A Woman's Life Page #36

"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.

								

snowy fleece in the midst of the bright blue sky. She went down into the
valley leading to the sea, between the two great arches which are called
the gates of Etretat, and went slowly towards the wood.

The sunlight poured down through the foliage which, as yet, was not very
thick, and Jeanne wandered along the little paths unable to find the
spot where she had sat with Julien. She turned into a long alley and, at
the other end of it, saw two saddle-horses fastened to a tree; she
recognized them at once; they were Gilberte's and Julien's. Tired of
being alone and pleased at this unexpected meeting, she trotted quickly
up to them, and when she reached the two animals, which were waiting
quietly as if accustomed to stand like this, she called aloud. There was
no answer.

On the grass, which looked as if someone had rested there, lay a woman's
glove and two whips. Julien and Gilberte had evidently sat down and then
gone farther on, leaving the horses tied to the tree. Jeanne wondered
what they could be doing, and getting off her horse, she leant against
the trunk of a tree and waited for a quarter of an hour or twenty
minutes. She stood quite motionless, and two little birds flew down onto
the grass close by her. One of them hopped round the other, fluttering
his outstretched wings, and chirping and nodding his little head; all at
once they coupled. Jeanne watched them, as surprised as if she had
never known of such a thing before; then she thought: "Oh, of course!
It is springtime."

Then came another thought--a suspicion. She looked again at the glove,
the whips and the two horses standing riderless; then she sprang on her
horse with an intense longing to leave this place. She started back to
Les Peuples at a gallop. Her brain was busy reasoning, connecting
different incidents and thinking it all out.

How was it that she had never noticed anything, had never guessed this
before? How was it that Julien's frequent absence from home, his renewed
attention to his toilet, his better temper had told her nothing? Now she
understood Gilberte's nervous irritability, her exaggerated affection
for herself and the bliss in which she had appeared to be living lately,
and which had so pleased the comte.

She pulled up her horse for she wanted to think calmly, and the quick
movement confused her ideas. After the first shock she became almost
indifferent; she felt neither jealousy nor hatred, only contempt. She
did not think about Julien at all, for nothing that he could do would
have astonished her, but the twofold treachery of the comtesse, who had
deceived her friend as well as her husband, hurt her deeply. So everyone
was treacherous, and untrue and faithless! Her eyes filled with tears,
for sometimes it is as bitter to see an illusion destroyed as to witness
the death of a friend. She resolved to say nothing more about her
discovery. Her heart would be dead to everyone but Paul and her parents,
but she would bear a smiling face.

When she reached home she caught up her son in her arms, carried him to
her room and pressed her lips to his face again and again, and for a
whole hour she played with and caressed him.

Julien came in to dinner in a very good temper and full of plans for his
wife's pleasure.

"Won't your father and mother come and stay with us this year?" he said.

Jeanne almost forgave him his infidelity, so grateful was she to him for
making this proposal. She longed to see the two people she loved best
after Paul, and she passed the whole evening in writing to them, and
urging them to come as soon as possible.

They wrote to say they would come on the twentieth of May; it was then
the seventh, and Jeanne awaited their arrival with intense impatience.
Besides her natural desire to see her parents, she felt it would be such
a relief to have near her two honest hearts, two simple-minded beings
whose life and every action, thought and desire had always been upright
and pure. She felt she stood alone in her honesty among all this guilt.
She had learnt to dissimulate her feelings, to meet the comtesse with an
outstretched hand and a smiling face, but her sense of desolation
increased with her contempt for her fellow-men.

Every day some village scandal reached her ears which filled her with
still greater disgust and scorn for human frailty. The Couillards'
daughter had just had a child and was therefore going to be married. The
Martins' servant, who was an orphan, a little girl only fifteen years
old, who lived near, and a widow, a lame, poverty-stricken woman who was
so horribly dirty that she had been nicknamed La Crotte, were all
pregnant; and Jeanne was continually hearing of the misconduct of some
girl, some married woman with a family, or of some rich farmer who had
been held in general respect.

This warm spring seemed to revive the passions of mankind as it revived
the plants and the flowers; but to Jeanne, whose senses were dead, and
whose wounded heart and romantic soul were alone stirred by the warm
springtide breezes, and who only dreamed of the poetic side of love,
these bestial desires were revolting and hateful. She was angry with
Gilberte, not for having robbed her of her husband, but for having
bespattered herself with this filth. The comtesse was not of the same
class as the peasants, who could not resist their brutal desires; then
how could she have fallen into the same abomination?

The very day that her parents were to arrive, Julien increased his
wife's disgust by telling her laughingly, as though it were something
quite natural and very funny, that the baker having heard a noise in his
oven the day before, which was not baking day, had gone to see what it
was, and instead of finding the stray cat he expected to see, had
surprised his wife, "who was certainly not putting bread into the oven."
"The baker closed the mouth of the oven," went on Julien, "and they
would have been suffocated if the baker's little boy, who had seen his
mother go into the oven with the blacksmith, had not told the neighbors
what was going on." He laughed as he added, "That will give a nice
flavor to the bread. It is just like a tale of La Fontaine's."

For some time after that Jeanne could not touch bread.

When the post-chaise drew up before the door with the baron's smiling
face looking out of the window, Jeanne felt fonder of her parents and
more pleased to see them than she had ever been before; but when she saw
her mother she was overcome with surprise and grief. The baroness looked
ten years older than when she had left Les Peuples six months before.
Her huge, flabby cheeks were suffused with blood, her eyes had a glazed
look, and she could not move a step unless she was supported on either
side; she drew her breath with so much difficulty that only to hear her
made everyone around her draw theirs painfully also.

The baron, who had lived with her and seen her every day, had not
noticed the gradual change in his wife, and if she had complained or
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