms
of negation and anonymity as “[t]he bastard of that woman from the rue aux Fers
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who killed her babies!” (8), which immediately signals a potential low level of self-
differentiation in the growing child whose father is absent and whose mother is a
convict. Grenouille’s early stages of life, especially with Madame Gaillard, have a
great effect on his level of self-differentiation because she represents the custodian
and, likewise, the emotionally absent mother. In Bowen’s theory, the parents’ level
of self-differentiation influences their children. Additionally, a child’s level of
self differentiation could be higher or less than that of their parents. Richard Gray
contends that “the three persons largely responsible for Grenouille’s childhood
development−his mother, Father Terrier, and Madame Gaillard−represent the
values Süskind associates with enlightened society in the mid-eighteenth century:
egocentrism, calculating rationality, emotionlessness, orderliness, ‘justice’” (495).
The monk, Father Terrier, who represents religious tolerance at the Enlightenment
era does not have a big role in shaping Grenouille’s level of self-differentiation. The
level of self-differentiation transcends cultural and social values. Consequently, the
Enlightenment culture of the eighteenth-century France should not be overlooked
as it sheds light on the difference between thoughts (reason) and feelings. However,
such an enlightened culture (ironically) does not seem to have changed Grenouille’s
low level of self-differentiation.
Madame Gaillard and Grenouille’s mother have some common characteristics
such as emotionlessness, mercilessness, and a weak sense of smell, unlike
Grenouille who is an odor genius differentiating all types of scents. During the labor
of her son, Grenouille’s mother “perceived the odor neither of the sh nor of the
corpses, for her sense of smell had been utterly dulled” (5). She does not recognize
that her four previous stillbirths are human beings, not a kind of “bloody meat
that had emerged had not differed greatly from the sh guts that lay there already,
nor had lived much longer” (5). Grenouille’s mother, still in her mid-twenties, has
some thoughts and hopes “to live a while yet, perhaps a good ve or ten years, and
perhaps even to marry one day and as the honorable wife of a widower with a trade
or some such to bear real children” (5). Krause claries that against such dreams,
“her life ends when the unwanted and hence ‘unreal’ child enters the world on the
grounds of the former cemetery. Physically impaired, socially marginalized, and
never identied by a name, she remains a mere shadow with dreams that degenerate
into nightmares” (5; emphasis added). She has ambition to settle down and be an
honorable wife with real children, which indicates that she does not consider her
multiple “stillbirths, or semi-stillbirths” (5) as real children. Although Grenouille’s
mother is merciless, she is driven by her emotions rather than thoughts to have a
low level of self- differentiation that emotionally transmits to her son. She is devoid
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of love, tenderness, sympathy, and tolerance. The wet nurse, Jeanne Bussie, refuses
to keep baby Grenouille because he does not have a smell like other babies (10).
She thinks that he is even possessed by the devil (10). Thus, Grenouille is rejected
from his infancy as different, and as undifferentiated in Bowen’s terms.
Madame Gaillard has a greater effect on Grenouille’s level of self-
differentiation than his actual mother because he lives with her for eight years. Her
role in shaping Grenouille’s personality is typically unnoticed by critics. When she
was a child, “her father had struck her across the forehead with a poker, just above
the base of the nose, and she had lost for good all sense of smell and every sense of
human warmth and human coldness-indeed, every human passion” (20). Madame
Gaillard lacks not only the sense of smell but also human warmth and passion. She
is even worse than Grenouille’s mother when it comes to emotions. She had “a
merciless sense of order and justice” because “of her total lack of emotion” (20).
She neither discriminates nor prefers any one of the children in her orphanage. She
lacks emotions, yet she is “aware of” only two sensations: “a very slight depression
at the approach of her monthly migraine and a very slight elevation of mood at its
departure. Otherwise, this numbed woman felt nothing” (20). Her main concern in
life is to afford a private death because she fears public death among strangers. If
she has such fears, then Madame Gaillard is unable to think clearly or to feel any
kind of emotions because she is so frightened of death. She is emotionally numb by
fears from future and shock rooted in her father’s past violence to her.
Kerr and Bowen mention that individuals with a low level of self-
differentiation are “so sensitized to the world around them that they have lost the
capacity to feel; they are numb. Emotionally needy and highly reactive to others,
it is very difficult for people in this range to maintain long-term relationships”
(100-101). Therefore, it could be argued that Madame Gaillard’s level of self-
differentiation is very low because she is driven by emotions of fear that control her
thoughts on the idea of receiving a “private death.” Consequently, her diminished
level of self-differentiation emotionally transmits to all the children in her
orphanage, including Grenouille, even though she is not their actual mother.
As a child, Grenouille requires nothing other than food and clothes. He lives
with Madame Gaillard with the minimum basics of living, yet for “his soul he
required nothing. Security, attention, tenderness, love-or whatever all those things
are called that children are said to require—were totally dispensable for the young
Grenouille” (21). He seems an existential character that does not care about spiritual
requirements of typical human beings such as care or love. He had given up such
requirements “just to go on living-from the very start” (22). Or rather, he had
606 Forum for World Literature Studies / Vol.12 No.4 December 2020
dispensed with these necessities because of his birth and harsh circumstances. He
was born without a soul or scent, i.e. without a distinct personality. “Every other
woman,” we are told, “would have kicked this monstrous child. But not Madame
Gaillard” (23). The cry that announces his being and attracts people’s attention to his
murderous mother is “not an instinctive cry for sympathy and love. That cry, emitted
upon careful consideration, one might almost say upon mature consideration, was
the newborn’s decision against love and nevertheless for life” (22). The newborn
has to existentially choose between love or life but not both. He is detestable among
the children at Madame Gaillard’s household who try to suffocate him several times
using a pile of rags or their hands. As he grows older, he is more deserted by other
children. Surprisingly, the children do not hate or envy him, but they are afraid of
him (24). Even our fears of something can ultimately create a feeling of hatred. The
amount of fear and hatred feelings in Madame Gaillard’s household are absorbed by
Grenouille and consequently affect his level of self-differentiation. They could be
the reason behind Grenouille’s loveless and guilty state.
Because Grenouille rarely communicates with the other children, it is difcult
for him to retain or name things and objects without odor or fathom abstract ideas
such as “justice, conscience, God, joy, responsibility, humility, gratitude, etc.”
(26). If they are classied to thoughts or feelings, the majority of these notions and
concepts are thoughts. Thus, his cognitive learning is sensual rather than thoughtful.
He uses his senses (smell in particular) to recollect some thoughts about things.
At the age of six, he becomes “an autodidact possessed of a huge vocabulary of
odors that enabled him to form at will great numbers of smelled sentences” (27).
Madame Gaillard notices that the self-taught Grenouille has supernatural qualities.
He does not fear darkness; he makes his way back and forth without any wrong
move; he can catch the smell of visitors before they arrive; and he can predict a
thunderstorm before it happens. He is able to perform all of these feats with the
aid of his prodigy of smelling. In this regard, Süskind makes Grenouille’s sense of
smell replace that of his eyesight. Such abilities are dreadful to Madame Gaillard
because she thinks that he can see through locked doors, brick walls, wood, paper,
and cloth. Grenouille lives with Madame Gaillard for years, which means that his
basic level of self- differentiation is already shaped. Nonetheless, his functional
level of self-differentiation will be enhanced or undermined during the course of
his life. Madame Gaillard believes that whether Grenouille is a “feeble-minded”
or not, he has second sight. Being a feeble-minded person and having second sight
are qualities associated with thoughts rather than feelings. However, Grenouille is
neither feeble-minded nor a man with second sight. His character is too mysterious
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and introverted. Furthermore, to use Bowen’s family systems theory, self-
differentiation “transcends categories such as genius, social class, and cultural-
ethnic differences. It applies to all human forms of life” (364).
Grenouille turns eight when he is sent by Madame Gaillard to work with
a tanner named Grimal. Madame Gaillard knows that “by all normal standards
Grenouille would have no chance of survival in Grimal’s tannery” (30). Grimal has “a
notorious need for young laborers-not for regular apprentices and journeymen, but
for cheap coolies … about whom there would be no inquiry in dubious situations”
(30). Grimal abuses vagabonds and homeless children in his tannery. Children at
his tannery, including Grenouille, scrap the meat from stinking hides, dye them
with poisonous chemical substances, and tan pits with caustic fumes. After a year
in Grimal’s tannery, Grenouille has anthrax, but he resists death. Grimal is happy
that Grenouille survives because the latter cannot be replaced by other workers.
Accordingly, when Grenouille turns thirteen, Grimal allows him to leave on
Sundays evenings. With Grimal, Grenouille proves to be “a docile and productive
worker” (33). This is because Grenouille realizes from his rst glance or from the
rst sniff of the amount of odors in Grimal’s shop that the tanner is as cruel as the
fatal odors enveloping the tannery. Grenouille perceives life through the sense of
smelling, which is mainly considered a feeling rather than a thought. To assign a
level of self-differentiation relying on the sense of smell is still not enough at this
stage because Grenouille is involved in Grimal’s emotional system regardless of the
fact that we do not know about Grimal’s family or emotional system. Nevertheless,
and in Bowen’s family systems theory, to assign one’s level of self-differentiation,
emotions and relationships are all that is demanded. However, Bowen explains:
“People in the lower half of the scale live in a ‘feeling’ controlled world in which
feelings and subjectivity are dominant over the objective reasoning process most of
the time” (473─474). Such feelings, it can be observed, shape Grenouille’s life and
crucial decisions.
During weekends, Grenouille is released to do what he likes. He roams Paris
snifng all kinds of odors and saving them in his mind. When he turns fteen and in
the thirty-eight anniversary of the king’s coronation, Grenouille is faced by a unique
delicate odor of a red-headed girl who confuses him:
For the rst time, it was not just that his greedy nature was offended, but his
very heart ached. He had the prescience of something extraordinary-this scent
was the key for ordering all odors, one could understand nothing about odors if
one did not understand this one scent, and his whole life would be bungled, if
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he, Grenouille, did not succeed in possessing it. He had to have it, not simply
in order to possess it, but for his heart to be at peace. (40; emphasis added)
This quotation connotes three important points about Grenouille’s level of self-
differentiation. First, the sense of smelling equals emotions and feelings because
Grenouille feels that he should possess it to understand the quality of all other odors
and “for his heart to be at peace.” Second, Grenouille is guided by his emotions
in the emotional system rather than his thoughts. In the same situation, heart is
connected to what Grenouille feels at the presence of the scent. Grenouille feels
his heart pounding, and he expects that the reason behind this pounding is “his
excited helplessness in the presence of this scent” (41). Third, Grenouille cannot
differentiate between his thoughts and feelings. When he follows the odor, “his
fearful heart pounding, for he suspected that it was not he who followed the scent,
but the scent that had captured him and was drawing him irresistibly to it” (42). And
when he discovers that the source of that odor is the girl in the rue des Marais, he
thinks that he has never seen anything beautiful like that girl. Grenouille means that
he has never smelled anything as beautiful as the odor of this girl:
For a moment he was so confused that he actually thought he had never in all
his life seen anything so beautiful as this girl-although he only caught her from
behind in silhouette against the candlelight. He meant, of course, he had never
smelled anything so beautiful. (43, emphasis added)
This turn, the sense of smelling is equivalent to thought. Grenouille’s thoughts in
such situations create his feelings and even his decision to kill the girl. Therefore,
smelling represents Grenouille’s feelings and thoughts but it is, once more, a
matter of feeling rather than actually thinking. His confusing of thought and feeling
is indicative of low scale self-differentiation in Bowen’s theory on emotional
relationships.
Grenouille discovers that he is a wunderkind in making perfumes since the
time he kills the red-headed girl. He “felt as if he nally knew who he really was:
nothing less than a genius. And that the meaning and goal and purpose of his life
had a higher destiny: nothing less than to revolutionize the odoriferous world” (46).
In owning the girl’s scent, Grenouille achieves utmost happiness. He feels that he is
not less than a genius and realizes the purpose of his life; he possesses an “exquisite
nose, a phenomenal memory, and, most important, the master scent taken from that
girl in the rue des Marais” (46). Grenouille believes that he finds the triad of his
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ability to create not only a scent but also a soul. The components of this triad are:
his nose, his memory, and the master scent of the girl. He owns the “magic formula
for everything that could make a scent, a perfume, great: delicacy, power, stability,
variety, and terrifying, irresistible beauty” (46). In creating a scent with such
qualities, Grenouille identies the components of the idolized soul and the identity
that he would like to possess.
It is Grenouille’s life chance when Grimal sends him to the perfumer and
glover, Giuseppe Baldini, to deliver the goatskins for the Spanish leather. For
Baldini, perfume represents the soul of the person who makes it. He mentions
that it “was the soul of the perfume-if one could speak of a perfume made by this
ice-cold profiteer Pelissier as having a soul-and the task now was to discover its
composition” (62-63). Pelissier is a very famous perfumer in Paris and one of
Baldini’s rivals. Pelissier also makes the perfume “Amor and Psyche” that Baldini is
not able to emulate. “Amor and Psyche” could represent heart and mind, feeling and
thought, and, therefore, low and high levels of self-differentiation in people’s lives.
According to Kerr and Bowen theory, people in the very low level in the scale
of differentiation of self do not have the ability “to differentiate between thoughts
and feelings” because they are “so immersed in a feeling world” (101; emphasis
original). At this stage, Grenouille raises his functional level of self-differentiation
by balancing between his thoughts and feelings. When he hears that Baldini wants
the goatskins, he does his best to be the one who delivers them. Upon entering
Baldini’s perfumery and walking behind Baldini’s shadow, Grenouille is overcome
by “the idea that he belonged here and nowhere else, that he would stay here, that
from here he would shake the world from its foundations” (72). His dream is to
stay at Baldini’s shop. He is aware that nothing justies “a stray tanner’s helper of
dubious origin, without connections or protection, without the least social standing,
to hope that he would get so much as a toehold in the most renowned perfume shop
in Paris-all” (72). Grenouille’s immodest thoughts are not a matter of hope but
certainty. He is encapsulated by his feelings of inferiority, and he makes his decision
to change. Working with Baldini is a matter of certainty rather than expectation
for Grenouille. This idea assigns Grenouille a higher functional level of self-
differentiation that enables him to differentiate between his thoughts and feelings.
He challenges Baldini in making the perfume “Amor and Psyche,” and he succeeds
in making a perfume that is “completely new, capable of creating a whole world,
a magical, rich world ne” (90). While Baldini achieves the maximum reputation
in perfume manufacturing making use of Grenouille’s olfactory organs, Grenouille
becomes a specialist in distillation, and it irritates him to know that many things
610 Forum for World Literature Studies / Vol.12 No.4 December 2020
cannot be distilled at all. He aims to “create entirely new basic odors, and with them
to produce at least some of the scents that he bore within him” (103). After months
of disappointing experiments to create a fundamentally new scent, Grenouille falls
seriously ill. Baldini does what he can in order to save the secret of his wealth and
reputation but all in vain until Grenouille asks him about other ways to extract the
scent from things “besides pressing or distilling” (109). Grenouille feels much better
when Baldini provides him with the answers that he needs to succeed in perfume
making. Wanting to succeed and being goal-oriented make him temporarily achieve
higher levels of self-differentiation.
Baldini’s thoughts are mainly about the six hundred formulas that are
recorded from Grenouille in how to make totally new perfumes and that “the
whole generation of perfumer would ever be able to implement” (114). In such an
emotionless environment, Grenouille encounters the same history with the cold
soulless Madame Gaillard and with the cruel inhuman Grimal. What Grenouille
cares about is the journeyman’s papers that would make it possible for him to live
an inconspicuous life, to travel undisturbed, and to find a job. Producing a top-
selling perfume and competing Baldini and other bourgeois perfumers are not the
things that Grenouille needs. He wants to “empty himself of his innermost being,
of nothing less than his innermost being, which he considered more wonderful
than anything else the world had to offer” (112). He wants to empty his mind and
heart of what surrounds him. His main target in this stage of his life is to reach
emotional self-awareness. After a journey of five days, Grenouille reaches the
peak of a mountain located in the Massif Central of the Auvergne to establish “the
kingdom most distant from humankind” and even any respectable mammal (123).
He wants to cut himself off physically and emotionally from the whole world. He
celebrates his arrival to the mountain of solitude and makes his mind up not to leave
this mountain all that soon. During this stage Grenouille seems contented, proud of
himself, and majestic in the empire of “Grenouille the Great.” He idolizes himself
as the founder of his own empire:
Yes! This was his empire! The incomparable Empire of Grenouille! Created and
ruled over by him, the incomparable Grenouille, laid waste by him if he so chose
and then raised up again, made boundless by him and defended with a aming
sword against every intruder. Here there was naught but his will, the will of the
great, splendid, incomparable Grenouille. And now that the evil stench of the
past had been swept away, he desired that his empire be fragrant. (130)
611
This narcissistic idol enjoys his empire where he can do whatever he wants,
forget his painful past, and assert his will. Grenouille’s thoughts and feelings are
all concentrated on his greatness and the ability of his olfactory system. At such
moments, his will represents his thoughts and beliefs rather than his feelings.
According to Kerr and Bowen, people “can function at levels that are higher or
lower than their basic level depending on the circumstances of the relationship
system in which they are operating” (98). Grenouille is not thoroughly involved in
a relationship system with others now. Accordingly, he cuts himself from the world
and lives in more suitable circumstances that boost his “basic” self-differentiation.
According to Kerr and Bowen, there is a difference between basic and functional
levels of self-differentiation: “Basic differentiation is functioning that is not
dependent on the relationship process. Functional differentiation is functioning that
is dependent on the relationship system” (98; emphasis original). Furthermore, “The
functional level of a person with a low basic level can rise and fall many times even
during just few hours” (Kerr and Bowen 99). Grenouille’s emotional system now is
a free world as he imagines that he is a king in a castle on his cozy sofa a calling his
“invisible, intangible, inaudible and above all inodorous, and thus utterly imaginary
servants … to fetch something for him to drink” from “the great library of odors”
(133). Trying to enhance his basic self- differentiation of independence from
relations with others essentially means lowering his functional level of emotional
dependence. However, Grenouille simply fails in this regard.
After seven years of a solitary life in the cave, Grenouille suddenly discovers
that he has not any kind of personal scent as a human being. He decides to leave the
cave and heads to Montpellier in the south. Upon his arrival, he attracts people’s
attention because of his awful appearance. During this stage, Grenouille succeeds in
making a human-like odor to himself. He notices the effect of his “new aura” (158)
from several meetings with crowds of people. He becomes more confident and
arrogant because he believes in his capability to make an odor that is “not merely a
human, but superhuman, an angle’s scent, so indescribably good and vital” to make
whoever smells enchanted and in love with the bearer to the extent of “insanity, of
self-abandonment” (160-161). He is determined to become “the omnipotent god
of scent” (161). Grenouille secretly leaves to Grasse after achieving certain fame
as the survivor caveman. Grenouille’s purpose of coming to Grasse–“the Rome of
scents” and “the promised land of perfumers” (172)–is a matter of a well-planned
thought to learn about the techniques of scent production. His feeling does not cling
to the beauty of the town but rather to a thought of learning more about perfume
production in order to make his superhuman scent.
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However, Grenouille’s emotions are agitated by the odor of Laure Richis, a
red-headed girl. He inhales the “fatal scent” (176) and nds it resembling the scent
of the rst red-headed girl from the rue des Marais. He feels dizzy, happy, and even
frightened to nd that scent in the world again. At this stage, Grenouille is guided
by his emotions again. As Bowen conrms with respect to self-differentiation, it is
typical for “low-level people to operate on feelings” rather than decide on the basis
on thinking (475). Grenouille works as a second journeyman for Madame Arnul
and her journeyman and paramour Dominique Druot. He starts to make personal
perfumes for himself; first, he tries the “odor for inconspicuousness” (189), but
it proves to be inconvenient for him because he is ignored in certain occasions.
Furthermore, this odor gives him the quality of being unnoticeable, insignificant,
invisible, and even marginal. Accordingly, he makes “a scent for arousing
sympathy” that proves to be suitable with middle-aged women (190). Then he
makes a nauseating odor and wears it when he wants to be avoided and left alone.
These odors are worn by Grenouille according to situational demands. Finally, he
dedicates himself to “his real passion: the subtle pursuit of scent” (190). Although
Grenouille is guided by his emotions, he seems aware of his thoughts for the future
as he “systematically” plans to “sharpen his weapons, polish his techniques and
gradually perfect his methods” in perfume production (190). Nevertheless, he is
still dominated by his feelings because he realizes that he can imitate human odor,
but what he seeks is “the odor of certain human beings: that is, those rare humans
who inspire love” (195). It is a matter of passion to achieve what he wants because
odor, for Grenouille, equals love. His over-rationalization of his decisions and his
sometimes exaggerated and sensitive reactions to surrounding people and events
indicate his low level of self-differentiation. In the case of people with very low
self-differentiation, Bowen writes, “So much of life energy goes into maintaining
the relationship system about them–into ‘loving’ or being ‘loved’ or reaction against
the failure to get love, or into getting more comfortable–that there is no life energy
for anything else” (162).
During his work with Madame Arnul and Druot, Grenouille accepts to remain
there under poor conditions. He also pretends to be very stupid while stirring,
washing tubes, and cleaning the workshop but never ignores to monitor and observe
every process of extracting perfumes using his nose. Furthermore, he acts as if he
does not understand his own genius in olfactory powers, and he only implements
Druot’s orders. Likewise, he succeeds in being “conspicuous neither by his absence
nor by his presence” and being totally uninteresting (188). This is what Grenouille
wants: to prepare himself for possessing the odor of Laure Richis “very gradually
613
and with utmost caution” to be the idol who inspires love (193). However, the level
of self-differentiation does not identify the amount of intelligence. Consequently,
Druot who is “not fabulously intelligent, but not a complete idiot either,” realizes
that his best decisions are those ones that depend on whatever Grenouille “almost
thought” or “somehow had a feeling about” (185). This indicates that Grenouille’s
thoughts and feelings are clear to Druot who recognizes Grenouille’s ability in
perfume making. Neil Donahue mentions that in a harsh world, Grenouille succeeds
“to survive and gain for himself a measure of independence while preserving his
secret talent, which he now begins to rene as an analyst and collector of scents”
(38). Druot knows that Grenouille is more talented than him. Grenouille encourages
Druot to have this feeling of superiority displaying the role of unambitious person
although Grenouille never says what he thinks or feels. This also indicates that
Grenouille is aware of what he thinks and feels even at the presence of Madame
Arnul. Druot also follows Grenouille’s opinion and advice secretly because Druot
knows that what Grenouille says regarding perfume production is the right thing.
Sometimes, Grenouille has the ability to differentiate between his thoughts
and feelings to some extent, yet he is driven again by his feelings to possess the
odor of Laure Richis. He walks along the wall where the garden of Laure Richis is
located. He is “lled with the happiness of a lover who has heard or seen his darling
from afar and knows that he will bring her home within the year” (197). Grenouille
has never felt love, and he does not have the ability to inspire it. He realizes that
he loves the scent of the girl and makes an oath to possess it. No wonder, Bowen
explains that for people on the low-scale of self differentiation, main life goals
revolve around “love, happiness, comfort, and security” (474).
Grenouille’s life decisions are based on what he “feels” right. Kerr and
Bowen mention that “people at this level are so immersed in a feeling world that
they are mostly unaware of an alternative. Major life decisions are based on what
feels right” (101). Such people’s functioning is governed by emotional reactions.
Grenouille behaves as if he is the lover of Laure, and he does what he can in order
to have her odor in a year. His decision in possessing Laure Richis’ odor comes
as an emotional reaction to his feelings. One thought that disturbs him is what he
can do if he loses the odor after possessing it. Grenouille starts a process of killing
many young girls, taking their clothes, cutting their hair, and extracting their odors.
In Justin Yi’s opinion, each murder is “insignificant on its own and can only be
meaningful if these pieces are all combined—the lives of humans are temporary,
but when collected under the jurisdiction of a god, then the ephemeral quality of life
can be set aside to produce a divine, eternal existence, which the ultimate perfume
614 Forum for World Literature Studies / Vol.12 No.4 December 2020
was supposed to do” (224). In killing twenty-five girls, Grenouille collects the
components of the divine, eternal, everlasting, and inspiring aura. At the night of
killing his twenty-fth victim, Laure Richis, Grenouille works with “professional
circumspection” (222). During the night and while he waits until he can extract
Laure’s odor from her body, he does not think of the scent that is “made of the auras
of twenty-ve maidens, nor of future plans, happiness and success” (226). However,
he thinks of his past life stations with Madame Gaillard, Grimal the tanner,
Giuseppe Baldini, and Marquis de la Taillade –Espinasse. This designates that he is
emotionally guided by his feelings about his miserable emotionless past rather than
his thoughts about the future. When he nishes his task with Laure, he drinks up her
scent, “her glorious scent, his scent” (227). In Grenouille’s opinion, Laure’s scent is
the most essential component of his superhuman scent that makes people not only
admire but also adore him. In Bowen’s theory, however, undifferentiated people
seek love and approval or attack others for not providing such feelings (474).
When he is discovered as the criminal and at the day of his execution, he
pours a drop of his perfume on himself. The miracle occurs that the crowd cannot
believe that the man who stands at the scaffold is “innocence personied” and “could
not possibly be a murderer” (244; emphasis original). They cannot resist their
feelings towards Grenouille and are overcome by the inuence of this god-like man;
hence, the scheduled execution deteriorates into a large orgy. Grenouille manages to
make the world admire him and worship his scent: “To hell with admire! Love him!
Desire him! Idolize him! He has performed a Promethean feat” (248). Considering
his miserable past of squalor and lack of emotional warmth, Grenouille reaches his
goal but does not nd real gratication in love either. He realizes that his fulllment
is in hating and being hated, and he never achieves a true emotional independence
needed for a high level of self-differentiation:
He would have loved right now to have exterminated these people from
the earth, every stupid, stinking, eroticized one of them, just as he had once
exterminated alien odors from the world of his raven-black soul. And he
wanted them to realize how much he hated them and for them, realizing that
it was the only emotion that he had ever truly felt, to return that hate and
exterminate him just as they had originally intended. (249─250; emphasis
added)
He could not empty himself of the only emotion inside him, hatred. The arrogant
unsatised idol wants to exterminate his worshipers from the world because they
615
do not understand his needs. Grenouille mentions that “the only one who has ever
recognized it [the perfume] for its true beauty is me, because I created it myself.
And at the same time, I’m the only one that it cannot enslave. I am the only person
for whom it is meaningless” (260). Living all his life in the margin of society, and
even in the margin of the emotional system, he cannot think moderately. Grenouille
becomes conscious that people do not worship him but they worship his “counterfeit
aura, his fragrant disguise, and his stolen perfume” (249). Richard Gray argues
that Grenouille realizes smells “as unavoidable, but it is precisely for this reason
that he considers olfactory sensations the most effective medium for influencing
and manipulating sensate creatures. On the basis of this recognition, Grenouille
formulates his olfactory program for tyranny” (493). He is aware that odor is
“the brother of breath” and people inhale it to control their hearts. He knows the
connection between scent and love, and he wants to be the supreme god of scent.
The amount of emotions provoked by the effect of Grenouille’s perfume
is massive. Grenouille could not differentiate between his thoughts and feelings
because he is immersed in the world of feelings. He thinks that he is the idol who is
able to eradicate these worshippers from the earth and be “the new Messiah” or “the
Supreme Emperor before kings and emperors” in Notre-Dame (159). He thinks that
it may be possible that people on the parade grounds have felt what he feels when
he smells the oods of odor of the girl playing in the garden. “Then he thought no
more, for thinking was not his strong point” (261), which indicates that he is more
engrossed in a world of feelings. Nonetheless, he just wants to die and is driven by
his emotions again. He dies at age of twenty-eight at the hands of cannibals who
ironically “were uncommonly proud” that they “had done something out of love”
for the rst time (263). He does not want to live in isolation or with human beings.
Being in the margin of life suits Grenouille more than being in the top of it or, at
least, living in the middle as an ordinary person. Accordingly, he cannot be assigned
in a high level of self-differentiation nor a moderate one. It never satises him to be
an idol admired or worshipped. Instead, he is the fatalistic and existential “idol” of
hate, self-alienation, and marginalization.
Conclusion
The marginalized idol, Grenouille, is the prisoner of his “inferior” and ambivalent
identity. He is the focus of the contradictory and terrifying world scented with
fragrance yet exuding violence and cruelty. The urgent desire to search for the lost
identity, which can be realized by attacking the identities of others, is overrun at
the end by his divine smell as an idol. The ideology of contempt and inferiority
616 Forum for World Literature Studies / Vol.12 No.4 December 2020
is the desire of the unlimited hero to prove his existence and non-existence at the
same time. Feelings of inferiority have delayed his sense of heroism and intensied
Grenouille’s anxiety, emptiness and self-contempt. Grenouille proves his presence
after being skilled in perfume manufacturing. However, his abused outcast spirit
is unable to overcome the hatred and frustration ensuing from the lack of having a
special smell differentiating him from others. This feeling of marginality in scents
gives him a constant sense of nothingness. Because he does not have a differentiated
smell (despite his attempts to do so), Grenouille does not pay attention to values,
ethics, or religion. He feels neither pain or remorse nor hope or recognition of laws.
Surprisingly, Grenouille has an exaggerated and short-lived form of self-importance
in his divine-like new fragrance.
The ultimate fragrance represents his salvation yet his false identity. Thus, the
idea of inferiority remains the dominant end of the “(anti)hero” who lived it and
who nally died at the hands of other drunken, homeless and marginalized others.
Within half an hour, Grenouille “had disappeared utterly from the earth” (263).
Grenouille’s life is as evanescent as his scent. He is a perfume addict, a murderer,
a cave monster, and above all the undifferentiated marginalized idol uncontrolled
by moral constraints. He is at the low scale of self-differentiation because he lives
in a feeling world rather than a thinking one. He is emotionally needy and reactive
to others although he appears emotionless and independent. His life energy is
consumed in searching for love that he pretends to be uncaring about, and his
anxiety is high as he does not feel comfortable except during the years in the cave
before he discovers that he does not possess a scent. He does not have the ability
to differentiate between his thoughts and feelings, and most of his life decisions in
idolizing himself are based on what he feels right, as when he decides to live alone
in a mountain. He murders twenty-ve teenage girls in Grasse in order to own their
perfume and, consequently, to make an unprecedented perfume for himself. Kerr
and Bowen mention that “very poorly differentiated people, if stressed sufciently,
may murderously strike out at others, particularly at those on whom they are most
dependent” (101). Grenouille is one of those undifferentiated people who violently
strike out at others to possess the formula for his perfume.
When it is discovered that he is a murderer and on his way to execution,
Grenouille wears the superhuman perfume that he makes from his victims to delude
the crowd and convince them of his innocence. Furthermore, the crowd of people
is overwhelmed by emotions to extent of participating in a huge orgy. In Perfume,
“Odors have a power of persuasion stronger than that of words, appearances,
emotions or will. The persuasive power of an odor cannot be fended off, it enters
617
into us like breath into our lungs, it fills us up, imbues us totally. There is no
remedy for it” (86─87). The entire crowd of Grasse could not resist the beauty of
this undifferentiated marginalized idol who becomes their celebrated idol. In his
decision to leave Grasse, Grenouille’s hatred increases, especially when he realizes
that people worship him only by the effect of his perfume. Accordingly, he gives
up his emotional attachment to those people and aims at Paris to die there. Kerr and
Bowen remark that “when stressed into emotional disequilibrium, the dysfunction
tends to be chronic and severe. The dysfunction may be physical, emotional, or
social” (101). Grenouille is emotionally unstable and is socially dysfunctional. He
ends his life journey at the fish market where his life story had started. Kerr and
Bowen add that at “the extreme lower end of the scale are people who have given
up on relationships. Typically, they are in various types of institutions or are existing
marginally in society” (101). Grenouille gives up his relationship with his emotional
system two times: first, when he cuts himself off physically and emotionally in
a cave for years, and second when he decides to return to Paris where he finally
pours the whole bottle of his magical perfume on himself to be eaten by criminals
who claim that they did so “out of love.” Because feelings have no role in an
enlightened rational world centered on reason, Grenouille remains the marginalized,
undifferentiated, and self-annihilating idol.
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