Perfume: The Story of a Murderer

Content Warning: These Chapter Summaries and Analyses discuss depictions of violence, murder, suicidal ideation, and cannibalization that feature in the source text.

Paris in the 18th century is a city of both profound cultural and historical import but is described here as a city filled to the brim with “a stench barely conceivable to us modern men and women” (3), as all other cities were at the time. At a certain spot in Paris lays the “Cimetière des Innocents” (4), the cemetery in which the dead were buried for the better part of a millennium and which now functions as a fish market. In this spot, on July 17, 1738, Jean-Baptiste Grenouille is born. The child’s mother gave birth to four other children at this very spot in years past but faints after giving birth this time. Upon waking, she attempts to deny giving birth, but the baby is discovered among the fish scraps and she is arrested, tried, and found guilty of infanticide for letting her previous children die. A few weeks later, she is beheaded for her crime.

The child is placed into the care of the cloister of Saint-Merri and is eventually baptized under the name of Jean-Baptiste (though he is referred to as Grenouille throughout the text).