Morality

The author uses Madame Tellier and her girls' profession to explore the boundary between morality and amorality. These thematic considerations are particularly pertinent given the era in which "The House of Madame Tellier" was written and published. By writing the short story from an omniscient third person point of view, the author is able to render Madame Tellier's world, life, and occupation through an unbiased lens. At the start of the narrative, this third person narrator says that "Madame Tellier, who came of a respectable family of peasant proprietors in the Department of the Eure, had taken up her profession just as she would have become a milliner or dressmaker" (7). The narrator, therefore, asserts that as the madame of a local brothel, Madame Tellier is simultaneously subverting cultural expectation while normalizing her occupation. In the context of the narrative world, her profession is established as neither...