Discuss the writing style of Guy de Maupassant.

Ans.

Guy de Maupassant once said, “It is the lives we encounter that make life worth living.” Guy de Maupassant was an acclaimed writer in France in the late nineteenth century, and he is particularly remembered for his depictions of the trails and circumstances found in everyday life.

When Guy de Maupassant was young, he developed a friendship and mentoring relationship with Gustave Flaubert, who had a profound influence on his writing style. In the decade of 1880 to 1890, Guy de Maupassant wrote approximately three hundred short stories, three travelogues, one poetry collection, and six novels.

Guy de Maupassant’s reputation as a writer continued to grow after his death in 1893. Today, countless high school and college students read his short stories and discuss his concise and uncompromising writing style.

Maupassant writing characteristics: Although de Maupassant preferred to identify with the Realist tradition, he is generally classified as a Naturalist. The difference between these designation is slight: both focus on the everyday lives of middle or lower class characters. Naturalism shows a greater emphasis on the inevitable consequences of desperate circumstances on human behaviour and ultimate outcomes.

Guy de Maupassant’s fiction is characterized by realistic accounts of the problems and desperate actions of unfortunate characters, frequently featuring prostitutes and other characters from the margins of polite French society. His interest in seafaring occupations and his experiences in war are often reflected in the settings of his fiction. Fictional characters de Maupassant creates to represent upper class individuals are usually satirical stories of greed and opportunistic behaviour.

The driving force behind his plots tends to be fate, or uncontrollable circumstances that push people to inevitable conclusions.

Examples of Maupassant’s style: Let’s look at some examples of Maupassant’s style in a few of his more known stories.

‘Boule de Suif’: The first piece that gave de Maupassant recognition as a writer was the 1880 short story Boule de Suif, literally translated as ‘Ball of Fat’ but usually titled “Dumpling in English. This story has several of the qualities that made him famous.

The two main characters represent common types in Maupassant’s fiction: prostitutes and soldiers. The title character is a prostitute travelling with a group of more ‘solid citizens’ to escape the Prussian, occupation. A German soldier detains the entire group at an inn, keeping them there until Dumpling agrees to spend a night with him.

The key element of the story is the dynamic of behaviour between Dumpling and the other passengers. These outwardly model, upper-class citizens (and two nuns) change their behaviour toward the woman as it suits there immediate purpose. De Maupassant is satirising the false patriotism and shallow values of French society while showing us that the title character has moral strength and love of country in spite of her lot in life. The plight of the underclass and the effect of circumstances on behaviour is a common theme for Maupassant.

The tone of the third-person narrator is a bit sarcastic concerning all the ‘virtuous’ passenger and the German soldier sympathetic toward Dumpling. There is also an undertone of concern that is especially evident in lines describing the internal thoughts and feelings of Dumpling. For example, “She felt herself swallowed up in the scorn of these virtuous creatures, who had first sacrificed, then rejected her as a thing useless and unclean.”