Jerome

Jerome, the eldest of the four monks who dominate the hidden institution, is described as its most debauched and cunning member. His authority rests not on restraint but on an appetite for cruelty and domination; even when the other monks suffer punishment themselves, the institution’s reciprocal rituals do not amount to justice or protection for its captives.

Identity and Position

Jerome is presented as the oldest of the four recluses and the most extreme in his indulgence. The account characterizes him as combining the other monks’ excesses with a further willingness to exchange roles with them: he both imposes abuse on the girls and seeks to receive the same treatment from his companions. His physical powers are said to be declining, and this change leads him to favor forms of gratification that require less exertion from him. The details establish not an isolated offender but a senior participant in an institution sustained by wealthy and powerful members of the religious order.

His cunning, like his cruelty, is treated as a shared feature of the group rather than an exception that might set him apart. Jerome is one of the four monks whose conduct has made the institution a closed world of exploitation. The narrator’s account places him within that collective structure while distinguishing him by age, the breadth of his appetites, and his particular interest in receiving what his fellow monks inflict.

Role in Thérèse’s Captivity

During Thérèse’s abuse by the monks, Jerome takes his turn after Clement. He addresses her as a captive whose consent does not matter and continues the pattern of coercion already established by his companions. Thérèse’s narrative emphasizes her inability to refuse in her situation; Jerome’s conduct therefore belongs to the institution’s larger exercise of power over those held there, not to any reciprocal relationship between him and his victims.

The narrator later reports that she has endured the assaults of the men in turn. After another episode involving Clement, she spends a night with Jerome, but declines to recount its particulars, describing it only as more terrifying. That omission is significant to the shape of her testimony: it conveys the continuation and escalation of her suffering without making the episode a spectacle. By the end of the week she has completed what she calls a circuit of the monks, a grim measure of the institution’s repetitive system of abuse.

Violence as a Shared System

Jerome’s behavior also appears in the monks’ treatment of younger captives. In one collective episode, the men take turns tormenting a ten-year-old girl while a fifteen-year-old girl is made to remain nearby. Jerome’s participation is part of a pattern in which each monk selects a method of punishment, while the women are positioned to serve the men. The scene makes plain that the institution’s violence is organized and communal, not the result of one monk acting alone.

The monks are sometimes themselves beaten or otherwise subjected to treatment resembling what they have inflicted. Jerome’s participation in this reciprocal pattern does not reduce the coercion imposed on the girls: the punishments are imposed within a system controlled by the monks, and the captives remain without meaningful power to refuse. The appearance of reciprocity therefore sharpens, rather than resolves, the moral contradiction of the institution. Its members may trade roles among themselves, but they continue to direct the system’s violence at those under their control.

The New Captive and Jerome’s Choices

When Octavie is brought into the institution, Jerome compares her with another young captive and makes her the focus of his attention. His behavior forms part of the monks’ coordinated assault on the newcomer: while she weeps and struggles, the men proceed without heeding her distress. Jerome’s interest in choosing between captives exposes the institution’s treatment of them as objects of competition and use, rather than as people whose appeals could impose an obligation on their captors.

This episode echoes the earlier account of Jerome’s participation in the abuse of Thérèse and the other girls. Across these scenes, his age and declining strength do not diminish his power within the institution; he remains one of its senior perpetrators, able to choose and exploit those whom the monks have confined. His conduct helps show how the institution’s apparent religious authority coexists with a closed practice of coercion.

Narrative Significance

Jerome’s characterization contributes to the narrative’s contrast between religious appearance and institutional conduct. He belongs to an order whose resources and hierarchy sustain the secluded establishment, yet his actions are presented as part of a system that turns confinement into license for abuse. The account makes the monks’ standing and collective organization essential to understanding the danger Thérèse faces: the threat is not confined to one individual, but is renewed as each member takes his turn.

Jerome’s role also clarifies the limits of the institution’s apparent reciprocity. The monks may endure forms of punishment among themselves, but this does not produce solidarity with their captives or check their authority over them. For Thérèse, the succession of perpetrators and the repeated pattern of coercion turn time itself into a measure of captivity. Jerome is thus significant both as a distinct figure—the eldest and most debauched of the four—and as evidence of the group’s shared, organized abuse.