The Perfumist of Paris

A central conflict Radha faces as a professional is her client’s desire for a fragrance that captures the model’s essence in Édouard Manet’s painting Olympia. Joshi’s extended allusion to Olympia and the deliberate parallel she makes between Victorine Meurent (Manet’s model) and Radha allows Joshi to make feminist arguments that transcend the particulars of Radha’s situation and Paris in the 1970s. Joshi argues that Meurent's situation is not very different from Radha’s, even though the women are separated by nationality, culture, and time period; they both undergo personal and professional betrayals that shape and limit them.

A daughter of artisans, Meurent broke into the upper crust of the Parisian arts and entertainment scene through unconventional means. Flouting traditional gender roles, Meurent supported herself by modeling for the likes of Impressionist painters such as Manet, Edgar Degas, and Thomas Couture. A talented painter herself, her paintings debuted in the 1876 Paris Salon while Manet’s works were rejected. In Olympia, Manet’s famously controversial nude portrait that critiques Titian’s Venus of Urbino, he depicts Meurent as a sex worker. References to Titian’s work and symbolism in the painting—such as the arched figure of the black cat relating to nighttime promiscuity, her covered genitalia representing denial of access without payment, and the title itself being a name associated with sex work in 1860s Paris—tied Meurent’s reputation to sex work. She was already notorious as a can-can dancer and muse in Parisian art circles, so the painting damaged her reputation and reduced her complexity and talent to a single label. Manet used her form, labor, and reputation to advance his own career, becoming a famous artist while she faded into relative obscurity.

One hundred years later, in Paris, Radha faces similar betrayals as her wealthy coworker Ferdinand steals Radha’s perfect formulation for the Olympia project and passes it off as his own. The scents link Radha directly to her Indian culture and the key base note, the mitti attar, is a result of Radha’s soul-searching trip to Agra, so Ferdinand’s professional betrayal is also an appropriation of her identity for his own benefit. Just as Manet stole Meurent’s labor and identity by immortalizing her in Olympia, Ferdinand attempts to appropriate Radha’s labor and identity. However, the strong female characters, Delphine and Céleste, rescue Radha from the oblivion that Meurent faced. These parallel stories set 100 years apart help Joshi identify the appropriation of female labor and identities as ongoing struggles faced by women throughout history, rather than reducing the conflict to Radha’s situation. By bringing attention to Meurent’s story and maintaining Radha’s agency through mutual support from female characters, Joshi also offers readers a narrative that challenges and repairs the injustices women continue to face.