A Woman's Life Page #6

"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.

								

something unique, to which no one else had any right. The baron and
Jeanne said "my wife's" or "mamma's hypertrophy" in the same way as they
would have spoken of her dress or her umbrella.

She had been very pretty when she was young, and as slender as a reed.
After flirting with the officers of all the regiments of the Empire, she
had read Corinne, which had made her cry, and, in a certain measure,
altered her character.

As her waist got bigger her mind became more and more poetical, and
when, through her size, she had to remain nearly all day in her
armchair, she dreamed of love adventures, of which she was always the
heroine; always thinking of the sort she liked best, like a hand-organ
continually repeating the same air. The languishing romances, where they
talk about captives and swallows, always made her cry; and she even
liked some of Béranger's coarse verses, because of the grief they
expressed. She would sit motionless for hours, lost in thought, and she
was very fond of Les Peuples, because it served as a scene for her
dreams, the surrounding woods, the sea, and the waste land reminding her
of Sir Walter Scott's books, which she had lately been reading.

On rainy days she stayed in her room looking over what she called her
"relics." They were all her old letters; those from her father and
mother, the baron's when she was engaged to him, and some others
besides. She kept them in a mahogany escritoire with copper sphinxes at
the corners, and she always used a particular tone when she said:
"Rosalie, bring me my souvenir-drawer."

The maid would open the escritoire, take out the drawer, and place it on
a chair beside her mistress, who slowly read the letters one by one,
occasionally letting fall a tear.

Jeanne sometimes took Rosalie's place and accompanied her mother's
walks, and listened to her reminiscences of childhood. The young girl
recognized herself in these tales, and was astonished to find that her
mother's thoughts and hopes had been the same as hers; for every one
imagines that he is the first to experience those feelings which made
the hearts of our first parents beat quicker, and which will continue to
exist in human hearts till the end of time.

These tales, often interrupted for several seconds by the baroness's
want of breath, were told as slowly as she walked, and Jeanne let her
thoughts run on to the happy future, without waiting to hear the end of
her mother's anecdotes.

One afternoon, as they were resting on the seat at the bottom of the
walk, they saw a fat priest coming towards them from the other end of
the avenue. He bowed, put on a smiling look, bowed again when he was
about three feet off, and cried:

"Well, Madame la baronne, and how are we to-day?"

He was the curé of the parish.

The baroness, born in a philosophical century and brought up in
revolutionary times by a father who did not believe very much in
anything, did not often go to church, although she liked priests with
the sort of religious instinct that most women have. She had forgotten
all about the Abbé Picot, her curé, and her face colored when she saw
him. She began to make excuses for not having gone to see him, but the
good-natured priest did not seem at all put out. He looked at Jeanne,
complimented her on her good looks, sat down, put his hat on his knees,
and wiped his forehead.

He was a very fat, red-faced man, who perspired very freely. Every
minute he drew an enormous, checked handkerchief from his pocket and
wiped his face and neck; but he had hardly put it back again when fresh
drops appeared on his skin and, falling on his cassock, made the dust on
it into little, round spots. He was a true country-priest, lively and
tolerant, talkative and honest. He told anecdotes, talked about the
peasants, and did not seem to have noticed that his two parishioners had
not been to mass; for the baroness always tried to reconcile her vague
ideas of religion to her indolence, and Jeanne was too happy at having
left the convent, where she had been sickened of holy ceremonies, to
think about going to church.

The baron joined them. His pantheistic religion made him indifferent to
doctrine, and he asked the abbé, whom he knew by sight, to stay to
dinner. The priest had the art of pleasing every one, and thanks to the
unconscious tact that is acquired by the most ordinary men called by
fate to exercise any moral power over their fellow creatures, and the
baroness, attracted perhaps by one of these affinities which draw
similar natures together, paid every attention to him, the fat man's
sanguine face and short breath agreeing with her gasping obesity. By the
time dessert was placed on the table he had begun telling funny stories,
with the laisser-aller of a man who had had a good dinner in
congenial society.

All at once, as though a good idea had just occurred to him, he
exclaimed:

"Oh, I have a new parishioner I must introduce to you, M. le Vicomte de
Lamare."

The baroness, who had all the heraldy of the province at her finger
ends, asked:

"Does he belong to the family of Lamare de l'Eure?"

The priest bowed:

"Yes, madame; he is the son of the Vicomte Jean de Lamare, who died last
year."

Then Madame Adélaïde, who loved the aristocracy above everything, asked
a great many questions, and learnt that the young man had sold the
family château to pay his father's debts, and had come to live on one of
the three farms that he owned at Etouvent.

This property only brought in about five or six thousand livres a year,
but the vicomte was of a foreseeing, economical disposition and meant to
live quietly for two or three years, so that he might save enough to go
into society and marry well, without having to get into debt or mortgage
his farms.

"He is a charming young fellow," added the curé; "and so steady, so
quiet. But he can't find many amusements in the country."

"Bring him to see us, M. l'Abbé," said the baron; "he might like to come
here sometimes." And then the conversation turned to other subjects.

When they went into the drawing-room the priest asked if he might go out
into the garden, as he was used to a little exercise after meals. The
baron went out with him, and they walked backwards and forwards the
whole length of the château, while their two shadows, the one thin, and
the other quite round and looking as though it had a mushroom on its
head, fell sometimes before and sometimes behind them, according as they
walked towards the moon or turned their backs on it. The curé chewed a
sort of cigarette that he had taken from his pocket; he told the baron
why he used it in the plain speech of a countryman:

"It is to help the digestion; my liver is rather sluggish."

Looking at the sky where the bright moon was sailing along, he suddenly
said:

"That is a sight one never gets tired of."
								Rate this book:0.0 / 0 votes