The Best Short Stories of Guy de Maupassant

Guy de Maupassant has oft been declared the master of the short story. I personally think that honour belongs to William Trevor, but I'm not going to quibble about that right now.

As it wasn't so much his short story ability that attracted me at this point, but more his membership of the literary naturalism club. A club that included the likes of (the founder) Emile Zola and Thomas Hardy - two of my favourite authors.

Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant was born on the 5th August 1850 and died at the age of 42 on the 6th July 1893. Most of his 300 short stories (and six novels) were set during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870/71 - an era I'm not very familiar with, but am slowly learning about thanks to Zola.

I find it very easy to get mixed up by all the wars happening in Europe during this century - who started what and why. I'm also prone to getting my Napoleon's and French Republic's mixed up. Given that the imbalance of power in Europe, that this war created, is often cited as one of the causes of WWI, I feel that I should understand it better. 

The shock of France's quick defeat as well as the hardship and hunger suffered by the population during the Prussian blockade, created a ongoing desire for revenge and right-wing politics in France.

Charles Édouard Armand-Dumaresq - Le Général Faidherbe au combat de Biefviller-lès-Bapaume, 3 Janvier 1871

Boule de Suif (or Dumpling or Ball of Fat), Deux Amis (Two Friends) and La Maison Tellier (Madame Tellier's Establishment) are the first three stories in my Best Of. They all focus on the resistance of the French population to the German occupation.

In Boule de Suif we have a cast of characters, who would never normally interact with each other in 'real life', brought together in a diligence (I love that word - after reading about the care and attention that the hostler took to hitch his horses to the coach, I wonder if that is that where the phrase 'due diligence' comes from).

The journey is slow and uncomfortable. Each character represents a particular stereotype of rural French society. From Monsieur and Madame Loiseau (wholesale wine merchants) who sit 'right at the back, in the best seats of all' to Cornudet, 'the democrat, the terror of all conservative people'. 

The coach also contains four more people who 'represent Society - the strong, established society of good people with religion and principle', two nuns 'fingering their long rosaries and murmuring paternosters and aves' and last, but certainly not least, Elisabeth Rousset, or Boule de suif, 'who belonged to the courtesan class'.

To my mind, Elisabeth is the true hero of this story. Her generosity and kindness are not only not repaid by her so called 'betters', but she shows up their utter lack of principle and total hypocrisy. Despite their superior views on her profession, they show themselves up to be little more than pimps.

Two Friends is set in Paris during the siege. Monsieur Morissot and Monsieur Sauvage represent two different political views - Imperialism and Republicanism 'under a king we have foreign wars; under a republic we have civil war'. Whilst out walking and fishing they both lament the futility of war and agree on one thing 'that they would never be free'. 

Once again de Maupassant presents us with brave, patriotic Frenchmen as opposed to the brutal, dull-witted German soldiers who confront them.

La Maison Tellier has another prostitute as protagonist. The bawdy nature of her working life is contrasted with the religious event that her brother invites her to in a sleepy rural village.

It's a bit of an odd story with a whole houseful of ladies of the night being transported to a child's first communion. I wasn't quite sure what the point of it was, except, perhaps, as a bit of fun. Madame Tellier herself, observes towards the end, 'everything has its right time, and we cannot always be enjoying ourselves'.

La Maison Tellier. Illustrations d'Edgar Degas. Paris: Ambroise Vollard, 1933

De Maupassant's realism is all about the showing. His descriptions of the environment and the people are just lovely. Class and political ideology feature in all of his stories with hypocrisy often being the common ground. The three stories I've read so far have a fairly clear point, counterpoint and final conflict/resolution. However, working out why someone did what they did, is entirely up to the reader, which is exactly what de Maupassant wanted.

For most of his career he was wary of looking too deeply into characters’ motivations. “The man who goes in for pure psychology can only substitute himself for all his characters,” Maupassant wrote, “for it is impossible for him to change his own organs, which are the only intermediaries between the outside world and ourselves.” Better, he thought, to report what people do and say, and say to themselves, than to ask what makes them tick.                              (Lorin Stein, 2010)

I'm looking forward to meandering my way through the final fourteen stories in this collection. But for now, I'm thrilled that I snuck these three stories in, just in time, for my Paris in July challenge with Tamara @Thyme for Tea. As well as my Deal Me In Short Story challenge with Jay @Bibliophilopolis -  theses three stories see me finally move onto the next suit of cards in my euchre pack. Slow and steady, slow and steady!

The Fortune of the Rougons by Emile Zola

I cannot thank Fanda @Classiclit enough for once again hosting #Zoladdiction2017 - one of my favourite readalongs each year!

I used this year's readalong to go back to the very beginning of the Rougon-Macquart series, a little worried that reading out of order might muck up the flow of the stories. However, reading part of Brian Nelson's Introduction before beginning, set my mind at ease,

the very nature of The Fortune of the Rougons as the founding text of the Rougon-Macquart series means that a knowledge of the later novels will make it all the more rewarding to return to the 'origins'.

I say 'part of' the Introduction, as Nelson warned that 'readers who do not wish to learn details of the plot will prefer to read the Introduction as an Afterword'. Because I knew very little about the Second Empire era of French history, I read the Introduction carefully for the historical notes, leaving the plot discussion for later.

Zola's aim was to show one family and it's various members through the time of the Second Empire. 'though they may seem at first glance totally dissimilar from each other, (they) are, as analysis shows, linked together in the most profound way. Heredity, like gravity, has its laws.' (Preface)

I can now never know what it would be like to read this origin story without some knowledge of the later novels, but exactly as Nelson suggested, I found it extremely gratifying to see where the unforgettable Nana and Etienne had sprung from.

My Oxford World Classic edition of The Fortune of the Rougons has a fabulous family tree at the front which I referred to often. Nelson also listed which characters appear in which book. I was fascinated to see that Anna (Nana) and Etienne (Germinal) were half brother and sister and that their grandfather was the drunken, brutish, undisciplined Antoine. Their mother was the beaten and abused daughter, Gervaise (L'Assommoir) who had her first baby at fourteen. She also took to the bottle.

However the story actually begins with a potted tour of the fictional town of Plassans (which was based on Zola's Provençal childhood home of Aix). This area of rural France maintained the strongest republican resistance against Louis-Napoleon's 1851 coup.

Young Silvère (cousin to Gervaise) is in love with the even younger Miette. Their love is platonic and idyllic in nature while their passions are fired up in defence of the Republic. They get caught up in the insurgent's march for liberty and head off together singing the Marseillaise.

The middle chapters of the book then detail the family history of the Rougon's - starting with the mad matriarch - the sensual, scandalous Adélaïde. Zola eventually weaves his way through the various branches of the Rougon's and Macquart's, back to modern times and the role each member plays in the birth of the Second Empire.

He (Pascal) pondered over the growth of the family, with its different branches springing from one parent stock, whose sap carried the same seeds to the furthest twigs, which bent in different directions according to the ambient sunshine or shade. For a moment he thought he could see, in a flash, the future of the Rougon-Macquart family, a pack of wild, satiated appetites in the midst of a blaze of gold and blood.

This includes a hauntingly beautiful chapter about what befalls our two young idealistic lovers, Silvère and Miette.

If you have yet to embark on your own Zoladdiction journey, I urge you to get started as soon as possible. Although I didn't start with The Fortune of the Rougons, I wish I had, purely for the pleasure of starting where it all began.

Zola's writing is quite raw and angry compared to the more measured tones that I found in Nana and Germinal, but right from this beginning, he impresses with his descriptive power, his attention to all the sordid details and his commitment to the naturalist form of story telling.

Now I just have to decide whether I read the rest of the Rougon-Macquart series in chronological order, or in Zola's recommended reading order!

#Zoladdiction2017

My earlier reviews for Nana and Germinal.

Fanda's review of The Fortune of the Rougons is here (and her dedicated Zola blog here).

O @Behold the Stars has her review here.

The Books of Emile Zola website has a review written by Lisa @ANZlitlovers here.

The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett

Before Thomas Thwaites dreamed up the idea of being a GoatMan and before Peter Wohlleben communed with the trees in Germany, Frances Hodgson Burnett gave us the original back to nature, talk with the animals, boy child, Dickon.

Dickon is a kindred spirit to all the creatures that live on the moors. He mothers orphaned lambs and squirrels, talks to the robins and is followed around by a fox cub. He grows the best herbs and vegetables to feed his large family and he has the sunniest, most positive disposition of any human I've ever known!

He is too good to be true.

Mary and Colin are not.

Two more self-indulged, self-involved, selfish children you will not find anywhere.

The Magic of the garden and Dickon's influence changes all that though.

And there you have The Secret Garden in a nutshell.

My lovely Penguin Threads edition was designed by Jillian Tamaki. It's hand-stitched, then sculpt-embossed - front and back - to create a gorgeous tactile, aesthetically pleasing cover. I confess, the cover, ultimately, had more lasting appeal than the story.

The Secret Garden is one of those books I was sure that I had read as a child, but as the years went by I felt less and less certain about this. I knew what the book was about in general, but it didn't feel familiar or known.

Now that I have really and truly read it, I'm pretty sure that this was my first time.

The Indian section at the start and the finding of the garden were vaguely familiar, but I suspect I gave up on the book as a kid at this point. As an adult I loved the descriptions of the moors and the garden coming to life after winter, but as a kid I would have got bogged down by the exuberant and somewhat excessive garden love.

The preachy part of Burnett's voice, I could push into the background as an adult, but as a child, her obvious attempts to tell me how to be a good child got up my nose!

My thoughts and feelings about this book are more ambiguous now.

As an adult I could appreciate Burnett's use of perspective and how this led to her character's developing self-awareness and personal growth.

I thoroughly enjoyed the early sections that read like a homesick homage to English weather and seasons. I loved how she explored the healing nature of nature. I loved learning about 'wuthering' and the Yorkshire moors (a lovely nod to the Bronte's, I thought). The smells and textures and sounds of the moors were described beautifully - she made me want to go a wandering across the heather on the misty morn.

I was pleased to see an unlovely, unlikable, spoilt child as protagonist.

I felt uncomfortable with the racist attitudes towards the Indians, but could accept them as being of their times, reflecting the attitudes and assumptions of Victorian England. I felt a little weird about the miraculous cure of Colin, but of course, the only real malady he suffered from was hypochondria.

Mrs Sowerby, Dickon's mother, was a lovely, warm, generous character, but she also felt too good to be true most of the time. A mother of 12, living on the edge of the Yorkshire moors in grinding poverty being so cheerful and helpful and wholesome? Really?

I very definitely felt that the heavy handed 'magical' parable that the ending morphed into was evangelical and prissy. The only 'magic' involved in this story though, is the magic of mother nature doing her thing in the garden and some children discovering that keeping busy and active is better for you than sitting around bemoaning your aches and pains and only thinking about yourself. I'm not sure how this book has ended up with a magical realism tag in wikipedia.

I have since found out that Burnett embraced the tenets of Christian Science which believes that illness is an illusion that can only be cured by prayers. She also dabbled in the occult after the death of her son, Lionel. We can read The Secret Garden as being a tribute to Lionel and as a way for her to work through her depression and grief.

This explains the strong element of 'healing' via nature and 'beautiful thought', as Burnett called it, throughout the book.

I'm the first to acknowledge that being in nature and thinking positive thoughts are beneficial to one's health and well-being. A lovely story could have been crafted with this idea in mind. Colin's smug Magic lectures at the end could have happily been left out.

How did you find The Secret Garden when you reread as an adult?

Germinal by Émile Zola

Mangoes and Cherry Blossoms is now hosting a new meme for readers of the classics called The Classics Salon. Each week she will pose a question for you to answer about the classic you are currently reading.

Thanks to my recent holiday, I'm running two weeks behind, so this is my catch up post.
The first question asked us about our first impressions.

I'm currently reading Germinal for Zoladdiction month.

I actually started Germinal two years ago. But I was reading it on my epad and it was a struggle. Not the story - the epad. It turns out that I seriously dislike reading a book on a screen. So I left Étienne languishing halfway down a mine for over a year.  

Firstly, Germinal is not a comfort read.

Zola's exploration of life in a mining village in France is bleak, cold, grim and definitely uncomfortable. My first impressions of Germinal have been very physical in nature.

Zola's descriptions of working in the mines made me squirm as the claustrophobic, cramped nature of their work bore down on me. I could almost feel the jagged edges edges pressing into my spine, the cold seeping into my bones, the muscle cramps and aches from repetitive work in unnatural poses.

The crowded, bleak existence of the miner's home lives also affected me strongly - instilling a sense of despair & helplessness. I felt how unfair it was to live like that and how difficult it was going to be to try and change anything.

To find love and human kindness amongst this grimness almost seemed like sacrilege. 

The acceptance of ones lot; to work in mean, squalid conditions as being better than to not work at all. That living and sleeping with 10 others in a two room hovel was the best you could expect from life; all hard truths for the reader to accept.

But despite all of this the young girls still dreamed of love. 

They believed that love & marriage would somehow be different for them because they loved more deeply, passionately & wisely than their mothers did!

Which leads me to Mangoes second Classics Salon question - which character do you relate to?

Young Catherine steals my heart so far. 

Her faith and trust that somehow everything will work out better for her...even as she gets drawn into a sexual relationship she doesn't really want because she has no power to avoid it.

Zola captures the innocence & unswerving self-belief of youth beautifully. Catherine's headlong rush into adult behaviours before having any real understanding of what she's getting herself into or the self-awareness to make good choices, is heartbreakingly familiar.