Folie du personnage ou folie d’une société ? Le Horla et L’Impasse
Characters’ Madness or Society’s Madness ? “Le Horlaˮ and “L’Impasseˮ

Summary/Abstract: Lucidity or raging madness? The chosen novels raise the question: who is insane? This analysis will compare literary representations of madness between the late nineteenth and late twentieth centuries. Le Horla (1887) and L’Impasse (1996) are two novels whereby the psyche’s sickness is characterized by anxiety, illusion and paranoia while simultaneously portraying the main character as a lucid and reasoning being. Mirrors are present in both works and testify of a double consciousness, another self, and, physical, mental, and identity disintegration of characters. Psychiatry, in both novels, represented by Dr. Parent and Dr. Malfoi, lead to the character’s alienation because of their mental imprisonment. By showing their evolution, the study will shed light on the madness’s meaning and the characters’ subversive strategy to overcome it. Believing in madness is based on reason and pragmatism, but most of all enables the characters to see the invisible that the society can’t see: their own madness. Ultimately, their discoveries haunts and dehumanizes the characters as they try to escape from their new knowledge.

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