Short Fiction · Character

Bertha

A woman whose secret correspondence leads to a dramatic confrontation.

minor

Also known as Madame Lelièvre, Madame Bertha Lelièvre

Bertha shows up with force in A Grandmother's Advice. The page is where that presence becomes real.

The young granddaughter, embroidering an altar-cloth, who reads newspaper accounts of love dramas and defends modern ideals of marriage and eternal love.

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In A Grandmother's Advice: The young granddaughter, embroidering an altar-cloth, who reads newspaper accounts of love dramas and defends modern ideals of marriage and eternal love. Later, in An Artifice: Madame Bertha…

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Narrative arc

Story tension across the book.

Setup
Escalation
Breaking point
Aftermath
Closing

The emotional and psychological peak occurs when Leuillet receives news of Souris’s sudden death and experienc…

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In the story

Bertha appears across 9 companion beats. Open any chapter in the free preview to see the notes beside the text.

A Grandmother's Advice
The young granddaughter, embroidering an altar-cloth, who reads newspaper accounts of love dramas and defends modern ideals of marriage and eternal love.
An Artifice
Madame Bertha Lelièvre, the young married woman whose lover dies in her bedroom; she seeks the doctor's help to conceal the affair from her husband.
The Pardon
The protagonist, a naive and upright woman who discovers her husband's infidelity and struggles with forgiveness.
The Child
Jacques' former lover who dies in childbirth, imploring him to care for their child.
Berthe
The intellectually disabled young woman at the center of the story, who learns to associate clocks with mealtimes and later develops a consuming love for her husband.
Scene II
Now Madame de Chantever, she is caught off guard by De Garelle's approach and eventually agrees to meet him again.
Military Honors
Berthine, the forester's daughter, is the central figure who bravely confronts and outwits the Prussian soldiers.
Finis
Lise de Vance, now the elderly Baroness de Vance, writes to Lormerin after twenty-five years, inviting him to meet her and her daughter.
The Sign
The little Baroness de Grangerie, who recounts her impulsive and disastrous imitation of a prostitute's signal from her window.

Chapter companion notes

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See Bertha in short fiction

See Bertha in A Grandmother's Advice