A Girl was locked up for 25 years by her Own Mother
A Girl was locked up for 25 years by her Own Mother
Love and marriage was very different during 1800’s, they are totally different from the present. Love and dating was like a business arrangement, people have to get there parent permission before stepping into a relationship. There was always a clash between upper & lower class, even today in some places we may witness the clashes between the caste and class. Blanche Monnier was a example for how an secret affair can go terribly wrong.
Blanche Monnier Relationship
Blanche Monnier was from Poitier, it was a wealthy town in Western France. She lived with her family in a mansion on 21 Rue de la Visitation. Her father Emilie Monnier passed away, he was a director of an arts faculty in town, the family had enough saving it was enough for her mother Madame Louise Monnier’s family to live on. Monnier was a happy, bubbly and beautiful girl with huge eyes and thick brown hair. Her brother Marcel became a lawyer, and they both lived together with their mother into their 20’s.
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Blanche’s mother, Madame Monnier is a two faced person, she only appears to be a nice person. She got an award from the Committee of Good Works for all of her charity projects around the city, but she was a monster in her home and real life. Marcel and Blanche had a very difficult time finding someone who wanted to date them, because their mother as she had high expectations about who her children’s marriage.
At age 25, Blanche was getting close to “old maid” status (by the standards in the 1800’s). She met a lawyer who was slightly older than her, she completely fell in love with him. He wasn’t rich or successful but she loved him as a person and they were entangled. Blanche kept their relationship a secret from her mother and brother, because they would disapprove. Nearly every night, she waited for her mother and brother to go to sleep, and she would quietly sneak down the stairs to see her lover after dark.
Monnier’s family was a true members of Aristocracy (highest class in certain society). Usually, dates were supervised, and both families would meet one another and come to an agreement that they meshed well together. A marriage was a team effort, more than two people would decided who fell in love and if it’s a well-suited match.
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Even though Blanche kept this as a secret from her mother. But there were plenty of witnesses from the city who saw her along with the boyfriend, and yet no announcement of an engagement. The people of the town started to doubt the secret relationship and few doubted that Blanche could be pregnant. When her mother found out about this relationship, she was absolutely furious. Her mother forbid Blanche from meeting her boyfriend. The two would get into huge arguments, and Blanche would sneak out to meet him anyway. Surely, she had hoped that he would propose to her, and that she could escape her mother’s house soon enough, anyway. She could have never imagined what would happen to her next.
Plots To Stop Blanche’s Affair
Madame Monnier told her son Marcel about Blanche’s relationship. He was very obedient and loyal to his mother, and he fully believed in the traditional ideas of society, as well. He was shocked at how angry and vicious the fights between his sister and mother were getting, and he thought that Blanche was out of control. They both agreed that they did not want Blanche to be with this man, and they wanted to teach her a lesson.
In the middle of the night, Blanche came home from seeing her lover. Madame Monnier and Marcel were hiding, and their arms reached out to grab Blanche in the darkness. They shut her into the attic, which had a straw mattress laying on the floor waiting for her. Blanche must have been screaming at them, and her mother told her through the door that if she wanted to come out, she would have to promise that she would break up with her boyfriend.
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The room was completely black even during the day time. Blanche would have had to feel around the room to figure out where everything was. Bugs and mice crawled through the attic, as well. Her mother would not even open up the door to give her food or let her use the bathroom. Instead, she would slip whatever scraps of food could slip underneath the space in the doorway.
These were even worse conditions than someone being held in solitary confinement. Being alone and in the dark for so long is known for driving people insane, no matter how mentally capable they were beforehand. Blanche was actually very strong, and clearly very stubborn, because she refused to give in to her mother’s demands.
Days passed, and Madame Monnier could see that Blanche remained steadfast in her decision. She began to tell her friends in town that Blanche had disappeared in the middle of the night, and she gave a good show with fake crying and the whole nine yards, her loyal son Marcel did the same. Not sure, if Blanche’s boyfriend stopped by the house to look for her, but if he did, Madame Monnier would have told him the same story.
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They probably decided that if she finally agreed to come out, they would tell the neighbors that she had returned home. Marcel went on to become an administrator at a local commune, and for him and his mother, their reputation was very important to them. Blanche grew thinner and thinner, and she was living in her own filth, growing more and more insane by the day. She screamed out the windows, hoping that someone would hear her on the street, but help never came. Twenty five years later, and Blanche never gave into her mother’s demands, yet she remained imprisoned in the attic.
Blanche is Rescued by Anonymously written Letter
In 1901, an anonymous letter arrived at the Poitier police station that a young woman was being held captive in 21 Rue de la Visitation. The police showed up to the house to investigate, and when they knocked on the door, no one answered, even though they could hear movement from the inside, and see the flutter of curtains moving as Madame Monnier peeked out the window. They decided to break in, and searched every room for this captive woman. When they opened the attic door, they saw the skeleton-like Blanche Monnier.
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She now 50 years old, and had not seen daylight for 25 years. Blanche was totally naked, and she hid her body and face under her blanket, because the sunlight was too much to handle. She was terrified and completely deranged. She only weighed 50 -55 pounds. One of the police officers wrote in his statement, “We immediately gave the order to open the casement window. This was done with great difficulty. The old, dark curtains fell a heavy shower of dust. To open the shutters, it was necessary to remove them from their hinges.”
Blanche had been lying on a straw mattress that had gone rotten, and she was lying in her own filth. Crumbs of food and bugs were all over the floor. The smell was so bad, the police officers didn’t want to go inside to investigate. Blanche was taken to the Hotel-Dieu Hospital, and doctors thought she was going to die, well because she was so thin. The nurses gave her a bath, and she kept saying how lovely it was to being clean, and how thankful she was to be free. It was still difficult for her to be in the sunlight, because of her sensitivity.
When the police were raiding her home, Madame Monnier was sitting in her living room, completely calm. Her brother was still living in the house, which clearly shows that his mother had also manipulated him from moving out and having his own life, even well into his 50’s. But he tried to claim that Blanche brought this all upon herself.
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When he and his mother were brought to court, Marcel testified that Blanche was an angry woman who was full of rage. (Wonder why?!) And that they believed she was mentally ill. He said that only a crazy person would choose to stay in solitary confinement over agreeing to break up with someone, and this was why they kept her locked up. They figured that she must be crazy, and deserved to be imprisoned. He also tried to claim that she never even tried to escape the room, and that after they locked her in there, she simply accepted her fate and decided to stay.
Obviously, this was no true. An entire group of police men had to work together to take down the shutters from the window, and there was no way the weak and starving Blanche could have done that on her own. Neighbors came to testify at the trial, claiming that they thought they could hear the screams of a woman shouting “police!” out of the blocked window. This is most likely where the anonymous letter came from. Someone probably noticed the screams that continued on for 25 years.
Blanche also never acting violent or lashed out at any of the doctors or nurses. She was calm, and very grateful to have been saved. Tragically, she never got to see her lover again. He had died in 1885.
Her mother was found guilty of her crimes, and she was sent to jail. But she was so old, she died only 15 days after her capture. Her brother was given a sentence of a year in jail, but he was a lawyer, so he knew how to protect himself. He appealed the charges, and was able to go free.
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Blanche was able to put on some weight at the hospital, but after being in solitary confinement for 25 years, they say she had lost her mind. She also had nowhere else to go. She was 50 years old, and could not very likely find a husband and move on with her life, and she sure wasn’t going to move back in with her brother. She was sent to live in the Blois Psychiatric Hospital, where she died in 1913.
Looking back, some people debate whether Blanche Monnier was truly insane or not. After all, she could have lied to her mom for the sake of getting out of the room, and then she could have run away with her boyfriend. Others believe that she was perfectly sane before going into the attic, and the solitary confinement drove her to become insane in the dark. There have been studies to theorize that Blanche was showing signs of bad behavior long before the incident, but much of it could be chocked up to teenage angst and rebellion.
While this is a shocking case of abuse, it begs the question- how many women were put into similar situations, only for them to cave within 24 hours and agree to break off a relationship? How long had violence and torture been used to oppress women from making their own choices? Since these family matters always happened behind closed doors, we really may never know.
Note: This article is a true story based on the below novel. Few other sources says that Blanche’s mother hide her because of her mental illness and she doesn’t want her daughter to go to Asylum.
Source:
La Séquestrée de Poitiers is a novel by André Gide.
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About Author Mohamed Faisal
I'm a blogger, it is my passion to view and write things differently.