Correcting the Aveugle: Monstrosity, Aliénisme, and the Haunting of the Social Body

Abstract

In a letter to Louis Bouilhet of 30 May 1855, Flaubert writes (1980: 579): ‘Tu devrais bien me dire quelle espèce de monstre il faut mettre dans la côte du Bois-Guillaume’ [‘You should really tell me what kind of monster I should put on the hill at Bois-Guillaume’]. Flaubert’s italics, suggesting ironically that the notion of monstrosity is a cliché to be undermined, also hold open the possibility that what he is in fact looking for, rather than an actual monster, is someone considered a monster by society to haunt the Bois-Guillaume: that is, someone onto whom social fears can be projected. In the previous chapter we saw how some of Bouilhet’s markers of monstrosity are put into practice in terms of physical symptoms. In this chapter we will focus, rather, on the social perception of deformity, and on the effects on the social imaginary of Flaubert’s monstre, as well as on the social and individual consequences of his deviation.