One life
A life ( Une vie ) is a French novel by Guy de Maupassant . The book was published in Germany in 1894 under this title, based on the original Une vie ou L'Humble Vérité ("A Life" or "The Simple Truth") from 1883.
publication
A life , Guy de Maupassant's first novel, was first published in 1883 as a serial in the French magazine Gil Blas and later in the same year as a separate book under the title L'Humble Vérité ("The simple truth"). The German first edition was published in a translation by Walter Vollmann under the title Ein Leben 1894 in Frankfurt an der Oder by the publishing house Hugo Andres & Co. The novel was later published in the GDR (1952) under the title "Ein Menschenleben". The novel describes the life of "a woman from the awakening of her heart to her death".
content
action
Jeanne, the daughter of Baron Simon-Jacques and Baroness Adélaïde, is a young noblewoman who left the monastery at the age of 17 to lead a "real life". She moves out of her parents' house to live with her future husband Julien de Lamare in a castle bequeathed to her by her parents. She met him a few days after leaving the monastery. He is a deeply stingy and selfish person, which Jeanne only becomes aware of after the marriage. He cheats on her with Rosalie, her maid, and later with a neighbor named Gilberte de Fourville. Jeanne gives birth to Paul, her first child, as a premature baby. It turns out to be sickly. Your second child is stillborn. On the same day, Julien is murdered by the neighbor de Fourville. Paul went to boarding school in Le Havre when he was 15, although his family thought little of his aspirations at school. After the death of the baron, the baroness and the aunt Lison, Jeanne remains alone. But Paul gives her a child that he has from a prostitute.
people
Jeanne Le Perthuis des Vauds : Jeanne, the main character in the novel, is a young girl with blonde hair and blue eyes. After an upbringing that should awaken in her a love of nature, she knows nothing about real life and dreams of the ideal man. She is convinced of the beauty and purity of marriage. Although she believes she has found true love in Julien, she will only get to know the sexual bestiality and hypocrisy of her husband. She dedicates her life to her son, who moves out of home at the age of 15. She stays in touch with him, but misses him very much and suffers from his absence. The character Jeannes is inspired by Laura de Maupassant, Emma Bovary and Madame Aubain ( A Simple Heart ).
Jeanne's parents : Her father is the Baron Simon-Jacques Le Perthuis des Vauds, an admirer of Jean-Jacques Rousseau , anti-clerical and generous, but weak. His love for nature made him a follower of Rousseau. This figure is inspired by Maupassant's paternal and maternal grandparents. Her mother, the Baroness Adélaïde, suffers from cardiac hypertrophy , of which she regularly complains. She secretly fosters memories of an early love affair that made her endure her existence. She often walks the avenue of her country estate.
Julien de Lamare : Jeanne's husband. Both meet shortly after Jeanne's arrival at Les Peuples (this is the name of the baron's imposing family residence, which later becomes the property of the Jeanne / Julien couple). They get married three months later and go on a honeymoon in Corsica . After her return, Jeanne discovers her husband's greed and selfishness. Shortly afterwards, she learns that he impregnated her maid. Jeanne then wants to dismiss her servant, but the count is strictly against it and finds a husband for her. Jeanne becomes pregnant, but her husband quickly becomes a stranger to her and she devotes herself exclusively to her son. Julien, on the other hand, shows little interest in this and turns to a neighbor with whom he has a relationship. Jeanne finds out about it, but does not react. When Julien's lover's husband learns of this relationship through the pastor, he goes crazy with jealousy and kicks the lovers off a rock face to their death. Jeanne, who is now a widow, keeps the secret of how the adulterous couple died to herself. On the day her husband dies, she gives birth to a girl who, however, is stillborn.
Paul : Paul, called by Jeanne "Lison" and the Baron "Poulet", is Jeanne's legitimate child. He lives in his parents' house, Les Peuples, and is very much loved by his mother, grandfather and great aunt. However, he did not get a particularly good education and was only sent to boarding school in Le Havre when he was 15. Two years later he ran away from school without being heard from. He travels to London and Paris in search of a business that could make him rich. Unfortunately, he gets into debt and has no choice but to ask his mother for large sums of money. She has to sell parts of her estate to help the son she has not seen for many years. Paul meets a girl from the bad quarters of Paris whom he marries shortly before her death in order to save their child, who will be born shortly before. Despite the bad qualities of her son, Jeanne thinks of him constantly. She visits his lover - a Parisian prostitute - whom she regards as a rival. In the last chapter of the novel, however, she takes the child into her care.
Rosalie : Rosalie is the family servant for most of the novel. As a child, she was Jeanne's milk sister and remains by her side as an adult, although she is to blame for Jeanne's misfortune. She moves out of the family residence after Julien makes her pregnant, but returns 24 years later to help her milk sister when she gets into trouble about her son.
subjects
Adultery, money, crime, raising girls, marriage, religion, children, family, women, malice, love and death are the main themes of this Maupassant's novel. At the same time, a life depicts various milieus, including the church. Using the figures of the two priests Picot and Tolbiac in particular, Maupassant describes two different types of priests: Picot is a good-natured priest who has given up giving his parishioners, especially young women, condemned sermons about the various aspects of life, namely sexuality. He accepts that they make a pilgrimage to what he calls Notre-Dame du Gros-Ventre (“Our Lady of the Big Belly”), because he expects that his parish will expand. This figure can be seen either as a perfect illustration of Christian forgiveness or, on the contrary, as a person who, out of fear or hypocrisy, refrains from fighting “sin” in order not to deter believers. The priest Tolbiac, on the other hand, fanatical and exalted, is diametrically opposed to this figure. In a very violent scene, he kicks a bitch with his foot when she is giving birth to puppies because he cannot bear the gaze of the children who are following this spectacle with the utmost innocence. During the service, he is not afraid to name the young people who have committed a sin. He informs betrayed spouses about their partners' adultery without considering the possible consequences. Because of his cruelty and intolerance, he is hated by the whole community. Through these opposing figures, Pastor Picot, a happy, rural, tolerant, talkative, righteous, but also somewhat cowardly person, on the one hand and the extremely strict Pastor Tolbiac on the other, he expresses his anti-clericalism and his opinion about the Church and some of its attitudes.
Sources of inspiration
The sources of inspiration were Honoré de Balzac : The woman of thirty , Gustave Flaubert : Madame Bovary , Flaubert: The education of the feelings / of the heart , Edmond and Jules de Goncourt : Madame Gervaise , and Arthur Schopenhauer .
Film adaptations
- 1947: Une vie , Finland, Toivo J. Särkkä
- 1958: A Woman's Life , France / Italy, Alexandre Astruc (86 minutes)
- 2004: Une vie , French television film, Élisabeth Rappeneau (90 minutes) with Barbara Schulz as Jeanne
- 2016: A Life , French feature film (119 minutes)
Web links
- Audiobook Une Vie, full French version (French)
- In the footsteps of Maupassant. Les Peuples Castle (French)
Individual evidence
- ^ Gil Blas, February 21, 1883.