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ENGL 253 ● Short Story ● de Maupassant “Boule-de-Suif” (NA 1013-40) and Realism “PRE-QUIZ”
Maupassant makes his own points on Realist content/style on pp.1651-1652 (see these). Keeping those comments in
mind, as well as the “Realism” Powerpoint notes, consider the following questions/items and formulate a response
based on the text of Maupassant’s story. We will use these comments to conduct class discussion at our next meeting.
Item 1: What different social groups, social class, or interests do characters represent? How does each make her/his
living?
● Loiseau:
● Carré-Lamadon:
● de Bréville:
● Sisters of Mercy (nuns):
● Cornudet:
● Boule-de-Suif1 (Elizabeth Rousset):
● the Follenvies:
● Prussian soldiers:
● the Prussian Commandant:
Item 2: Besides establishing the general setting, why spend the space from pp.1013 to 1015 describing the retreating
French army? The invading Prussians? The towns? When/where does this material become important later in the story?
Clarification: the English phrase “one of the so-called ‘gay’ sisterhood” (p.1019) can be misleading to 21st-Century readers. That phrase translates
Maupassant’s original French phrase «une de celles appelées galantes»--the French implies “light-hearted, happy, easygoing,” a euphemism for a prostitute.
The English “gay” here is meant in its original sense: happy, carefree. Maupassant does not make Boule de Suif a lesbian. Both euphemisms do, however,
show how 19th-Century societies usually stereotyped sexual prostitution as happy and carefree, which was not always the case for the prostitute. We can
easily see that Elizabeth Rousset does not fit the conventional stereotype of the prostitute: she is not destitute, nor crude, nor (evidently, unless we take Mme.
Loiseau on p.1033 at her word) undiscriminating in whom she beds. All the characters taken together beg the questions, “how does one’s work define one
socially? Does one’s social position or status have any bearing on one’s character or morality? Who, really, is ‘moral’ or ‘immoral’ here?”
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Item 3: What does the story say about social class? Consider not only the situation/arrangement of the passengers in
the coach, but also Mme. Follenvie’s statements about military concepts of glory pp.1026-27, and de Bréville’s
discussion with the beadle on p.1028.
Item 4: what’s ironic about the following, and compared to what?
● the group’s scheming to change Boule-de-Suif’s mind?
● their treatment of her once the coach recommences its journey?
Item 5: What point is Cornudet making by whistling the national anthem for the rest of the trip? What point does the
text seem to make through Cornudet here?