# Paquette la Chantefleurie — Notre-Dame de Paris character guide

> Paquette la Chantefleurie in Notre-Dame de Paris by Victor Hugo.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Paquette, la Chantefleurie, Chantefleurie, the recluse

**First appearance:** 0032-ii-the-rat-hole

## Snapshot

Once the laughing, pretty Chantefleurie of Reims, Paquette now lives walled in the Rat-Hole, mourning a daughter stolen from her years ago.

## Who they are

Paquette was a poor embroiderer's daughter whose beauty and ready laugh earned her a nickname and then a ruinous fall through a succession of lovers, each less noble than the last. Now a recluse in a stone cell, she survives on the charity of passersby and the memory of the little girl taken from her, her grief sharpened by every child she sees. Her vigil in the Rat-Hole makes her the human cost behind the story's questions about motherhood, loss, and the cruelty of a city that forgets its poor.

## In the story

### [History of a Leavened Cake of Maize](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/notre_dame_de_paris_se/chapters/iii-history-of-a-leavened-cake-of-maize)

The tragic central figure of the story, a fallen woman whose infant daughter was stolen by gypsies.

### [V: The Mother](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/notre_dame_de_paris_se/chapters/v-the-mother)

The recluse mother, consumed by fifteen years of grief over her stolen daughter, finds a bitter satisfaction in the impending execution of a gypsy.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/notre_dame_de_paris_se/characters/paquette_la_chantefleurie
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/notre_dame_de_paris_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/notre_dame_de_paris_se/characters