The Perfumist of Paris

Radha’s story explores how women become trapped by the limited identities offered them in patriarchal societies. It also portrays their struggles to form cohesive identities within the proffered roles. Radha’s situation challenges the idea that woman can “have it all” by illuminating the double binds that set women up to fail when they try to balance a home life with a career.

Unlike the men in the novel, whose overarching male identities allow them to enjoy unity between their various identities, Radha is forced to compartmentalize her personal, domestic, and professional identities. The roles that each of these identities demands of her—due to her gender—require complete and total commitment. For instance, Pierre tells her: “I want a full-time mother for [the children], a normal life.” This expectation demands that Radha choose between aspects of her identity—professional and domestic—that are of equal importance to her. Pierre’s words also reject her personal and professional identities as though they are not also who she is. Any progress Radha makes at work becomes a loss at home, with her promotions leading to censure and accusations of negligence from Pierre. Similarly, at work, she stays longer, works harder, and faces criticism for being unfocused if she must leave early to attend to her children. As a wife and mother, her identity is subordinated by Pierre; and at work, Radha feels subordinate to her male counterparts and her boss, Delphine.

Radha’s divided loyalties between her various identities lead her to double binds in which she loses no matter what choice she makes. Between two impossible and conflicting demands, Radha has little time or space left for her best friend, Mathilde, or herself. Her mother-in-law Florence examines her own struggles as a woman when she says, “[I]n the end, we’re left with…pieces of a whole. Shards. Splinters. Chips. Pick them up, they cut our hands. Leave them on the ground, they cut our feet” (226). Florence’s words echo Radha’s situation, revealing that women are expected to live their lives in painful ways that force them to deny parts of their identities and fracture themselves. Since Florence, Radha, and even Victorine have all experienced this, the novel shows that this is a problem that women have faced for generations.

The double binds in Radha’s life lead her to become her own oppressor. Buying into the notion that having it all means doing it all, she sets unrealistic expectations for herself as a worker and mother. She also keeps painful secrets about her past trauma out of fear of failure in her various roles. Even when Pierre is not present, her self-talk mimics his, like when she leaps to the conclusion that Shanti is fighting at school and lashing out at nannies because Radha works too much. Later, Radha’s ensuing guilt of arriving home late to dinner ruins the supportive and congratulatory feedback Delphine offers at work. Driving her insecurities is the patriarchal notion that she must be content with just motherhood; so, Radha views her own perceived failure to keep and mother Niki when she was 13 and her desire to succeed professionally as proof she is flawed. As a result, she cuts herself off from memories of Niki even as her body remembers him and will not let her forget. It is not until she visits the courtesans in Agra while working on a perfume that captures the essence of Olympia that Radha sees that no one identity, aspect, or role is representative of her whole self. Just as Havi refuses to have herself and her girls reduced to only sex workers and Victorine refused to be defined by male slanderers, Radha realizes she can find herself within her various identities. She discovers that by unifying them, she can nullify the double binds her identities create when treated as individual wholes.