Mouchette (Cyclopedia of Literary Characters)
At a glance:
- Author: Georges Bernanos
- First Published: 1937
- Type of Work: Novel
- Type of Plot: Philosophical realism
- Time of Work: Unspecified
- Setting: The Artois region of northern France
- Genres: Long fiction, Philosophical realism
- Subjects: Children, France or French people, Suicide, Rape, Death or dying
- Locales: France, Artois, France
Characters Discussed
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...
[The entire page is 798 words long]
