https://expositions.bnf.fr/contes/grand/008_3.htm
In this 15th century painting by an unknown author titled Mélusine en son bain, épiée par son époux, or its English title Melusine’s secret discovered, a human (center) stands near a structure with a wooden door with a peephole, hiding a beautiful human-fish hybrid (right) on the other side. This painting is a part of an illuminated manuscript of the Roman de Mélusine; a Medieval French story by Jean d’Arras of which André Lebey’s modern retelling The Romance of the Faery Melusine is based on. In the Romance, Raymondin falls in love with a water spirit named Melusine, who, unbeknownst to him, is “cursed with turning into a half snake, half woman every Saturday … and makes it a condition of their marriage that Raymondin must not see her on Saturdays.” (Penguin 85). As the story progresses, Raymondin’s desire for knowledge eventually culminates in a “breach of faith” (Penguin 87) in his contract to never see his loved one on a Saturday–the very scene that the painting depicts. Through a comparative analysis of the painting in relation to André Lebey’s version of the Romance, the story of Melusine becomes a story about penetration. This penetration of the female body and her privacy, with regard to literature and the environment, critiques how we understand (and use) the natural world, as knowledge involves penetration, and therefore, infiltration.
In the painting, Raymondin is meticulously positioned between the outdoors and Melusine’s room, sheltered from humanity. Raymondin is facing away from the door, looking at a guardsman with a spear on the left. This can be interpreted in different ways: either Raymondin is protecting Melusine from the human world by forbidding everyone from seeing her cursed form, or Raymondin is making sure no one else is looking so that only he can see what Melusine looks like, despite his promise to never see her on a Saturday. His position in the center is also important because it places him in a space between the open and closed; the public and private; the light and dark; the natural and supernatural. He is looking back at his own world before peering into a private space where a woman can be herself.
On the right, Melusine is in her half-serpent form, naked and bathing in a small tub and quite clearly enjoying herself. Compared to the outside, the room she is in is very small and has no windows, symbolizing that she finds joy in her own secret space, sheltered from the outside world. However, she still has a risk of discovery due to the door’s peephole. The peephole is an important detail because it is situated between a public and private space. Should anyone peek through it, they would penetrate that space, illustrating how creating ways of entry into someone else’s private life would lead to a violation of privacy; or, in Melusine’s case, her hidden secret being discovered.
André Lebey’s Romance of the Faery Melusine features a more colorful interpretation of Melusine’s discovery as shown in the painting. In chapter 19, titled “Betrayal,” the wooden door that separates Raymondin and Melusine is more of a rigid boundary between the human and non-human: “Enormous ironwork across [the door’s] width passed into the wall as if to seal it. So tightly that the stone on each side of the door, like the wood between, could not be opened or raised.” (Lebey 122) Here, Lebey fortifies the door to Melusine’s room, sealing it with “enormous ironwork” instead of a lock and thus adding more security to her safe space. Instead of it being out in the open like in the painting, it is located at the top of a tower–a place far away from society where “neither [Raymondin], nor anyone, except [Melusine]” have ever been before. (121) There are no easy entry points, and there is no mention of a peephole to peek through–only a small crack “between two of the thick polished planks of which the door was made.” (122) This fissure, this imperfection in the boundary, is what makes the curiosity-driven Raymondin create a method of entrance into her chamber:
“The blade entered [the door] a little, so slowly that he almost began to despair. But he forbade himself to think what he would do next, for he could not, he saw, fully part the adjacent boards. But he might make a crack wide enough to see through! He would soon find out something, no matter how!” (Lebey 122)
This moment in the book can be seen as a moment of sexual frustration. Instead of looking through a peephole as seen in the painting, Raymondin is forced to violently peel away at the barrier separating him from Melusine, “forbad[ing] himself to think” about the morality of such an action. He uses his blade in an act of penetration, prying the boards open in the hopes that “he might make a crack wide enough to see through” the boundary he is not meant to cross. Lebey turns this heartbreaking, yet non-violent “breach of faith” (Penguin 87) into an act of sexual aggression. As Raymondin drives his blade deeper into the door, he is intentionally violating Melusine’s personal space just to discover her secret, “no matter how” violent he has to be.
Compared to the painting, the small room in which Melusine enjoys herself is much larger and fits more with her supernatural nature. After Raymondin forces himself into Melusine’s room, Lebey describes it as “quite large, with high bare walls pierced high and low with little niches which shone through interlaced branches of coral. Thousands of shells in unknown forms … were reflected irregularly in the thick glass of an immense rough window of uniform colour … [The window] was like a sheet of water, a sort of plane detached from the sea, then solidified, and through which passed the light of the shining moon outside, veiled, as if supernatural.” (Lebey 123-124) By expanding the room, Lebey creates “another world” for Raymondin to explore and Melusine to inhabit, using phrases like “large,” “high,” and “immense” to show scale. As a result, the “immense” scale of her room renders Raymondin as an inferior “other”. Lebey themes Melusine’s room around water through the “branches of coal” and the “[t]housands of shells in unknown forms.” There is something unnatural about this place, as evident in the imagery of the window looking like “a sheet of water, a sort of plane detached from the sea, then solidified.” The use of “supernatural” implies that Raymondin is not meant to be in her sacred space. It is outside the normative space, and he is an alien to Melusine’s world just as she is to the human world. This difference in portraying Melusine’s room is important because in the painting, we see Raymondin invading the only space within the human world where Melusine can be herself. Lebey expands on this invasion of space by depicting Raymondin as invading her own “supernatural” world where she is herself. Because the room is so large compared to the artwork, the entry into Melusine’s room can be interpreted as a penetration into the female body/space as a sperm, a microscopic being “in another world” where the female is unaware of its existence.
In conclusion, close-reading the 15th century painting Melusine’s secret discovered with regard to André Lebey’s version in The Romance of the Faery Melusine reveals that the Romance can be read as a story about penetration. While the discovery involved Raymondin peeking into Melusine’s room and feeling heartbroken over his “breach of faith” in the original manuscript, Lebey takes the discovery of Melusine and turns it into violation of not just privacy, but of the female body. As we have discovered this semester, stories and their adaptations reflect our relationship with nature. In the case of Melusine, it reminds us that we too have been penetrating and violating the environment in order to uncover its secrets.
Works Cited
Mélusine en son bain, épiée par son époux. Roman de Mélusine par Jean d’Arras, c. 1450-1500. Bibliothèque nationale de France, https://expositions.bnf.fr/contes/grand/008_3.htm. Assessed December 13, 2025.
Lebey, André. The Romance of the Faery Melusine. Translated by Gareth Knight, United Kingdom, Skylight Press, 2011, pp. 119-125.
Bacchilega, Cristina, and Marie Alohalani Brown. “Legend of Melusina.” The Penguin Book of Mermaids. New York, New York, Penguin Books, 2019, pp. 85-88.