SOURCE: "Metaphor and Madness in Mérimée's La Vénus dille," in Romance Notes, Vol. XXVII, No. 1, Autumn, 1986, pp. 75-80.

In the following essay, Carpenter notes the thematic importance of uncertainty, analogy, and madness to Mérimée's La Vénus d'Ille.

Like so many of his stories, La Vénus dille, Mérimée's unsolved murder mystery, culminates in death, sex, and insanity: Mlle de Puygarrig, believing her husband murdered in their wedding bed by an animated statue, succombs to madness. There is more at stake here than a simple case of Pygmalion gone awry—as critics have been quick to point out.¹ Michel Guerrero, in his article in Europe, has shown how La Vénus dilleis a sort of "cryptogram," thus holding particular difficulties in reading, and even resistances to it.² Likewise, Lawrence Porter has summarized the disagreement among critics on just what takes...