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Part 3, Chapter 40
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Perfume, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Growing Up and Becoming Human
Power and Control
Creative Genius vs. Convention and Assimilation
Upward Mobility and Social Movement
Scent, Sight, and the Grotesque
Summary
Analysis
One man in Grasse, Antoine Richis, doesn't trust the peace. He's a widower who intends to remarry so that he can produce sons and climb the social ladder, but he wants to marry off his daughter Laure first. Richis is very rich, and Laure is his prize possession. She's exceptionally beautiful, and even Richis himself finds himself sexually attracted to her at times. He had increased his home's security over the summer but hadn't feared for Laure, as she wasn't quite old enough at the time. He also found the town's behavior despicable and wanted to set an example.
Richis has a very complicated relationship to Laure, whom the reader is led to assume is Grenouille's girl in the garden. Like everyone else in the novel, Richis sees Laure only as a means of advancement for himself, as he can profit from her marriage to someone of high social standing (but he also perversely sees her as a means of pleasure that he must deny himself).
Themes
