Perfumed Letters, Fatal Correspondence

This article focuses on the fragrant presence of two fictional letters, considered in the context of 19th-century social practices related to perfume and perfuming. Epistolary episodes simultaneously dramatize the complexity of interpreting socially readable odors, and relate fragrance to physical and psychological imbalance. Like extra-literary writing of the era, these novels reveal an insidious confusion of miasma and cosmetic fragrance that at once reflects and fosters contradictory attitudes about women who use perfume.