The novel "Mad Shadows" was written in the 1960's by Canadian author Marie-Claire Blais. The characters live in a universe where false love occurs within basically all three main characters. Within these characters, outer beauty reflects no truth about their inner beauty, and their love for others is delusional. The main characters in this novel cannot bind themselves to a world that has no overpowering source. These characters are as isolated from society as they are from nature, leaving them to live in their own moral universe.
The mother, Louise, is self-conceited, and admires herself when she looks at her own reflection in her mirror, or perceives the perfect body and face of her son, Patrice. She only cares for her beautiful, yet idiotic son, and not her ugly daughter, Isabelle-Marie. She cherishes and loves Patrice's beautiful image, and takes care of him as if he is a baby. She does not love Patrice for the person he is, nor does she have the natural love of a mother/son relationship, but only love for his appearance and beauty. When Louise is worried about her son, she only worries about his appearance. Louise's delusional and empty love for her son was proven as her "love" quickly diminished when Patrice had his face scalded by boiling water leaving him scared and ugly. She never cared for her daughter because of her appalling appearance. Louise judges her love for a person by their outer beauty, not their inner beauty. Louise loved to look physically beautiful, and wore makeup to hide the cancer that was eating away her face. She falsely loved her husband Lanz, only loving his outer beauty and Lanz only returning the false love for the same reason. Lanz wears a wig and a false beard to disguise his ugliness. Both Lanz and Louise were vain, and also seemed to hide behind "masks" to escape their inner ugliness. Louise was destroyed when her beautiful son was transformed to be ugly, and her husband was brutally killed.
