Comparing The Empress In The Diving Bell And The Butterfly

“The Empress,” a chapter within the memoir The Diving Bell and the Butterfly by
Jean-Dominique Bauby, draws an image of Bauby’s imaginative experience with Empress Eugenie, wife of Napoleon III. Bauby explains that the Empress was the hospital's patroness, and in her honor, the hospital houses a white marble bust portraying her, and a letter written by the deputy stationmaster of Berck’s railroad depot describing to the editor of the Correspondent Maritime Eugenie’s visit to the hospital. As Bauby observes the bust and reads this letter, he brings the words to life, and creates his own experience of following and interacting with the Empress throughout her visit at the hospital.

The imaginary experience that Bauby creates which consumes the whole chapter is an apostrophe. He begins this illusory journey by “mingling with the chattering flock of ladies-in-waiting,” and “following Eugenie.” As he follows Eugenie, he employs creative vocabulary, to describe what he sees, smells, and feels, as he moves about. For example, he describes how he “followed...the scent of her passage, imbued with the eau de cologne of the court perfumer” (24). These details of the apostrophe provide as an unsaid statement that, although he is completely inert, his mind is moving and experiences all these things mentally, as he cannot physically.
Soon he realizes that he is in fact looking at himself. This realization results in him emitting a nervous laughter, deciding to treat his locked-in syndrome as a joke. Shortly after Eugenie joins in on the laughter. This aspect of the apostrophe is significant because this is one of the few times Eugenie responds to an action of Bauby’s in this imaginary setting. It presents the idea that he would like other people to treat his condition the way he himself