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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Perspective, from 19th Century France,
By John P. Jones III (Albuquerque, NM, USA) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE) (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: A Woman's Life (Paperback)
Is reading a novel set in the first half of 19th Century France relevant today? Maupassant's novel is set in Normandy, in a manor house with the surrounding countryside. It is a political and social microclimate. Paris is a very long way away, and the larger events of France, as it emerges from the turmoil of the Revolution and the Napoleonic period are not related. The novel is primarily a character study of Jeanne, the woman born of the manor, and a coterie of friends and relatives, who disappoint her, and ultimately lead her to ruin.
Philandering, political or otherwise, is not a monopoly of the United States, in the early 21st Century. It was the accepted norm of the French countryside, and even the prudent priests looked the other way. Jeanne is truly disillusioned when she realizes that even her own mother was guilty of it. Religious fanaticism? Maupassant draws a telling portrait of a priest who believes he truly is God's personal agent on earth, and manages to manipulate particularly the women in a most vindictive manner. One of the priest's classic lines, as relevant today as when it was written: "In order to be powerful and respected, we must act together. If the church and the mansion go hand in hand, the cottage will fear us and obey." A hierarchical society? As the gap between rich and poor continues to increase in the United States, accompanied by the propaganda that this is the natural course of "free markets," it's important to reflect on a society that still had serious economic disparities even after its Revolution. With the hype and sometimes fraud that accompanies numerous "best sellers" pushed the publishing industry today, particularly "memoirs," for me it proved much more beneficial to enjoy the study of a society and its characters that was written a century and a half ago. Maupassant clearly has insights into "Man's Fate," particularly when it is a woman's.
11 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The masterpiece of the naturalistic literature,
By M. OKAZAKI (Kochi, JAPAN) - See all my reviews
This review is from: A Woman's Life (Paperback)
The first time I read this novel, I thought that the naturalism was bored, because there was no elan vital like Stendhal's novels. Twenty years later, I have now re-estimated it. It has no fantasy and little romance, but some important reality.This is a story of a woman living as a falling aristocratic landowner in some French country. It may be supposed that if readers don't have the exotics against the past French country, they cannot find any significance of this novel. It is, however, not the case. While talking a woman or looking at her gestures, suddenly I have remembered some plots of this novel to find their resemblance. At the same time I have begun to wonder if she is strongly responsible and doesn't believe in love and give up almost all trivial pleasures. The boredom of the naturalism at my adolescence has gradually turned out its applause, as I have experienced much. This novel doesn't make readers happy, but widens their ability to understand women, in particular, rural and naive girls. Although the importance of this novel is hard to see, it should be evaluated fairly.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Novel of Haute Normandie,
This review is from: A Woman's Life (Paperback)
What are the secrets, most carefully concealed, of those with whom we share a life? What are the limits and depths of our ignorance and naiveté? When the final twilight falls and disdains to tarry, what will be left to see us through? Upon what can we pour out the last of our days? These are but a few of the cavernous questions which yawn ahead with a reading of this book. The heroine is likeable to a fault, yet even as we like her--and we do so to the end--we begin to wonder if she's really quite all there. Can she have done nothing to prevent some of the horrors which assail? Is she the innocent victim of those who decide her fate and have made her what she is? Perhaps, strange to say, the most endearing of characters in this novel is the family estate where most of the action occurs. Perched upon a cliff near Yport, in the Pays de Caux of Haute Normandie, it gazes out over the sea in fair weather and foul, loved by its inhabitants, yet much disserviced in the end. Still, it knows tenacity and moderation and its place. If only those it shelters could take a lesson from its lines, from its silent sense of measure, from its order and repose.
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