Rouge: A Novel

Seth works for Rouge but appears via a mirror to Mira in the guise of Tom Cruise. He is the primary antagonist in the novel and is an archetypical Gothic villain, an older man who preys on a young, innocent girl. He has an inappropriate relationship with Mira while she is a child and he is an adult. He slow dances with her, attempts to kiss her (leaving a scar when she becomes afraid), and they lie on her bed together. He manipulates Mira to turn her against her mother, suggesting that Noelle stole Mira’s beauty and that they need to get her out of the way to be together. He preys on her insecurities, and it is later revealed that he is grooming her for consumption by Rouge. He plans to poison Noelle, and even though the plan relies on his magic—he transforms the rose petals into something more sinister—he later tells Mira that he only reflected her darkness back to her. When he is announced as a respected guest at La Maison de Méduse, he gloats with Mira, calling her his “seedling.” The fact Seth that assumes Tom Cruise’s appearance but is later revealed to work for Rouge makes him representative of both popular culture and the beauty industry. After Mira poisons her mother, he disappears for decades, reflecting that the promises offered by these industries are insincere, shallow, and potentially dangerous.

Noelle is Mira’s mother and a significant and complex secondary character in the novel. Her death precedes the beginning of the novel and is the inciting incident for Mira’s return to California. She is characterized through Mira’s memories of her, other characters’ statements about her, and the actions of her extracted soul. She is described as very beautiful and vain with “glossy dark red hair” and “bright blue” eyes (9). She is French, and she moves from Montreal to California to pursue an acting career after Mira attempts to poison her.

Noelle is initially characterized only through Mira’s reflections on her childhood and is depicted as a neglectful mother. Mira remembers being left home with Grand-Maman while her mother went on dates and her mother’s negative statements toward her. For example, Noelle tries to quit smoking but “she never will with me around. Whining” (147). Noelle’s characterization is dependent on how Mira perceives her mother’s comments. For example, Noelle often tells Mira that she is beautiful and that she is jealous of her coloring. However, Mira doesn’t believe this, so the memories are portrayed as sarcastic comments or lies.

Later in the novel, Noelle’s perspective is included in the novel as well. Most notably, Awad creates ambiguity about whether Noelle actually thinks her daughter is beautiful. Early in the novel, the reader only has access to Mira’s belief that her mother doesn’t mean what she says about her skin and appearance. Later, when the perspective briefly shifts to Noelle, it becomes clear that she does see her daughter as beautiful when she arrives in California and that she is upset by this. Awad uses this ambiguity to suggest that self-esteem and the truth of “beauty” are extremely subjective.

Despite their troubled history, Noelle is ultimately characterized by her love for her daughter. In her jellyfish form, she rescues her from being devoured by Rouge, and the novel ends with them reconciling and healing their shared trauma. These moments reflect how generational trauma isn’t set in stone, and there are always opportunities for rectifying past harms.

Hud Hudson is a private investigator who poses as a Rouge customer to investigate the entity. His brother received treatments at Rouge before becoming disoriented and disappearing, and Hud has a “scar on his cheek like a jagged slash” as a result of his brother trying to kill him (127). Both Hud and his brother illustrate that the beauty industry’s impact is not limited to women.

There is a clear attraction between Mira and Hud. He kisses her when she first sees him at La Maison de Méduse, they have sex before she goes for her final treatment, and in the final scene of the novel, they dance on the beach. His confused parapraxes indicate his affection for her: “love” instead of “lose” and “fall for” instead of “follow.” He initially prioritizes his desire to investigate Rouge over Mira’s well-being by failing to prevent her second treatment but ultimately wants to save her. Subverting fairy tale and Gothic novel tropes, he is not the hero of Mira’s story. He cannot save her at the mansion and reappears at the end, victimized by Rouge the way Mira was. In the end, it’s up to Mira to save Hud, and she does so by dancing him toward the shore.

Sylvia is a minor character, Noelle’s former business partner in the Belle of the Ball dress shop, and a foil for Mira and Noelle. Before Noelle’s death, she sold the business to Sylvia. Mira speculates that she is jealous of her because she never uses the shop’s full name, assuming that she “doesn’t like the name’s affiliation with me or that it predates her” (19). She is characterized as caring but meddlesome and intrusive. When Mira is in the bathroom at her mother’s funeral, she thinks that when Sylvia finds that the door is locked, “she’ll take a screwdriver to the handle. A credit card to the lock. She might even kick it down with her little Gucci-soled foot. All under the smiling guise of concern” (13). This passage reflects Sylvia’s characterization through Mira’s unreliable perspective; compared to Noelle’s edgy and artistic fashion taste, Mira views Sylvia as typical and pandering to a “certain” type of woman. Mira continually criticizes Sylvia, suggesting that “[h]ers is the wily face of the sycophant. Greasily beaming” (44).

Despite this negative opinion, Sylvia is characterized through her actions as a fair and genuinely caring person. She hesitates to call the police when Mira is harassing the staff and knocking over mannequins at Belle of the Ball. She searches for Mira when she disappears to Rouge and is the one who finds her on the beach. She then lets Mira stay at her house to recuperate and offers her a job. This resolution between the two at the end emphasizes the value of genuine solidarity among women in a patriarchal world, in contrast to the relationships Mira cultivated with the woman in red and others at Rouge.