Signature scents : perfume and characterization in the contemporary novel

• Perfume critique is an underdeveloped academic field and this includes considerations of perfume as a theme within other art forms such as literature. In this article, Angela Carter’s Wise Children and Monika Fagerholm’s Wonderful Women by the Sea are read alongside perfume blogs in order to analyze the significance of perfume references in the novels. It is demonstrated that the authors’ choice of perfumes for their characters plays a crucial part in their characterization, especially in relation to the theme of identity change. Using Alfred Gell’s analysis of perfume use as bound up with “the transcendence of the sweet life,” it is argued that female characters use perfume to become someone else, sometimes a past self. Furthermore, the use of perfume as a literary device in these novels is shown serve as the vehicle for a feminist critique of the division between “masculine” “high” and “feminine” “low” culture.

Subject headings

HUMANIORA  -- Språk och litteratur -- Litteraturvetenskap (hsv//swe)

HUMANITIES  -- Languages and Literature -- General Literary Studies (hsv//eng)

Keyword

perfume

olfaction

novel

Angela Carter

Monika Fagerholm

gender

parfym

lukt

roman

Angela Carter

Monika Fagerholm

genus

Literature

Litteraturvetenskap

Literature

litteraturvetenskap

Publication and Content Type

ref (subject category)

art (subject category)