A Woman's Life Page #15

"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.

								

should have slept. She leant on her elbow, and bent towards him to
listen to the breath which sometimes sounded like a snore as it passed
through his lips.

Daylight came, dim at first, then brighter, then pink, then radiant.
Julien opened his eyes, yawned, stretched his arms, looked at his wife,
smiled, and asked:

"Have you slept well, dear?"

She noticed with great surprise that he said "thou" to her now, and she
replied:

"Oh, yes; have you?"

"I? Oh, very well indeed," he answered, turning and kissing her. Then he
began to talk, telling her his plans, and using the word "economy" so
often that Jeanne wondered. She listened to him without very well
understanding what he said, and, as she looked at him, a thousand
thoughts passed rapidly through her mind.

Eight o'clock struck.

"We must get up," he said; "we shall look stupid if we stay in bed late
to-day;" and he got up first.

When he had finished dressing, he helped his wife in all the little
details of her toilet, and would not hear of her calling Rosalie. As he
was going out of the room, he stopped to say:

"You know, when we are by ourselves, we can call each other 'thee' and
'thou,' but we had better wait a little while before we talk like that
before your parents. It will sound quite natural when we come back after
our honeymoon." And then he went downstairs.

Jeanne did not go down till lunch-time; and the day passed exactly the
same as usual, without anything extraordinary happening. There was only
an extra man in the house.

V

Four days after the wedding, the berlin in which they were to travel to
Marseilles arrived. After the anguish of that first night, Jeanne soon
became accustomed to Julien's kisses and affectionate caresses, though
their more intimate relations still revolted her. When they went away
she had quite regained her gayety of heart, and the baroness was the
only one who showed any emotion at the parting. Just as the carriage was
going off, she put a heavy purse in her daughter's hand.

"That is for any little thing you may want to buy," she said.

Jeanne dropped it into her pocket and the carriage started.

"How much did your mother give you in that purse?" asked Julien in the
evening.

Jeanne had forgotten all about it, so she turned it out on her knees,
and found there were two thousand francs in gold.

"What a lot of things I shall be able to buy!" she cried, clapping her
hands.

At the end of a week they arrived at Marseilles, where the heat was
terrible, and the next day they embarked on the Roi Louis, the little
packet-boat which calls at Ajaccio on its way to Naples, and started for
Corsica. It seemed to Jeanne as if she were in a trance which yet left
her the full possession of all her senses, and she could hardly believe
she was really going to Corsica, the birthplace of Napoleon, with its
wild undergrowth, its bandits, and its mountains. She and her husband
stood side by side on the deck of the boat watching the cliffs of
Provence fly past. Overhead was a bright blue sky, and the waves seemed
to be getting thicker and firmer under the burning heat of the sun.

"Do you remember when we went to Etretat in old Lastique's boat?" asked
Jeanne; and, instead of answering her, Julien dropped a kiss right on
her ear.

The steamer's paddles churned up the sea, and behind the boat, as far as
the eye could reach, lay a long foaming track where the troubled waves
frothed like champagne. All at once an immense dolphin leapt out of the
water a few fathoms ahead, and then dived in again head foremost. It
startled Jeanne, and she threw herself in Julien's arms with a little
cry of fear; then she laughed at her terror, and watched for the
reappearance of the enormous fish. In a few seconds up it came again,
like a huge mechanical toy; then it dived again, and again disappeared;
then came two more, then three, then six, which gamboled round the boat,
and seemed to be escorting their large wooden brother with the iron
fins. Sometimes they were on the left of the boat, sometimes on the
right, and, one following the other in a kind of game, they would leap
into the air, describe a curve, and replunge into the sea one after the
other. Jeanne clapped her hands, delighted at each reappearance of the
big, pliant fish, and felt a childish enjoyment in watching them.
Suddenly they disappeared, rose to the surface a long way out to sea,
then disappeared for good, and Jeanne felt quite sorry when they went
away.

The calm, mild, radiant evening drew on; there was not a breath of air
to cause the smallest ripple on the sea; the sun was slowly sinking
towards that part of the horizon beyond which lay the land of burning
heat, Africa, whose glow could almost be felt across the ocean; then,
when the sun had quite disappeared, a cool breath of wind, so faint that
it could not be called a breeze, came over the sea. There were all the
horrible smells of a packet-boat in their cabin, so Jeanne and Julien
wrapped themselves in their cloaks and lay down side by side on deck.
Julien went to sleep directly, but Jeanne lay looking up at the host of
stars which sparkled with so bright and clear a light in this soft
Southern sky; then the monotonous noise of the engines made her drowsy,
and at last she fell asleep. In the morning she was awakened by the
voices of the sailors cleaning the boat, and she aroused her husband and
got up. The sea was still all around them, but straight ahead something
gray could be faintly seen in the dawn; it looked like a bank of
strange-shaped clouds, pointed and jagged, lying on the waves. This
vague outline gradually became more distinct, until, standing out
against the brightening sky, a long line of mountain-peaks could be
seen. It was Corsica, hidden behind a light veil of mist.

The sun rose, throwing black shadows around and below every prominence,
and each peak had a crown of light, while all the rest of the island
remained enveloped in mist.

The captain, a little elderly man, bronzed, withered, and toughened by
the rough salt winds, came up on deck.

"Can you smell my lady over there?" he asked Jeanne, in a voice that
thirty years of command, and shouting above the noise of the wind, had
made hoarse.

She had indeed noticed a strong, peculiar odor of herbs and aromatic
plants.

"It's Corsica that smells like that, madame," went on the captain. "She
has a perfumed breath, just like a pretty woman. I am a Corsican, and I
should know that smell five miles off, if I'd been away twenty years.
Over there, at St. Helena, I hear he is always speaking of the perfume
of his country; he belongs to my family."

And the captain took off his hat and saluted Corsica, and then, looking
across the ocean, he saluted the great emperor who was a prisoner on
that far-away isle, and Jeanne's heart was touched by this simple
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