Grenouille's Mother

• Grenouille's mother's treatment of him sets up Grenouille for being repulsive throughout the novel. “revolting birth”.
• She creates sympathy for Grenouille, since she obviously doesn't care about him or even see him as human.
• While Grenouille has a very strong scent of smell and relies on it, his mother is different in that “her sense of smell had been utterly dulled” since she's used to the horrible smell of the fish markets. The smell is just an “unbearable, numbing something”. This is juxtaposed with how disgusting it has been described already by the phrase “like a field of lillies or a small room filled with too many daffodils”.