Identity in Cologne: Not Everything Is Sexual

In a paper about Peter Süskind’s novel "Perfume" titled "Sniffing Out the Odorless Genius: Identity in Perfume," Catherine Villeneuve-Tang writes about the odorless character Grenouille's search for identity displaced onto his conscious striving to develop the perfect perfume. She writes:

The French describe a person’s intangible quality that charms the senses as a “Je ne sais quoi.” This phrase translated into English closely resembles the expression, “There’s something about her/him.” The notion of an attractive aura surrounding a person conjures up images of an invisible force at work. For the most part, ordinary human scent passes relatively unnoticed since all humans are accustomed to their own smell. But this general observation cannot be applied to one exceptional example of the human species: Grenouille, having no odor of his own, indulges in the minutest shred of scent and can deconstruct a person’s “je ne sais quoi” into the building blocks of smell. Ironically, Grenouille lacks all personal odor; he is inadequate in an area to which he devotes himself wholeheartedly. In chapter 29, Grenouille discovers his odorlessness and realizes that he lacks an identity which, according to his eccentric disposition, equals personal scent. His subsequent endeavors to create a perfect perfume reflect his desperate attempt to create an identity for himself. In Süskind’s Perfume, Grenouille’s desire for an identity and subsequent self-destruction elucidate the futility in manufacturing a false sense of self.