A Woman's Life

Author:

Henri Rene Albert Guy de Maupassant grew up in a well-off family living in Etretat in Normandy. Odd for the times and their socioeconomic status, his mother left his father due to abuse and the three of them, Maupassant, his brother, and his mother, lived well on their own. Maupassant did well in school and moved to Paris during the Franco-Russian war in 1870. He hung out with other writers, edited newspapers, and started writing plays, short stories, and novels. He became very successful and traveled often, usually coming home from each trip with a new piece. He and a handful of other well-known writers of the time took an instant dislike to the establishment of the Eiffel Tower and even submitted a letter of outrage to the Minister of Public Works in 1887. In 1892, suffering from the effects of syphilis, Maupassant tried to commit suicide and was admitted to an asylum where he died in 1893. He is buried in the well-known cemetery of Montparnasse in Paris.

Learn More about Henri Maupassant

Three words to describe this read:

Reflective- this book really makes Jeanne’s life feel like it is flying by which invites the reader to consider their own. You can’t help but pity her and want better for yourself.

Disillusioned- overall, it feels like this is a story of a girl who grows up and realizes that she won’t get everything that she ever wanted and things aren’t as great as they seem. If I were able to form the word weltschmerz as an adjective, it would have been one of the three words to describe this book. Weltschmerz combines the German words welt, meaning world, and schmerz, meaning pain, to form a word that means world-weariness; the feeling you get when you are thinking about all the bad things in life and accepting them as necessary. Think of it as sentimental pessimism.

Charming- Maupassant did a great job in describing the setting of the story, a mansion near a small village in Normandy by the sea, and the simple life of the main character. I love the city, but it made me want to retreat to a picturesque, seaside country for the summer and lay under a tree.

Quote:

“You see, life is never as good or as bad as one thinks.”

With this being the last line of the book, I can’t help but think that it is the main moral of the story. Regardless of good or bad times, life goes on and that seems to be what Maupassant wanted the reader to take away from Jeanne’s story.

I also couldn't help but think that Taylor Swift's song "Nothing New" is a really great representation of the disillusionment that the main character faced throughout the story, especially the lyrics,

"How can a person know everything at 18 and nothing at 22?"