Rose by Guy de Maupassant, 1883
The magic trick:
A lark of a story
So for day two of our weekend double, we follow yesterday’s amusement, “An Uncomfortable Bed,” with an example of Maupassant’s deeper fiction. “Rose” is a startlingly complex and subtle story about two women talking about love during a flower festival in Cannes. What do they talk about when they talk about love? Well, the chat winds up focusing on an anecdote of one of the woman’s past. And, actually, on the surface it seems to be a similarly humorous tale like yesterday’s prank tale from Maupassant.
Even a moment’s further consideration, though, reveals this story to be much messier and layered than a simple punch line. There are many reasons for that effect, but I’ll just mention the ending. Margot finishes telling her story, and it’s the other woman – Simone’s reaction that closes the story. She stares straight ahead “with that sphinx-like smile while women sometimes have.”
This is supremely nuanced stuff. No hand-holding here for the reader. The story Margot shares is almost comically outsized in its dimensions. It’s kind of a crazy thing that has happened to her. But the women react in ways that are very, very subtle and that provoke many different ideas and interpretations.
And that’s quite a trick on Maupassant’s part.
The selection:
Mlle Marguerite scarcely smiled as she replied:
“I can assure you it is very amusing to be loved by a domestic. This has happened to me two or three times. They roll their eyes so queerly that one is dying to laugh.
Naturally, the more one is loved, the more severe she becomes, since otherwise, one puts herself in the way of being made ridiculous for some very slight cause, if anyone happened to observe it.”
Mlle Simone listened, her look fixed straight before her; then she declared:
“No, decidedly, the heart of my valet at my feet would not appear to me sufficient.
But tell me how you perceived that you were loved.”
“I perceived it in them as I do in other men; they become so stupid!”
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