# Madame Foucault — The Old Wives’ Tale character guide

> Madame Foucault in The Old Wives’ Tale by Arnold Bennett.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Foucault, Madame, the Foucault, the ageing feckless Madame Foucault

**First appearance:** 0022-ii-supper

## Snapshot

Sophia's ageing, feckless Paris landlady — a faded courtesan of obvious sincerity who throws herself on Sophia's charity and calls it the recommencement of her life.

## Who they are

Madame Foucault is disfigured by time and habit, half prostrate before Sophia in gratitude when the younger woman proposes they share the boarding-house and its profits. She is sincere, impractical, and doomed to be the toy of chance; a lover's return undoes her resolves within days. Her partnership with Sophia is a strange, almost didactic arrangement — Christian charity, mutual need, and two very different kinds of woman learning what they can from each other.

## Relationships

### [Sophia Baines](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_old_wives_tale_se/characters/sophia_baines)

_professional_

Sophia's employer and landlady in Paris, a pragmatic businesswoman who becomes a confidante.

### [Gerald Scales](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_old_wives_tale_se/characters/gerald_scales)

_social_

Acquaintances through Sophia's Parisian life, with Gerald's visits to Madame Foucault's pension causing tension.

### [Gerald Scales](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_old_wives_tale_se/characters/gerald_scales)

_social_

Acquaintances through Sophia's Parisian life, with Gerald's visits to Madame Foucault's pension causing tension.

### [Sophia Baines](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_old_wives_tale_se/characters/sophia_baines)

_professional_

Sophia's employer and landlady in Paris, a pragmatic businesswoman who becomes a confidante.

### [Gerald Scales](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_old_wives_tale_se/characters/gerald_scales)

_social_

Acquaintances through Sophia's Parisian life, with Gerald's visits to Madame Foucault's pension causing tension.

### [Sophia Baines](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_old_wives_tale_se/characters/sophia_baines)

_professional_

Sophia's employer and landlady in Paris, a pragmatic businesswoman who becomes a confidante.

## In the story

### [Book III: Sophia](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_old_wives_tale_se/chapters/book-iii-sophia)

Owner of the pension in Paris where Sophia eventually works and takes over.

### [Fever](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_old_wives_tale_se/chapters/v-fever)

Emotionally distraught after a quarrel with her young lover, she reveals financial woes and a pretence of delicacy about accepting payment from Sophia, while her room was never disinfected.

### [VI: The Siege](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_old_wives_tale_se/chapters/vi-the-siege)

Madame Foucault, repentant and emotional, seeks Sophia's moral guidance and proposes a partnership in letting rooms to respectable tenants.

### [VII: Success](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_old_wives_tale_se/chapters/vii-success)

Her furniture, once despised, is now part of Sophia's successful pension.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_old_wives_tale_se/characters/madame_foucault
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_old_wives_tale_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_old_wives_tale_se/characters