Boule de Suif | Chapter 3: Maupassant’s Women: His Mother and His Heroines
In the following essay excerpt, Wallace argues that Maupassant’s admiration and love for women and disdain for men is a common theme in Maupassant’s works.
I The Growth of a Favoring Prejudice
Maupassant was not showing us a Romantic ‘‘femme fatale’’ when he repeatedly told tales in which the woman gained ascendancy over the man. His admiration for woman grew out of personal contact and observation, not from fear inspired by a superstitious cult. Among the strangely few men who enjoyed Maupassant’s unstinting admiration, most had chosen celibacy and so were relatively safe from acts of weakness that so often characterize a husband’s behavior and which would have lowered them in his esteem. Flaubert, of course, was...
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