Boule de Suif | The French Decadence

In the following essay, Barry argues that Maupassant’s stories contain the ‘‘suffocating atmosphere and cold analysis’’ of Zola’s school of writing but also ‘‘humour, pathos, strong characterdrawing, and the most deceptive air, not merely of Realism but of real life.’’

All that is revolting in [Zola’s ‘physiological school’]—its suffocating atmosphere and cold analysis, —might be illustrated from ‘Boule de Suif.’ But there was something more in it than Zolaesque brutality, or the tedious yet impressive collocation of details with which Flaubert’s name is inseparably associated. There was humour, pathos, strong character-drawing, and the most deceptive air, not merely of Realism but of real life. . . . ‘Boule de Suif,’ who gives her name, or rather her nickname, to the story, —how can we praise her sufficiently? Describe her,...

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