Joséphine Character Analysis

Joséphine is Napoleon Bonaparte’s first wife and sometime empress—until he annuls their marriage for her failure to produce children. Formerly Joséphine de Beauharnais, she was married once before Napoleon, but her aristocrat husband was executed by guillotine during the French Revolution while Joséphine herself was imprisoned. A self-possessed, clever woman and excellent billiard player, Joséphine becomes a noted botanist after the end of her marriage to Napoleon. French army deserter Henri writes to her while imprisoned in the Venetian insane asylum San Servelo, whose neglected garden he is trying to revive. She sends him back a kind letter with a variety of seeds enclosed.