Book Review: "An Adventure in Paris” by Guy de Maupassant

 The Most Anticlimactic of Escapades

“Disappointment forever lurked just beyond the edges of her joy, ready to spring like a ravenous cougar.”     - Kathleen Rice Adams, Prodigal Gun 

In “An Adventure in Paris” by Guy de Maupassant the subject of the story is a woman dissatisfied with her life. The narrator refers to her as a “little person from the provinces” suggesting she is not of a lavish lifestyle. She is a wife, mother and homemaker; exactly what a woman should be yet she yearned for more. Sexual exploration and being a participant in group sex was her main fantasy, those thoughts being her escape from the everyday boredom she experienced. Even while next to her sleeping husband, those thoughts ran through her mind. The lives of the wealthy appealed to her, “ she was continuously thinking of Paris and read the fashionable papers eagerly.” She was naive, adventurous and ready to change her life. Once she got the nerve to go, there was no stopping her; her plan was brilliant. This essay will be discussing the themes of disillusionment and the blindness that can be brought about by idealistic optimism. 

One thing she was clueless to, unfortunately, was how journalists for entertainment magazines might either exaggerate or focus on the more eccentric parts of Parisian living. 

"She went up and down the boulevards, without seeing anything except roving and numbered vice. She looked into the large cafés, and read the Agony Column of the Figaro, which every morning seemed to her like a tocsin, a summons to love. But nothing put her on the track of those orgies of actors and actresses; nothing revealed to her those temples of debauchery which she imagined opened at some magic word, like the cave in the Arabian Nights, or those catacombs in Rome, where the mysteries of a persecuted religion were secretly celebrated."

Her initial lack of excitement is what probably stirred her to behave as rash as she did when encountering the celebrity in the antique store. Under normal circumstances most people, especially those of the middle class, would not step in to purchase something expensive as a gift for a stranger, celebrity or not. Unconventional or not, her impromptu purchase gave her the doorway she was looking for. All of sudden, this small town girl was chatting it up with a famous author, whose works she was conveniently well versed in. Being stubborn she refused to give up the few seconds of spotlight she got from being seen speaking with him. She sheds her traditional mannerisms and becomes almost wanton in her pursuits. She demanded to spend the whole day with him, no regard for whether he had plans or not. Him agreeing brings back the narrators thoughts on how “with all those charming, improper acts, with that delightful deceit...drive lovers who are stupidly credulous, to suicide; but which delight others.” This man seems to be of the latter in that regard (much to her pleasure). Unbeknownst to her or the reader

Maupassant’s work is thoroughly realistic. His characters inhabit a world of material desires and sensual appetites in which lust, greed, and ambition are the driving forces, and any higher feelings are either absent or doomed to cruel disappointment. 

The author, after giving in, unknowingly fed her much wanted information about upper society,“the names of all the well-known women, pure or impure...their life, their habits, their private affairs, and their vices…” she was enraptured. She spent the rest of the night without inhibition, she accompanied her stranger to heavy drinking, dinner and the theatre. Her upbringing unfortunately prevents her from gaining the man’s interest sexually and she goes to bed. After everything she has done comes back to her, she becomes shaken, soft spoken and runs away. Her eyes were opened perhaps too wide to the city, the “vice” she wanted, becoming nothing but an upsetting thought. As the lights of the city left and she really saw the man, she found herself looking at the other side of Paris. 

The woman’s immediate shift to the Parisian version of herself is intriguing. Seemingly a woman who has lived a simple life, “her relations, quite middle class people”, she was hiding such a bold persona. The narrator, when describing her home life, says, “...two children, whom she brought up like an irreproachable woman.” This same perfect woman, in all sense, sought after “refinements of sensuality”. She is multidimensional as a character, and despite her naivety, mustered up the courage to go off on her own adventure. She wanted to be the main character of her story for once. 

Guy de Maupassant explores themes of identity, seeking purpose, upper and lower class existence and the sensualization of Paris throughout his story and through the major character, ‘the woman’. His writing is very philosophical,

...One can detect within De Maupassant's work an awareness of isolation and disillusionment, and an exploration of how this manifests in humanity. ‘Useless Beauty’ contains a particularly detailed consideration of the human condition for example, including the summation that; “it is thanks to our intelligence, that trifling accident, that we can never feel at home in a world which was not made for such as us, which was never intended to shelter, nourish, and satisfy reasoning beings”. De Maupassant writes about life, death, liberation and entrapment, making him an engaging author from an existential viewpoint.

The woman’s disappointment was inevitable. She let her fantasies blind her from the reality that even the most luxurious of places lack certain things. She was not fulfilled because one cannot become whole through carnal and material desires. Maupassant teaches his readers this through the woman’s heartbreak. Despite all the wonderful things she saw during her trip in Paris she left without a wonderful memory.

And it seemed to her as if something had been swept out of her; as if her over-excited dreams had been pushed into the gutter, or into the drain, and so she went home, out of breath, and very cold, and all that she could remember was the sensation of the motion of those brooms sweeping the streets of Paris in the early morning.

In summary, Maupassant tells a cautionary tale towards those who are looking perhaps in the wrong direction for self fulfilment. He is warning against taking things at face value and not to have too great expectations when pursuing certain fantasies.

Bibliography

Canavan, Brendan. “Tourism-in-Literature: Existential Comfort, Confrontation and Catastrophe in Guy De Maupassant's Short Stories.” Annals of Tourism Research, Pergamon, 10 July 2019

Dumesnil, René, and Martin Turnell. “Mature Life and Works.” Encyclopædia Britannica, Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., 5 Sept. 2019

 Nadar. “Guy De Maupassant by Nadar.” Guy De Maupassant by Nadar on Artnet, Doyle New York, 1 Jan. 1888