A Woman's Life (Classics) [Paperback]

This novella, coming in at just over 200 pages, tells the story of the life of Jeanne, a young woman who leaves her convent education naive, aspirational and full of romantic notions, only to have the stuffing knocked out of her over the course of a gruelling, miserable life, subject to crushing disappointments and cruelty inflicted by the people who should love her best.

Despite this unhappy subject matter, the book is rather beautiful. It is quite modern in tone, well written, and pacy. It is lyrical at times in its descriptions of the Normandy of the 19th Century, and really evocative of a long gone way of life, in much the same way as the prose of Thomas Hardy. The melodramatic episodes involving Jeanne's husband and his affairs with a neighbours wife are rather over the top, but they are symptomatic of the time they were written, and the rest of the book is melancholy, elegaic and quite lovely.

Is reading a novel set in the first half of 19th Century France relevant today? Maupassant's novel is set in Normandy, in a manor house with the surrounding countryside. It is a political and social microclimate. Paris is a very long way away, and the larger events of France, as it emerges from the turmoil of the Revolution and the Napoleonic period are not related. The novel is primarily a character study of Jeanne, the woman born of the manor, and a coterie of friends and relatives, who disappoint her, and ultimately lead her to ruin.

Philandering, political or otherwise, is not a monopoly of the United States, in the early 21st Century. It was the accepted norm of the French countryside, and even the prudent priests looked the other way. Jeanne is truly disillusioned when she realizes that even her own mother was guilty of it. Religious fanaticism? Maupassant draws a telling portrait of a priest who believes he truly is God's personal agent on earth, and manages to manipulate particularly the women in a most vindictive manner. One of the priest's classic lines, as relevant today as when it was written: "In order to be powerful and respected, we must act together. If the church and the mansion go hand in hand, the cottage will fear us and obey." A hierarchical society? As the gap between rich and poor continues to increase in the United States, accompanied by the propaganda that this is the natural course of "free markets," it's important to reflect on a society that still had serious economic disparities even after its Revolution.

With the hype and sometimes fraud that accompanies numerous "best sellers" pushed the publishing industry today, particularly "memoirs," for me it proved much more beneficial to enjoy the study of a society and its characters that was written a century and a half ago. Maupassant clearly has insights into "Man's Fate," particularly when it is a woman's.

(Note: Review first published at Amazon, USA, on April 10, 2008)

Who would have thought that such a little book (just 202 pages) could incite so many different emotions (on the part of the reader as well as the characters). One minutes I was swooning over landscape and seascape and melting in Maupassants prose, and the next I was wanting to ring the protagonists neck!

The book starts with a young Jeanne who is on her last ever day at the convent school in 1819 and who is desperate to taste freedom and start her life after being cooped up for so long, only being able to stare out of windows and dream what her life will be like when she is finally out in the world. Jeanne's daydreams are filled with longing and a restless spirit that is aching to see far away lands and nature and finally breathe after all these years at school. Jeanne's parents (a Baron and Baroness) pick her up on her last day and drive her to Poplars which is to become her home by the sea. Maupassants narrative is so beautiful in parts that I longed to be there too; to experience what Jeanne was experiencing.

"First of all facing her was a broad lawn as yellow as butter under the night sky. Two tall trees rose up like steeples in front of the hous, a plane to the north and a linden to the south."

"Jeanne gazed at the broad surface of the sea, which looked like watered silk, sleeping peacefully under the stars. In the quiet of the sunless sky all the scents of the earth rose up into the air. A jessamine climbing round the downstairs windows gave a penetrating scent, which mingled with the fainter smell of the young leaves. Gentle gusts of wind were blowing, laden with the sharp tang of the salt and the heavy sticky reek of seaweed. At first the girl was happy just breathing the night air; the peace of the countryside had the calming effect of a cool bath."

Jeanne's first few months are spent getting to know her new surroundings and enjoying her freedom and soon she is introduced to a young man by the name of Julien who is a count and after a breif and all-consuming romance they marry. Jeanne starts to pick up clues that all is not what it seemed as early as the wedding night when he forces himself on his new bride but desperately wanting to believe that she has married the right man and stay happy she puts it to one side. I feel the need to note here (for amusements sake) that Julien calls his wifes breasts Mr Sleeper-out and Mr Kiss-me-quick and certain other part of her womanly anatomy The road to Damascus. Fortunatley these aren't mentioned more than once.

The story is very much about the downward spiral of one woman's life. We watch Jeanne's hopes and desires and dreams turn into boredom and frustration and self-pity.

"Suddenly she realised that she had nothing to do and never would have anything."

"But now the magic reality of those first days was about to become the every day reality, which closed the door on those hopes and delightful enigmas of the unknown."

"Habit spread over her life like a layer of resignation like the chalky deposit left on the ground by certain kinds of of water."

"Sometimes she would spend the whole afternoon sitting looking at the sea; sometimes she went down to Yport through the wood, repeating the walks of old days which she could not forget. What a long time it was since she had wondered through the countryside as a young girl intoxicated with dreams!"

Maupassant has such a way with words that he drew me into Jeanne's world and I felt the same longing she felt. It took me back to days when I had the world at my feet too and thought I could do anything, had no cares in the world - OK so my carefree days were a little different to Jeanne's as in rather than floating round some big mansion by the sea, it was made up of nights out on the town, no mortgage to pay and a feeling of being able accountable to nobody except myself (ahh, to be so naive once more!). I do sometimes wonder how I would have coped in those days - one part of me thinks how lovely to do nothing all day other than read my books and take little walks round the garden with my parasol in hand, and the other part thinks but what would happen when you got bored of that? A woman didn't have a choice then. In those particular circles they were there to look pretty and be seen but not so much heard. How dull!

Despite my sympathy towards Jeanne, not just because of her longing for something else but also because of her brutish husband and selfish son, I still found myself wanting to grab her shoulders and give her a good shake! My God, this woman can make a fuss. Her level of self-pity knows no bounds - we have hysterics, weeping, falling on someones breast and weeping, collapsing on a chair and weeping, we have fainting, panic attacks and wailing. There were times when I wanted to yell "get a grip, love!" at the pages.

"She continually repeated: `I have no luck in life.' But Rosalie would retort: `What would you say if you had to earn your living and had to get up at six every morning and go out to work? There are plenty of women who have to do that, and when they are too old to work, they starve to death.'"

Quite!

This book, I believe, should have been translated as One Woman's Life rather than A Woman's Life as it is very much about Jeanne and her personal story.

I read quite a few Maupassant books when I was at school (we studied Boule de Suife and some of his other shorter stories) but it's far too long since I have read anything else of his. I'm glad I did - it reminded me why I liked him. Recommended.