Monsters and monstrous names

Use in the book

After Marat’s assassination, women demand extraordinary torture for the monster they blame. Watching a general’s trial, Gamelin sees rebellion and defeat as two monsters to strike down in the accused, while individual innocence becomes secondary. The festival later burns an allegorical monster of atheism. Personification and revulsion give abstract dangers bodies that can be destroyed.

Pelleport uses monstre differently when he describes Tronche as fused twins with doubled bones and muscles. His speech claims examination but also says in my opinion: the fictional doctor’s account is not an independently established diagnosis. Her labour, laughter and the later abundance of roses give her an active place in the social world. Those scenes do not cancel either the dehumanising classification or the troubling attic encounter.

Élodie fears Gamelin as a monster while continuing to desire him. His mother eventually uses the word after he threatens to denounce Julie, and Julie herself turns it against her brother. These judgements arise through specific relationships; they do not amount to a narrator’s claim that he was never human.

The epithet also moves between political sides. Gamelin calls his opponents monsters gorged with blood and plunder; the crowd calls the defeated terrorists cannibals and vampires; later anti-Robespierre imagery multiplies monsters, and the theatre crowd shouts Tiger at Marat’s image. Tracking the speaker and changing target is more revealing than adopting any one label as a neutral description.

Places to read

1. Chapter VII, paragraph 55Frenchpour ce monstre: For this monster. The crowd’s punitive designation of Marat’s assassin.
2. Chapter IX, paragraph 16Frenchles deux monstres affreux: The two hideous monsters. Gamelin personifies rebellion and defeat as targets within the accused general.
3. Chapter X, paragraph 49FrenchSa fourche à l’épaule, elle riait: with her pitchfork on her shoulder, she laughed. Tronche’s laughter and physical labour precede Pelleport’s later description of her body; the sequence should not be reversed. This is contextual evidence, not an occurrence of monstre.
4. Chapter X, paragraph 60FrenchC’est un monstre que vous voyez là: You are looking at a monstrosity. Pelleport’s period anatomical classification, not the editor’s diagnosis.
5. Chapter X, paragraph 71FrenchDe ses larges mains les roses tombaient: Roses fell from her broad hands. Tronche’s labour supplies the final abundance.
6. Chapter XIII, paragraph 22Frenchcomme un monstre: like a monster. Élodie’s fear accompanies love and erotic attachment.
7. Chapter XVIII, paragraph 84Frenchc’est un monstre: he is a monster. Madame Gamelin finally accepts what she had resisted believing.
8. Chapter XXII, paragraph 2Frenchles flammes dévorent le monstre: flames devour the monster. The referent is the allegorical representation of atheism.
9. Chapter XXV, paragraph 9Frenchmonstres gorgés de sang et de rapines: monsters gorged with blood and plunder. Gamelin demonises his political opponents.
10. Chapter XXVIII, paragraph 10FrenchCannibales, anthropophages, vampires: Cannibals, man-eaters, vampires. The fashionable spectators turn dehumanising names against the condemned.
11. Chapter XXIX, paragraph 43FrenchTigre: Tiger. The shouted animal name is directed against Marat’s image.

Translation in this edition

The English distinguishes monster as moral or figurative horror from monstrosity in Pelleport’s classificatory speech. His qualifier à mon sens, in my opinion, must survive a summary. Cannibals, man-eaters and vampires are the execution crowd’s invective, not a report of literal cannibalism.