A grandmother's advice

The advice of a grandmother (French: Les Conseils d'une Grand mère ) is a novella by Guy de Maupassant . It first appeared on September 13, 1880 in Le Gil Blas .

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In a castle drawing room, a grandmother and her granddaughter sit chatting at the open window. The young girl reads newspaper reports, the content of which she tells her grandmother. One account is of a woman who burned the eyes of her husband's lover with acid and was found not guilty in the subsequent trial. Another report is about a woman who shot her unfaithful lover. He became a cripple as a result of the act. In this case too, the court acquitted the perpetrator. Both episodes find completely opposite ratings with grandmother and granddaughter. While the young girl approves of the deeds in principle, the old woman condemns them as barbaric. The granddaughter sees something sacred in marriage and believes that sincere love can only be felt once in a lifetime. The old woman sees marriage as a community of convenience for the continued existence of human society. In her opinion, sacred is love, not marriage. The two women cannot find a consensus. The novella ends with a warning from the grandmother, who fears that the granddaughter will soon be very unhappy.