Author Archives: Jesmond Phimmachack

Penetration in the Romance of Melusine

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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.

ECL 305 final thoughts

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Taking this with the 522 class, and the many ECL classes before it, I would say that I have learned a lot this semester. Namely, working on close-reading and critical thinking as a class was a much easier, but anxiety-inducing time than having to learn to close-read yourself, as it has given us the opportunity to hear the different ways others have approached literature and their interpretations.

I like to think of close-reading as a form of psychoanalysis, but for media. Why do you think the professor wants us to analyze a passage from a text from The Little Mermaid or The Deep? Why does she want us to close-read The Water Will Carry Us Home and Sirenomelia, even though they aren’t “texts”? Why explicate? We see the author’s creation (the manifest content), and we try to find its hidden, often larger meaning (latent content) through dissections and interpretations. We have been practicing it throughout the semester, and it has been shaping how we think about the world.

In the context of this class, we’ve learned that mermaids are so much more than just beautiful women with fish tails. They have historical significance (dating back to medieval times) and reflect our relationship with nature. Mermaid literature places us in Her eyes, allowing us to experience man’s impact and penetration through Her perspective, raise environmental/ecological awareness, and promote ecocritical thinking. Through Her, the Ocean is History, the Ocean is an archive, and the Ocean is our mother.

I am looking forward to apply what I’ve learned in this course for the next semester, where we dissect the literature of AI and how it is affecting the world in the age of AI (ECL 510B).

Week 14

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As of right now, I’m still unsure what to write about for my final essay. Compared to Moby-Dick, which was a slog to get through even with a whole class, being able to close read The Deep by Rivers Solomon et al. after all of that felt like a reward. It being a much shorter story should make it easier to close read since at least it doesn’t have much going on compared to that other whale. Plus, there shouldn’t be any convoluting themes; the first few chapters seem to revolve around History and intergenerational trauma.

As I’ve said in 522, I still need to work on my writing/analysis skills since my mind defaults back to just summary instead of explication. I still think there’s room for improvement since a couple of the essay assignments I wrote for this class and the Moby-Dick class got mediocre grades because I wasn’t able to do the So What (relevance) portion of these essays that well.

I envy people who are able to make convincing arguments/interpretations/insights/whatever about a particular passage and turn them into a 750-1000+ word essay. If only I had the skills…

A Post-Human World

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The machine is a transgression against nature in that humans have actively taken from nature to fulfill their self-interests. They have built houses, cities, sculptures, and modes of transportation that make use of what is available, but by doing so they have razed down trees and moved rocks around to make way for their creations. They chip away at rocks and minerals to replace the parts that are worn down. However, these transgressions are also what helps them study the environment (e.g. sea levels arising from climate change): Scientists use machines to study and predict events in the natural world; oceanographers use machines to study the ocean and its inhabitants; civilians use machines as a medium of communication; and yet all of the machines we use are worn down by nature over time, and maintenance requires taking from nature again to increase our machines’ lifespans.

But in a post-human world, without humans to maintain their creations, they will fall into disrepair, and nature will eventually reclaim these transgressions for herself. In her 6-minute short film Sirenomelia, Emilija Škarnulytė uses the post-human environment in and around a decommissioned NATO base to explore this paradox of maintenance. Humans are ultimately responsible for maintaining their creations—these transgressions against nature—that they use to study nature.

The Radio Dish

A radio dish rotates slowly (0:15-1:00)

At the beginning of the film (0:15-1:00), the viewer is presented with a view of a snowy landscape through the perspective of a rotating radio dish with no humans in sight, accompanied with sounds of machinery. Despite the lack of humans, this machine remains functional, and it continues to rotate and gather data from its surroundings even when there is no one around to maintain it. Compared to the other manmade creations around the NATO base, this is the most intact piece of science equipment in the film, and it demonstrates the machines longevity in the absence of humans. And yet, it is designed to only perform the one task it was designed to perform: to gather data which is to be analyzed by the now-absent humans.

Although the radio dish is relatively maintained (it is still operational in case scientists wish to analyze the data it gathered), it is still subject to the forces of nature, and it probably will not be around for the next hundreds of years.

The Interior

A view of an unlit tunnel as a mermaid swims through the interior of the base (2:51)

At 2:15, Škarnulytė offers a glimpse into the interior of the long-abandoned base. The scene is in black and white, set underground in what looks like an unlit submarine pathway; a tunnel dug into the underside of a mountain, perhaps. As the main shot explores the deeper part of the tunnel, there is another scene overlayed on the top-left corner. This other shot is set in what is presumably an indoor pool, with a ceiling light shining through the watery surface and some stone walls to the left and right. Before the scene switches (2:47), a mermaid–the posthuman being–splashes into the water, distorting the room above beyond recognition.

The distortion of the room caused by the mermaid splashing can be seen as nature reclaiming abandoned creations by force, deteriorating their structural integrity to the point of unrecognizability. Voices can be heard, but they are not discernible; what once was a foundation used to house submarines and torpedo ships is now an echo of the past.

The Exterior

View of the exterior from under water

At 3:28-3:48, Škarnulytė presents a view of the base’s exterior. Set outside, it is much brighter than the view of the interior, but it is viewed from under the water’s surface, distorting it much like the overlayed shot inside the tunnel.

In this underwater shot, Škarnulytė juxtaposes the manmade with the natural. The manmade (the tunnel) takes up more of the screen than the natural (the mountain and trees), symbolizing how industrialization has taken precedence over the environment, building more while destroying more. The wall on the right is discolored, likely due to erosion from rainfall, and it is a display of nature chipping away at the exterior before moving onto the interior. To keep their creations standing, humans will have to maintain not just the interior, but the exteriors as well.

In the end, Sirenomelia is a film about maintenance, and how humans are responsible for maintaining the creations that were made from the resources they took from nature. Without the people to look after their creations, nature will be allowed to reclaim these transgressions for herself.

Week 11: Nature marches on

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After watching Sirenomelia, I thought the short film was powerful in showing how nature, with or without humans, continues onward. The film places us in the perspective of a mermaid, exploring a decommissioned NATO base in Norway and seeing how much of it has been claimed by nature since there are no humans around to maintain it.

The scene at 2:15 especially interested me because it shows how desolate the underground parts of the base really are when there are no humans looking after it. The scene is in black and white with what sounds like the screeching of a tram, and the only “light” we have exploring this part of the base is pointed towards the ground. Meanwhile, there is another scene overlayed on top of it; it’s hard to make out, but there is a light and a part of a wall which quickly gets distorted by a disturbance on the water’s surface. Although there are muffled voices, there is no discernible dialogue throughout the film; what once was a foundation used to study the Arctic Ocean is now an echo of the past.

By using a decommissioned NATO base, it shows us that humans are responsible for maintaining the transgressions against nature that we call machinery/industrialization, which we use to explore and learn about the ocean. Maintaining them means actively protecting it from the forces of nature, such as erosion and invasive species, and that also means we have to exploit the resources given to us to maintain them. Without someone to look after these machines, nature will ultimately come back to reclaim them, reincorporating them as another part of nature. That is why you often see plants growing inside abandoned buildings and theme parks; man-made creations are temporary, nature is inevitable.

Week 10: The Ocean is big, but its resources are not infinite

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After reading the introduction to The Ocean Reader by Eric Paul Roorada, one thing that stood out to me is how the author reminds us that humans are constantly exploiting the Ocean (with a capital O) and hurting its ecosystems, and wants us to become more environmentally aware of the Ocean due to its limited resources.

Roorada writes, “[T]he multifaceted Ocean … is an enormous and very complicated system. Humans interact with that system in many ways. They relentlessly hunt sea creatures, taking 90 million tons of fish from it annually.” (3)

This description of humans “relentlessly” hunting sea creatures shows how we take these gifts of Nature for granted. The Ocean is enormous, but it is not infinite. Like land, it is home to many resources that can only be found underwater. However, there is only so much that we can gather from the Ocean before it eventually runs out of said resources and we have to compete for it.

The author also sheds light on overfishing, giving us a statistic of humans “taking 90 million tons of fish from it annually.” Overfishing leads to a depletion in fish stock, which endangers marine ecosystems and harms human livelihoods. Because of this, it is important for us to consider what resources we really want and how much we really need, taking in mind how efficient we need to be with the resources we have. Limited resources cannot fulfill our unlimited wants.

Close reading essay #1: Taught to fear the unknown

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In his children’s book The Little Mermaid, Hans Christian Andersen explores the human relationship with nature through the nature’s point of view, telling of fictional mermaids who live under the sea. These “other” beings long to be with humans, and desire things we have. However, humans and mermaids have a limited understanding of each others’ worlds, and their actions end up scaring each other away. Through this relationship, Andersen reminds us that we only have surface-level knowledge of the ocean, and the deeper parts remain inscrutable to us. As a result, The Little Mermaid teaches us to fear things we cannot understand.

Mermaids are commonly thought of as an embodiment of not just the feminine body, but of hybridity. They are a result of humans trying to integrate themselves with nature, allowing them to exist in and with the environment. However, the thought of mermaids existing with the human world is something we cannot fully grasp, since the blending of human and non-human traits is considered a violation of the laws of nature. Andersen demonstrates this through the mermaids’ attempted interaction with the humans during a storm. In his story, the mermaids “sang most sweetly of delights to be found beneath the water, begging the seafarers not to be afraid of coming down below. But the sailors could not understand what they said, and mistook their words for the howling of the tempest, and they never saw all the fine things below, for if the ship sank the men were drowned, and their bodies alone reached the sea-king’s palace.” (Penguin 112-113)

The sailors’ misinterpretation of the mermaids’ calls for “the howling of the tempest” illustrates how an irrational mind alters our perception of the world, including our perception of the other. When we panic, our brains prioritize survival over rational thought which incapacitates our ability to think clearly. The mermaids’ calls are drowned out by the “howling” of the storm, as though they were a part of the storm itself. The sailors are implied to be in a state of panic in fear of their ship sinking, and they are too focused on survival to hear the words of these other beings. The “howling” adds to the sailors’ fears because very strong winds can capsize a ship and lead to them drowning.

The imagery of the men drowning and “their bodies alone reach[ing] the sea-king’s palace” captures our incompatibility with the ocean. Humans have not evolved to breathe underwater unlike sea mammals, so we rely on machinery to know what happens in the deep ocean. However, the crushing pressure in deeper parts makes this infeasible, as if it is a boundary we cannot cross. The line, “their bodies alone reached the sea-king’s palace” also emphasizes how most human bodies, like shipwrecks, are never recovered in ocean-related deaths. The bodies of those who have died there are found on the ocean floor, which can be miles below the surface. As such, we are never able to see “all the fine things below” because we would not be alive to see it.

Moreover, the line “the sailors could not understand what they said” highlights the inscrutable nature of these mermaids and the world they live in. To understand something is to comprehend it. If we cannot comprehend it, our mind defaults back to fearing it. Andersen tells the readers that the ocean is home to many “delights” that are only found under the sea, but since we do not have the means to reliably explore the deep ocean, it is unknown if there are any “delights” to be found if at all. This makes us doubt the mermaids’ words, since we do not know if these so-called “delights” are good or bad. And since we cannot comprehend the unknown, we fear what we cannot understand.

Despite being a story for children, Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid features much darker elements compared to the stories we tell today, yet it sends powerful messages. For one, it teaches us that most decisions do not come without a cost. For two, it tells us that a soul is what makes us human. And lastly, it reminds us that the deep ocean remains unknown and uncharted, and that’s why humans fear it so much.

Week 8: To make of the world below

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While reading Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid, what stood out to me in this tale is just how different the underwater world is compared to the terrestrial world. Since the underwater world remains largely unexplored, we can only make of its supposed beauty through what we think lies below. That the depths of the ocean hides a world that is completely alien to the land above.

In the beginning, the narrator reminds us that the ocean is “so deep … that no rope can fathom it; and many church steeples need be piled upon the other to reach from the bottom to the surface.” (108) Just how deep is the ocean, and how much of it have we not explored? Humans are not capable of breathing underwater, so we have to rely on submarines and scuba tanks to explore only a part of it. Even then, the crushing depths make exploring the bottom of the ocean almost impossible. Even in reality, there are thresholds set in place by Nature that we literally cannot cross, even if we wanted to.

In the next paragraph, the narrator tells us that the ocean must not “be imagined that there is nothing but a bare, white, sandy ground below,” and proceeds to describe its environment: “The soil produces the most curious trees and flowers, whose leaves and stems are so flexible that the slightest motion of the water seems to fluster them as if they were living creatures.” (108) This exemplifies the alien nature of the ocean, and it also implies that even the depths are connected to terrestrial life. The “trees and flowers” can be made out as coral, but it is described in a way that makes them seem as though they are a part of a forest. The fish are likened to birds, further demonstrating the parallel between sea and land.

However, both of these worlds are separated by water as stated before; humans and aquatic beings are incompatible with water and land respectively. There are things in their world that we desire but cannot have due to the nature of their world, and vice versa. Alas, we can only describe what lies at the bottom of the ocean, and we have yet to see the beauty of it in the distant future.

Week 7: Mermaid sightings

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After reading “The Feejee Mermaid Hoax” and its accompanying article “The Mermaid” in the Penguin Book of Mermaids, it is kind of intriguing how people are led to believe that mermaids actually exist. Although this section of the Penguin Book talks about Phineas Taylor Barnum exhibiting a mummified mermaid to the public, the article does talk about the mermaid in question, but only in the first paragraph.

In the article, Barnum writes that a young artist saw the Feejee mermaid and sent Barnum and his team a drawing of it. The artist assured them that the drawing was accurate to how he saw it, with its hair being the exception, which “he has taken the liberty to make a little longer than the original would warrant.” (241)

Here is how the Feejee mermaid was depicted:

Eugh.
Yes, I did take the liberty to search for that image on the web. To think that all mermaids were supposed to be beautiful, this grotesque human-fish monstrosity basically takes that and throws it out the window. If this is how mermaids actually looked like if they existed in our world, it would change how we view them quite drastically. However, this is just one depiction; others may vary.

Anyway, the article. It argues that mermaids have been considered by many as a “fabulous animal,” but naturalists think there’s too much evidence of the existence of them to be considered mere fantasy (241). Barnum then presents us with various sightings of mermaids, with their appearances and personalities varying every time. The authenticity of these sightings are disputed; we don’t know if they’re real or fabricated. However, there are two examples that caught my attention, and they are both found in page 243 of the Penguin Book:

The 1758 St. Germaine’s mermaid: “…about two feet long … fed with bread and small fish … female, with ugly negro features. The skin was harsh, the ears very large, and the back parts and tail were covered with scales.“
The 1775 London mermaid: “Its face is like that of a young female–its eyes a fine light blue–its nose small and handsome–its mouth small–its lips thin, and the edges of them round like that of the codfish–its teeth are small, regular and white–its chin well shaped, and its neck full.

Yikes. If you read them closely, you can practically see the racism permeating from these descriptions alone. While the London mermaid was described as a very beautiful female, the St. Germaine mermaid, despite her agility and delight, is described as ugly because her skin looks black, hence the word “negro.” The use of the word “negro” coupled with the word “ugly” in the 1758 example implies that even mermaid sightings were rooted in racism. Keep in mind that these alleged sightings were reported while the transatlantic slave trade was taking place, when dark-skinned African people were forcefully taken overseas to work for their masters.

That being said, I think it’s crazy to include the last two examples in the article because it shows that not even mermaids were safe from racism. Sure, these creatures may vary per sighting, but these examples side-by-side reveal how Europeans (mostly White people by the way!) always found a reason to promote their idea of white supremacy during the mid-late 18th century.

Week 6: Breaching the boundary

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In my post from last week I talked about how Melusine’s curse is an example of how outside forces can impact the bond between us and them, but I only read the summary of the legend of Melusine from the Penguin Book of Mermaids. Whoops! The Romance of the Faery Melusine, although a more difficult read, offers much more depth than just a mere summary. So for this post, I will do an analysis on how the environment around Raymondin reflects the shattering of the boundary between the natural and the supernatural as a result of his curiosity in chapter 19 of The Romance of the Faery Melusine.

At the start of Chapter 19, we see Raymondin in a state of restlessness brought on by his “regret and his anguish,” pacing up and down in his room distractedly. (119) His regret comes from his suspicions about Melusine, while his anguish stems from the grief that Melusine might be betraying them, as per the title of the chapter. The tapestry in the room is a stark contrast from the overall mood of this scene. While the design is quite elegant, Raymondin is only focused on a fawn with open legs and horns that “seemed to mock him” because the woman he married has tainted their marriage with her curse. This leads to his murderous obsession with Melusine’s secret, donning his armor and grabbing some weapons to protect himself in case Melusine attacks.

Of course, this obsession leads to an “irresistible and fatal” urge, as seen when Raymondin charges up the stairs to Melusine’s room, eager to strike (120-121). The climbing of the “narrow winding stair, steeper and steeper, to the very top” shows his bilnd franticness in discovering Melusine’s secret. And apparently, what lies at the top of the stairs is a place where “he had never been before.” He finds himself in some unknown territory, a dwelling place for the other, in which no one had dared to explore further. At the top, however, there is only one obstacle in his way: a door.

The door serves as a barrier between the natural world and the supernatural. The natural-ness of the door comes from its composition of wood, iron, and stone. Raymondin, already driven by his curiosity-fueled obsession, begins the process of unlocking the door, chipping away at the barrier separating the supernatural from the supernatural. After he opens it, he breaches the barrier, finding himself “in another world.”

The “world” he steps in is decorated to resemble the depths of the ocean, coupled with a “strange sound of splashing water.” It is oddly spacious for a room located at the top of a tower, essentially making it a pocket dimension for Melusine, and its unnaturalness comes from how it is decorated: “Thousands of shells in unknown forms, thousands and thousands of pebbles in all colours, including great rocks…” (123-124) And in this world lies a giant glass wall, serving as the final separator between him and her. And lo and behold, at the end of the chapter, he looks through the glass, that final barrier, and discovers Melusine’s half-human half-serpent form, and as his face falls into the sand, (125) he is left truly devastated.

Curiosity is the driver of the soul. Sometimes it rewards us, sometimes it kills us. And when curiosity gets the best of us, it drives us into obsession, leading us into places unknown. Some places are better off unexplored, yet our obsessions compell us to explore deeper. As seen in Raymondin’s obsession with Melusine’s secret, curiosity can make us overstep boundaries when it comes to discovering something beyond our comprehension.