Baudelaire’s exploitation and challenging of generic conventions have implications for readers’ impressions of a text, including their perceptions of the other people with whom the speaker comes into contact. This article explores these issues in relation to two short texts: ‘A une passante’ – a sonnet evoking one of the most celebrated Baudelairean encounters – and ‘Les Veuves’, a poeme en prose in which an apparently similar subject is treated very differently. I conclude that generic baggage can be as problematic as the heuristic assumptions we bring to our everyday dealings with other people.