Perfume: The Story Of A Murderer, English research help: When the wet nurse refuses to keep Grenouille because

When the nurse refuses to keep Grenouille because he has no smell and therefore must be a “child of the devil” [p. 11], Father Terrier takes him in. But he is exasperated. He has tried to combat “the superstitious notions of the simple folk: witches and fortune-telling cards, the wearing of amulets, the evil eye, exorcisms, hocus-pocus at full moon, and all the other acts they performed” [p. 14]. In what ways can Perfume be read as a critique of the eighteenth century’s conception of itself as the Age of Reason? Where else in the novel do you find rationality being overcome by baser human instincts?