Rodin and Rosalie

Rodin and Rosalie are father and daughter, but their relationship is defined by Rodin’s abuse of parental authority: he exploits Rosalie from childhood, isolates her from religious practice, confines her when she resists his associate, and finally treats her life as expendable material for anatomical research. Rosalie’s account turns a hidden pattern of household abuse into an explicit threat of murder, while Rodin’s own arguments reveal how he uses claims about science and paternal rights to excuse it.

Identity and Background

Rosalie is Rodin’s daughter and, in the household, one of the young people under his power. She tells Therese that her father began exploiting her when she was barely eleven. She also explains that he uses the same abusive method with girls as with boys, presenting it as a way to avoid pregnancy and preserve the girls’ prospects of marrying. The claim does not make the abuse less coercive; it shows how Rodin treats the children’s futures as part of the system he controls.

Rosalie places her own experience within a broader pattern. She says Rodin has corrupted nearly all the boys in a year and at least half the other children; of fourteen girls Therese has seen, eight have already been subjected to his abuse, and he has also abused the two women who serve him. Rosalie is therefore both a victim in her own right and the person who makes the household’s repeated abuses legible to Therese.

Abuse and Control

Rodin’s power over Rosalie reaches beyond the abuse itself. Rosalie says that as he perverts the children, he also suppresses their religious belief: he forbids religious devotions, has given her little religious instruction, and has ridiculed religious duties. She had never been to confession or made her First Communion. In her account, deliberate ignorance and the removal of religious practice prevent the children from seeking counsel or naming what is being done to them.

The danger escalates when Rodin brings his colleague Rombeau into the abuse. Before Rosalie disappears, Rombeau examines her, and Rodin orders her to submit to him. Rosalie resists; Rodin responds by handing her over to Rombeau. Afterward, Rodin tells her she will go to the country to visit a relative, orders her to leave without speaking to Therese, and says he will join her. The supposed family visit is a cover: an old woman escorts Rosalie out, then brings her back to Rodin’s house after nightfall. At midnight, Rodin silences her and puts her in a cellar. Although she is fed and looked after there, Rosalie fears that the circumstances point to an experiment and that she is doomed.

The Plan Against Rosalie

Therese finds Rosalie in the cellar after hearing sounds from behind a narrow door blocked by firewood. Rosalie explains that Rodin had led her to believe he meant to marry her, which made Rombeau’s examination seem part of a plan to determine whether she could bear a child. The promise of marriage is thus another instrument of control, concealing the purpose of the examination and the confinement that follows.

The threat becomes unmistakable when Therese overhears Rodin and Rombeau at dinner. They discuss killing a young girl so they can study her anatomy after death, and Rombeau identifies Rosalie as the intended subject. Rodin argues that the possible scientific benefit outweighs the death of one person, comparing the proposed act to the sacrifice of individuals under natural law. When Rombeau raises the fact that Rosalie is Rodin’s daughter, Rodin dismisses the bond as irrelevant and invokes supposed historical and cultural precedents for a father’s power over his children. His language converts kinship from a claim to protection into a rationale for domination.

Rodin also makes clear that the proposed killing is not only a scientific project. He says Rosalie has served his pleasures for five years and that, having lost interest, he intends to end her life. The contrast between his professed concern for anatomical knowledge and his personal willingness to dispose of his daughter exposes the self-serving character of his justification.

Rescue and Narrative Significance

After hearing that Rosalie is to be killed that evening, Therese rushes to the cellar. A blow against the door dislodges the key, and she opens it and urges Rosalie to flee. Rosalie reaches the threshold, but Rodin catches her before she can escape; Rombeau seizes Therese. Rodin accuses Therese of encouraging his daughter’s flight, while Therese answers that a father plotting his daughter’s death has forfeited any claim to her obedience. The two women are dragged back inside, the doors are bolted, and Rosalie is tied to a bedpost. Rodin and Rombeau then turn their anger on Therese, whom they intend to use in a separate experiment.

The episode makes the father-daughter relationship a conflict over what parental authority means. Rodin treats his status as a father as a right to control, abuse, confine, and kill; Rosalie’s disclosure and Therese’s attempted rescue insist that the relationship instead creates an obligation to protect. The failed escape sharpens the novel’s recurring contrast between compassionate action and its punishment: Therese acts to save Rosalie, but the household’s power turns that act into a pretext for further violence.