This is an early work of naturalism, and is a personal rather than a political history. Through the life of one woman, we see life's pitfalls, and the unrelenting pessimism of life itself.

The novel begins as 17 year old Jeanne leaves the convent in which she has been educated to return to the family chateau high on a cliff overlooking the sea in Normandy. Contemplating her future, Jeanne can see no further than meeting the love of her life, marrying him, and living happily ever after. And in fact, within a few months of returning home Jeanne has met and married Julien, the man she thinks is her true love (Ha!). The happily ever after does not happen, however, and Jeanne's life thereafter is one disappointment and tragedy after another.

This seemed to me to be a book very much before its time. The scene of Jeanne's doting parents on her wedding night, with her father having to explain "the facts of life" to Jeanne because her mother was too embarrassed to do so, is both touching and humorous. And the depiction of Jeanne's sexual awakening was more frank than most novels of that day. One warning for sensitive readers: there is one scene of extreme animal cruelty involving a priest and a dog giving birth. It was hard to read, and may have reflected de Maupassant's disdain for the Church.

de Maupassant is known primarily for his short stories, but I've now read three of his novels and enjoyed each one very much. He is a writer into whose works I want to delve more deeply I highly recommend this book.

4 stars ( )

Une vie was Guy de Maupassant's first long-form fiction/novel, and already it shows a great flair for realism and for heartbreaking clarity of vision that at its best rivals his own ideal, Gustave Flaubert. Une vie is a novel which in many respects resembles Madame Bovary, but whereas Emma in that novel at least lived a fairly turbulent and active life and managed to claim a kind of martyrdom for herself in the end, Jeanne in this tale is perhaps a much sadder figure for how one wrong decision sets her on a long train of sadness and despairs which crush her sensitive and sentimental soul under their hammer blows. Rather than flaring out, we see as the ennui and inability to forge an identity for herself separate from that of first her husband and then later her son constrain her world and turn a happy, hopeful young girl into an embittered woman, prematurely aged and utterly resigned to a kind of dark fatalism about her own chances in life. There is a note of hope in the end, a kind of authorial act of mercy which lifts the shadow a little but it's still an overwhelmingly sad tale and one that made me ponder how cruel the world is for dreamers and idealists. Do wish this was a little more psychologically detailed as Jeanne doesn't really develop very much as character and there's only hints with some of the underlying factors motivating her mindset but on the other hand the occasions where it does delve there are really excellent.

Otherwise of note: was surprised by how explicit this got in some of its depictions of sex/eroticism for a novel of its era and not just in an isolated passage here or there either.

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As a French reading experience, this went quite smoothly although still slowish for how detailed the prose becomes. Often lavish description is a big hindrance to me but when it's as well done as it is here I can't say I mind (and the constant implied analogies between the weather/seasons/countryside, always in vivid detail, and the life of our protagonist added a great deal). Still feel like I missed details here and there but there were parts where I felt I was gliding through with great fluency so progress nonetheless. ( )

Some quotes to share:
"One sometimes weeps over one's illusions with as much bitterness as over a death."
"She was dead. They would nail her down in a coffin and bury it--that would be the end; she would never be seen again. Was it possible? How could it be? Would she never have a mother again? This beloved familiar face, seen as soon as she had opened her eyes, loved as soon as she had opened her arms, the outlet for her affection, this unique being, a mother, more important to the heart than all the rest of the world, was gone."
"... he reacted sharply against the Catholic image of a god with middle class ideas, The temper of a Jesuit, and the tyrant's desire for vengeance. In his eyes such a god dwarfed the dimly understood mystery of creation, decreed by Fate, limitless, all-powerful, the creation of Life, light, the Earth, thought, plants, rocks, man, the air, animals, Stars, God, and insect life alike."
"... exasperated her more and more against the dastardly behavior of man, who is the slave of all the beastial practices of the fleshly lusts, which corrupt the heart as well as the body. Human nature itself seemed to her obscene, when she thought of all the filthy secrets of sensuality, the degrading carresses, all the mysterious connections that cannot be broken off, at which she guessed."

What a very sad story. A tale for young women who think they are"in love," get married in haste, and repent at a snail's pace. Jeanne is a young French woman who does just that, only to find out that her"dashing," broke, Noble of a husband is a mujeriego, a tightwad, and just an all-around pendejo. Nevertheless, she conceives a son, who is her sole joy. Not knowing any better (I guess), she spoils him mercilessly, so, of course, he grows up to be an ingrate, thinking the world owes him. The great characterizations are all that brings these French people from the early 19th century to life, and I was very involved in this short work. ( )

A superficially gentle little novel about the life of a naive young girl with a privileged background and indulgent parents, who finds herself having to deal with an unsatisfactory husband and a wayward son, both of whom give her more than what she considers her fair share of unhappiness.

Jeanne's maid and foster-sister, Rosalie, however, is usually on hand to remind her that people who have never had to work for their living don't know what suffering means. Maupassant sneaks in some fairly harsh social criticism and some interesting Normandy local colour, but the overall tone is a kind of romantic pessimism with a lot of weather and some Thomas-Hardy-ish moments of melodrama (watch out for that shepherd's caravan!).

Fun, but probably not Maupassant's finest hour. ( )

Une Vie or A Woman's Life is the second de Maupassant book for me. The author's debut. This is a story of a dream or delusion ruined by reality. Jeanne comes home from schooling in a convent where she has been protected from knowing the world. She comes home with a head full of romantic dreams and castles in the sky. She soon finds herself married and a growing awareness of reality and the hardness of life. The story involves a aristocratic family living off the land but in slow decline which continues through out the story until there is nothing left but a meager life. The dreams of marriage, travel, children are all washed away and all Jeanne has left is a sense of failure. There is some glimmer of hope.

Quotes:
for the first time, she understood that two people can never be in perfect sympathy; they may pass through life side by side, seemingly in perfect union, but neither quite understands the other, and every soul must of necessity be for ever lonely.

selfish carelessness of a man whom the idea of paternity irritates.

she idolized it more, perhaps, because she had been so deceived in her love and disappointed in her hopes.

The story is a grim look at a life and it is pretty darn grim but the author does give us hope in the end. ( )