Relationships

          Virginie, the main character of Madame X, has different relationships with the people around her, but the two that are important are the ones with her mother and Dr. Pozzi. The relationship with her mother is strained due to her mother's dream of having high status in society. Virginie is disrespectful to her mother, occasionally slapping her on the face and often yelling or locking herself in a room to avoid her mother's punishment. However, Virginie's mother does not care about Virginie's feelings on certain topics and does things that affect her negatively, such as reporting Aurelie to the convent and taking away Virginie's only and best friend. Virginie's mother also took her away from Louisiana where her family lived because she found her family fortune and forced her to move back to France even though Virginie didn't want to. She also paid a doctor to put an arsenic based cream to make Virginie's skin whiter and made Virginie violently ill as a result. Virginie's mother used her as a means to rise up the social ladder and marry Virginie off to a French aristocrat for the sake of money and status. 

         Dr. Pozzi was Virginie's first lover. They met at one of the plays she was acting in and met up again at Julie's studio. He went to work at a hospital during civil war in Paris. She traveled during dangerous streets to see him at the hospital. They had sexual relations that night. She wanted someone to love her and she thought Dr. Pozzi was the one to give it to her. She was oblivious to Dr. Pozzi's actual intentions. All he wanted was to have physical connection rather than something deeper. Afterwards, she started to feel sick as if she was pregnant but ignored it. She wanted more of him and did anything to catch his attention. This occurred during a march in the street and she saw him. Virginie stopped her cab and walked in Dr. Pozzi's eyesight so he can see her. Her choices of action showed desperation. They had arrangements to meet up at his home on Tuesdays and Thursdays. However, his lover found her earring and confronted Virginie and Mama about it. The thing that made everything worse was that Virginie thought Dr. Pozzi would marry her since she found out finally she was pregnant with his baby. Unfortunately, he used his excuse of "busy at work" to stop the idea. This made her depressed. When she went to live with Pierre's mother for awhile, she had thoughts of suicide at the beach because Dr. Pozzi "scarred her heart". He confused her and made her worse than she was already.

Dr Pozzi, painted by John Singer Sargent. For more info on the painting:
https://hammer.ucla.edu/blog/2014/10/dr-pozzi-comes-home/