A Woman's Life

"A Woman's Life" (French: "Une vie") by Guy de Maupassant tells the poignant story of Jeanne, a young noblewoman in the 19th century, as she navigates the complexities of love, marriage, and societal expectations. Spanning her life from a romanticized youth to a disillusioned adulthood, the novel explores themes of gender, class, and the harsh realities faced by women. Through Jeanne's experiences, Maupassant critiques the constraints imposed by society and highlights the emotional turmoil that often accompanies personal choices. The narrative is both a reflection on the individual's struggle for autonomy and a subtle commentary on the limitations placed on women of the era.

								
I

Jeanne, having finished her packing, went to the window, but it had not
stopped raining.

All night long the downpour had pattered against the roofs and the
window-panes. The low, heavy clouds seemed as though they had burst, and
were emptying themselves on the world, to reduce it to a pulp and melt
it as though it were a sugar-loaf. A hot wind swept by in gusts; the
murmur of the overflowing gutters filled the empty streets, and the
houses, like sponges, absorbed the moisture which, penetrating to the
interior, made the walls wet from cellar to attic.

Jeanne, who had left the convent the day before, free at last and ready
for all the happiness of a life of which she had dreamed for so long,
feared that her father would hesitate about starting if the weather did
not clear up, and, for the hundredth time since the morning, she studied
the horizon.

Looking round, she saw that she had forgotten to put her almanac in her
traveling bag. She took from the wall the little card which bore in the
center of a design, the date of the current year 1819 in gilt letters,
and crossed out with a pencil the first four columns, drawing a line
through each saint's name till she came to the second of May, the day
she had left the convent.

A voice outside the door called: "Jeannette!"

Jeanne answered: "Come in, papa." And her father appeared.

The Baron Simon-Jecques Le Perthuis des Vauds was a gentleman of the old
school, eccentric and good-hearted. An enthusiastic follower of
Jean-Jacques Rousseau, he had a loving tenderness for all nature; for
the fields, the woods, and for animals. An aristocrat by birth, he hated
'93 by instinct; but of a philosophical temperament and liberal by
education, he loathed tyranny with an inoffensive and declamatory
hatred. The strongest, and at the same time the weakest, trait in his
character was his generosity; a generosity which had not enough arms to
caress, to give, to embrace; the generosity of a creator which was
utterly devoid of system, and to which he gave way with no attempt to
resist his impulses, as though part of his will were paralyzed; it was a
want of energy, and almost amounted to a vice.

A man of theories, he had thought out a whole plan of education for his
daughter, wishing to make her happy and good, straightforward and
affectionate. Till she was twelve years old she had stayed at home;
then, in spite of her mother's tears, she was sent to the Sacred Heart
Convent. He had kept her strictly immured there, totally ignorant of
worldly things, for he wished her to return to him, at the age of
seventeen, innocent, that he might himself immerse her in a sort of bath
of rational poetry; and, in the fields, surrounded by the fertile earth,
he meant to instruct her, and enlighten her by the sight of the serene
laws of life, the innocent loves and the simple tenderness of the
animals.

And now she was leaving the convent, radiant and brimful of happiness,
ready for every joy and for all the charming adventures that, in the
idle moments of her days and during the long nights, she had already
pictured to herself.

She looked like a portrait by Veronese, with her shining, fair hair,
which looked as though it had given part of its color to her skin, the
creamy skin of a high-born girl, hardly tinted with pink and shaded by a
soft velvety down, which could just be seen when she was kissed by a
sun-ray. Her eyes were blue, an opaque blue, like the eyes of a Dutch
china figure. On her left nostril was a little mole, another on the
right side of her chin, where curled a few hairs so much like the color
of the skin that they could hardly be seen. She was tall, with a
well-developed chest and supple waist. Her clear voice sometimes sounded
too shrill, but her merry laugh made everyone around her feel happy. She
had a way of frequently putting both hands to her forehead, as though to
smooth her hair.

She ran to her father, put her arms around his neck and kissed him.

"Well, are we going to start?" she asked.

He smiled, shook back his white hair, which he wore rather long, and
pointing towards the window:

"How can you think of traveling in such weather?" he said.

Then she pleaded coaxingly and affectionately, "Oh, papa, please do let
us start. It will be fine in the afternoon."

"But your mother will never consent to it."

"Oh, yes, I promise you she shall; I will answer for her."

"Well, if you can persuade your mother, I am quite willing to start."

She hastened towards the baroness's room, for she had looked forward to
this day with great impatience. Since she had entered the convent she
had not left Rouen, as her father would allow no distracting pleasures
before the age he had fixed. Only twice had she been taken to Paris for
a fortnight, but that was another town, and she longed for the country.
Now she was going to spend the summer on their estate, Les Peuples, in
an old family château built on the cliff near Yport; and she was looking
forward to the boundless happiness of a free life beside the waves. And
then it was understood that the manor was to be given to her, and that
she was to live there always when she was married; and the rain which
had been falling incessantly since the night before was the first real
grief of her life.

In three minutes she came running out of her mother's room, crying:

"Papa! papa! Mamma is quite willing. Tell them to harness the horses."

The rain had not given over in the least, in fact, it was coming down
still faster when the landau came round to the door. Jeanne was ready to
jump in when the baroness came down the stairs, supported on one side by
her husband, and on the other by a tall maid, whose frame was as strong
and as well-knit as a boy's. She was a Normandy girl from Caux, and
looked at least twenty years old, though she really was scarcely
eighteen. In the baron's family she was treated somewhat like a second
daughter, for she was Jeanne's foster-sister. She was named Rosalie, and
her principal duty consisted in aiding her mistress to walk, for, within
the last few years, the baroness had attained an enormous size, owing
to an hypertrophy of the heart, of which she was always complaining.

Breathing very hard, the baroness reached the steps of the old hotel;
there she stopped to look at the court-yard where the water was
streaming down, and murmured:

"Really, it is not prudent."

Her husband answered with a smile:

"It was you who wished it, Madame Adélaïde."

She bore the pompous name of Adélaïde, and he always prefaced it by
"Madame" with a certain little look of mock-respect.

She began to move forward again, and with difficulty got into the
carriage, all the springs of which bent under her weight. The baron sat
by her side, and Jeanne and Rosalie took their places with their backs
to the horses. Ludivine, the cook, brought a bundle of rugs, which were
thrown over their knees, and two baskets, which were pushed under their

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