A young teen girl--suffering from the pains of abuse, an alcoholic father and a dying mother--is driven to suicide.

Mouchette is the 14-year-old daughter of an alcoholic bootlegger and a mother who is bedridden and dying. Cruelly treated by her father, Mouchette is friendless and harassed by her classmates, and she takes her revenge with glaring looks and by hurling mudballs at her young persecutors. Caught in a sudden downpour while walking home from school one day, she takes shelter under a tree. From there she witnesses a fight between Arsène, a poacher, and Mathieu, the gamekeeper. Arsène later finds Mouchette and takes her to his shack to dry her clothes. Drunk, he believes he has killed the gamekeeper; and Mouchette tries to console him and offers to provide him with an alibi. Arsène has an epileptic seizure, and when Mouchette cradles his head and sings to him, he misunderstands her gestures of sympathy and rapes her. Mouchette returns home to confide in her mother, who dies before Mouchette can speak. The next day Mouchette learns that the gamekeeper is still alive and that he and Arsène were fighting over a local barmaid, Louisa. Mouchette's encounters with the local grocer, the gamekeeper's wife, and an old woman who is obsessed with death all contribute to her isolation and growing hostility to those around her; and she commits suicide by rolling herself down a hill into a pond.