The Story of a Farm Girl

by Guy de Maupassant

The Story of a Farm Girl" is a short story by Guy de Maupassant. Henri Rene Albert Guy de Maupassant (5 August 1850 - 6 July 1893) was a popular 19th-century French writer, considered one of the fathers of the modern short story and one of the form's finest exponents. A protege of Flaubert, Maupassant's stories are characterized by their economy of style and efficient, effortless denouements. Many of the stories are set during the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870s and several describe the futility of war and the innocent civilians who, caught in the conflict, emerge changed. He authored some 300 short stories, six novels, three travel books, and one volume of verse. His first published story "Boule de Suif" ("Ball of Fat," 1880) is often considered his masterpiece. He delighted in clever plotting, and served as a model for Somerset Maugham and O. Henry in this respect. His stories about expensive jewellery ("The Necklace," "La parure") are imitated with a twist by Maugham ("Mr Know-All," "A String of Beads") and Henry James ("Paste"). Taking his cue from Balzac, Maupassant wrote comfortably in both the high-Realist and fantastic modes; stories and novels such as "L'Heritage" and Bel-Ami aim to recreate Third Republic France in a realistic way, whereas many of the short stories (notably "Le Horla" and "Qui sait?") describe apparently supernatural phenomena. The supernatural in Maupassant, however, is often implicitly a symptom of the protagonists' troubled minds; Maupassant was fascinated by the burgeoning discipline of psychiatry, and attended the public lectures of Jean-Martin Charcot between 1885 and 1886. This interest is reflected in his fiction. Maupassant is notable as the subject of one of Leo Tolstoy's essays on art: The Works of Guy de Maupassant. Friedrich Nietzsche's autobiography mentions him in the following text: "I cannot at all conceive in which century of history one could haul together such inquisitive and at the same time delicate psychologists as one can in contemporary Paris: I can name as a sample - for their number is by no means small, ... or to pick out one of the stronger race, a genuine Latin to whom I am particularly attached, Guy de Maupassant.

Genres: Short Stories, Classics

44 pages, Paperback

First published July 26, 2004

About the author

Henri René Albert Guy de Maupassant was a popular 19th-century French writer. He is one of the fathers of the modern short story. A protege of Flaubert, Maupassant's short stories are characterized by their economy of style and their efficient effortless dénouement. He also wrote six short novels. A number of his stories often denote the futility of war and the innocent civilians who get crushed in it - many are set during the Franco-Prussian War of the 1870s.

Reviews

[Dragana Străin · Rating 3 out of 5]

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[Sara Rahimi · Rating 4 out of 5]

very touching, short and strong. très amusant et émouvant :)

[Lyuba Boyajyan · Rating 2 out of 5]

Երեկ ճանապարհին եմ լսել, բայց շատ ծեծված սցենար է, շատ կանխատեդելի ու առանց լուրջ զարգացումների։ Մոպասանից բան չէի կարդացել, դրա համար որոշեցի փորձել լսել, բայց տպավորված չեմ

[Classic reverie · Rating 5 out of 5]

Guy de Maupassant's "The Story of a Farm Girl" is a sad tale of a young girl betrayed by her lover and the consequences soon appear.



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She took a few undecided steps and closed her eyes, for she was seized with a feeling of animal comfort, and then she went to look for eggs in the hen loft. There were thirteen of them, which she took in and put into the storeroom; but the smell from the kitchen annoyed her again, and she went out to sit on the grass for a time.
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He tried to kiss her, but she gave him a smack in the face, for she was as strong as he, and he was shrewd enough to beg her pardon; so they sat down side by side and talked amicably. They spoke about the favorable weather, of their master, who was a good fellow, then of their neighbors, of all the people in the country round, of themselves, of their village, of their youthful days, of their recollections, of their relations, who had left them for a long time, and it might be forever.
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Suddenly, however, he seized her by the neck and kissed her again, but she struck him so violently in the face with her clenched fist that his nose began to bleed, and he got up and laid his head against the stem of a tree. When she saw
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that, she was sorry, and going up to him, she said: “Have I hurt you?” He, however, only laughed. “No, it was a mere nothing; only she had hit him right on the middle of the nose. What a devil!” he said, and he looked at her with admiration, for she had inspired him with a feeling of respect and of a very different kind of admiration which was the beginning of a real love for that tall, strong wench. When the bleeding had stopped, he proposed a walk, as he was afraid of his neighbor’s heavy hand, if they remained

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side by side like that much longer; but she took his arm of her own accord, in the avenue, as if they had been out for an evening’s walk, and said: “It is not nice of you to despise me like that, Jacques.” He protested, however. No, he did not despise her. He was in love with her, that was all. “So you really want to marry me?” she asked. He hesitated and then looked at her sideways, while she looked straight ahead of her.


❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌spoiler alert ❌❌


Jacques has been following Rose and starts to romance her with a promise of marrige and soon is tired of her. She tells him she is pregnant and he flees. She worries about others finding out. Her mother request she come home because she is dying. After her mother dies, she has her baby, telling all at home she is married but with work she must keep the baby here. She visits and loves her baby more than anything, thinking of him always. She wants to earn more money for herself and the baby, so she saves the farmer a lot and instead of a raise, he wants to marry her but she tells him she must refuse. He then rapes her and they live as man and woman until he says they should marry and she no longer resists. He starts to be brutal after she is unable to have a baby, in a fit of rage she tells him she has a baby already. He then sees it is his fault and is happy now because they can adopt the baby without anyone knowing.

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“Yes, of course I do.” Then she threw her arms round his neck and kissed him till they were both out of breath. From that moment the eternal story of love began between them. They plagued one another in corners; they met in the moonlight beside the haystack and gave each other bruises on the legs, under the table, with their heavy nailed boots. By degrees,
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however, Jacques seemed to grow tired of her; he avoided her, scarcely spoke to her, and did not try any longer to meet her alone, which made her sad and anxious; and soon she found that she was enceinte.
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“What do you want?” he then asked her. And with clenched teeth, and trembling with anger, she replied: “I want — I want you to marry me, as you promised.” But he only laughed and replied: “Oh! if a man were to marry all the girls with whom he has made a slip, he would have more than enough to do.”
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Then she seized him by the throat, threw him or his back, so that he could not get away from her, and, half strangling him, she shouted into his face: “I am enceinte, do you hear? I am enceinte!” He gasped for breath, as he was almost choked, and so they remained, both of them, motionless and without speaking, in the dark silence, which was only broken by the noise made by a horse as he, pulled the hay out of the manger and then slowly munched it.
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When Jacques found that she was the stronger, he stammered out: “Very well, I will marry you, as that is the case.” But she did not believe his promises. “It must be at once,” she said. “You must have the banns put up.” “At once,” he replied. “Swear solemnly that you will.” He hesitated for a few moments and then said: “I swear it, by Heaven!” Then she released her grasp and went away without another word. She had no chance of speaking to him for several days; and, as the stable was now always locked at
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night, she was afraid to make any noise, for fear of creating a scandal. One morning, however, she saw another man come in at dinner time, and she said: “Has Jacques left?” “Yes;” the man replied; “I have got his place.”

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“Suppose people were to know.” This continual feeling made her so incapable of reasoning that she did not even try to think of any means of avoiding the disgrace that she knew must ensue, which was irreparable and drawing nearer every day, and which was as sure as death itself. She got up every morning long before the others and persistently tried to look at her figure in a piece of broken looking-glass, before which she did her hair, as she was very anxious to know whether anybody would notice a change in her, and, during the day, she stopped working every few minutes to look at herself from top to toe, to see whether her apron did not look too short. The months went on, and she scarcely spoke now, and when she was asked a question, did not appear to understand; but she had a frightened look, haggard eyes and trembling hands, which made her master say to her occasionally: “My
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poor girl, how stupid you have grown lately.” In church she hid behind a pillar, and no longer ventured to go to confession, as she feared to face the priest, to whom she attributed superhuman powers, which enabled him to read people’s consciences; and at meal times the looks of her fellow servants almost made her faint with mental agony;
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One morning the postman brought her a letter, and as she had never received one in her life before she was so upset by it that she was obliged to sit down. Perhaps it was from him? But, as she could not read, she sat anxious and trembling with that piece of paper, covered with ink, in her hand. After a time, however, she put it into her pocket, as she did not venture to confide her secret to any one. She often stopped in her work to look
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at those lines written at regular intervals, and which terminated in a signature, imagining vaguely that she would suddenly discover their meaning, until at last, as she felt half mad with impatience and anxiety, she went to the schoolmaster, who told her to sit down and read to her as follows: “MY DEAR DAUGHTER: I write to tell you that I am very ill. Our neighbor, Monsieur Dentu, begs you to come, if you can. “From your affectionate mother,
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When she got back, she told the farmer her bad news, and he allowed her to go home for as long as she liked, and promised to have her work done by a charwoman and to take her back when she returned. Her mother died soon after she got there, and the next day Rose
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gave birth to a seven-months child, a miserable little skeleton, thin enough to make anybody shudder, and which seemed to be suffering continually, to judge from the painful manner in which it moved its poor little hands, which were as thin as a crab’s legs; but it lived for all that. She said she was married, but could not be burdened

with the child, so she left it with some neighbors, who promised to take great care of it, and she went back to the farm.
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But now in her heart, which had been wounded so long, there arose something like brightness, an unknown love for that frail little creature which she had left behind her, though there was fresh suffering in that very love, suffering which she felt every hour and every minute, because she was parted from her child. What pained her most, however, was the mad longing to kiss it, to press it in her arms, to feel the warmth of its little body against her breast. She could not sleep at night; she thought of it the whole day long,
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and in the evening, when her work was done, she would sit in front of the fire and gaze at it intently, as people do whose thoughts are far away.
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By degrees she almost monopolized the work and persuaded him to get rid of one servant girl, who had become useless since she had taken to working like two; she economized in the bread, oil and candles; in the corn, which they gave to the chickens too extravagantly, and in the fodder for the horses and cattle, which was rather wasted. She
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was as miserly about her master’s money as if it had been her own; and, by dint of making good bargains, of getting high prices for all their produce, and by baffling the peasants’ tricks when they offered anything for sale, he, at last, entrusted her with buying and selling everything, with the direction of all the laborers, and with the purchase of provisions necessary for the household; so that, in a short time, she became. indispensable to him. She kept such a strict eye on everything about her that, under her
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direction, the farm prospered wonderfully, and for five miles around people talked of “Master Vallin’s servant,” and the farmer himself said everywhere: “That girl is worth more than her weight in gold.” But time passed by, and her wages remained the same. Her hard work was accepted as something that was due from every good servant, and as a mere token of good will; and she began to think rather bitterly that if the farmer could put fifty or a hundred crowns extra into the bank every month, thanks to her, she was
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still only earning her two hundred francs a year, neither more nor less; and so she made up her mind to ask for an increase of wages.
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but asked for a week’s holiday, so that she might get away, as she was not very well. He acceded to her request immediately, and then added, in some embarrassment himself: “When you come back, I shall have something to say to you myself.”
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She took the greatest pleasure in handling it, in washing and dressing it, for it seemed to her that all this was the confirmation of her maternity; and she would look at it,
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almost feeling surprised ‘that it was hers, and would say to herself in a low voice as she danced it in her arms: “It is my baby, it’s my baby.”
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A feeling of delicious coolness pervaded her from head to foot, and suddenly, while she was looking fixedly at the deep pool, she
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was seized with dizziness, and with a mad longing to throw herself into it. All her sufferings would be over in there, over forever. She no longer thought of her child; she only wanted peace, complete rest, and to sleep forever, and she got up with raised arms and took two steps forward. She was in the water up to her thighs, and she was just about to throw her self in when sharp, pricking pains in her ankles made her jump back, and she uttered a cry of despair, for, from her knees to the tips of her feet, long
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black leeches were sucking her lifeblood, and were swelling as they adhered to her flesh. She did not dare to touch them, and screamed with horror, so that her cries of despair attracted a peasant, who was driving along at some distance, to the spot. He pulled off the leeches one by one, applied herbs to the wounds, and drove the girl to her master’s farm in his gig.
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And he angrily mentioned all the young fellows in the neighborhood, while she denied that he had hit upon the right one, and every moment wiped her eyes with the corner of her blue apron. But he still tried to find it out, with his brutish obstinacy, and, as it were, scratching at her heart to discover her secret, just as a terrier scratches at a hole to try and get at the animal which he scents inside it. Suddenly, however, the man shouted: “By George! It is Jacques, the man who was here last year. They used to

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say that you were always talking together, and that you thought about getting married.”
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This time she looked her master straight in the face. “No, never, never; I will solemnly swear to you that if he were to come to-day and ask me to marry him I would have nothing to do with him.” She spoke with such an air of sincerity that the farmer hesitated, and then he continued, as if speaking to himself: “What, then? You have not had
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misfortune, as they call it, or it would have been known, and as it has no consequences, no girl would refuse her master on that account. There must be something at the bottom of it, however.”
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“Don’t be frightened, Rose; I have come to speak to you.” She was surprised at first, but when he tried to take liberties with her she understood and began to tremble violently, as she felt quite alone
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in the darkness, still heavy from sleep, and quite unprotected, with that man standing near her. She certainly did not consent, but she resisted carelessly struggling against that instinct which is always strong in simple natures and very imperfectly protected by the undecided will of inert and gentle races. She turned her head now to the wall, and now toward the room, in order to avoid the attentions which the farmer tried to press on her, but she was weakened by fatigue, while
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he became brutal, intoxicated by desire. They lived together as man and wife, and one morning he said to her: “I have put up our banns, and we will get married next month.” She did not reply, for what could she say? She did not resist, for what could she do?

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“What have you got against me?” He began to shout and to swear: “What have I got against you? That I have no children, by — . When a man takes a wife it is not that
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they may live alone together to the end of their days. That is what I have against you. When a cow has no calves she is not worth anything, and when a woman has no children she is also not worth anything.” She began to cry,

and said: “It is not my fault! It is not my fault!” He grew rather more gentle when he heard that, and added: “I do not say that it is, but it is very provoking, all the same.”
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In his exasperation he knelt on her stomach, and with clenched teeth, and mad with rage, he began to beat her. Then in
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her despair she rebelled, and flinging him against the wall with a furious gesture, she sat up, and in an altered voice she hissed: “I have had a child, I have had one! I had it by Jacques; you know Jacques. He promised to marry me, but he left this neighborhood without keeping his word.” The man was thunderstruck and could hardly speak, but at last he stammered out: “What are you saying? What are you saying?” Then she began to sob, and amid her tears she continued: “That was the reason
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why I did not want to marry you. I could not tell you, for you would have left me without any bread for my child. You have never had any children, so you cannot understand, you cannot understand!” He said again, mechanically, with increasing surprise: “You have a child? You have a child?” “You took me by force, as I suppose you know? I did not want to marry you,” she said, still sobbing.
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“Then it is my fault that you have no children?” She gave him no answer, and he began to walk up and down again, and then, stopping again, he continued: “How old is your child?” “Just six,” she whispered. “Why did you not tell me about it?” he asked. “How could I?” she replied, with a sigh. He remained standing, motionless. “Come, get up,” he said. She got up with some difficulty, and then, when she was standing on the floor,
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he suddenly began to laugh with the hearty laugh of his good days, and, seeing how surprised she was, he added: “Very well, we will go and fetch the child, as you and I can have none together.” She was so scared that if she had had the strength she would assuredly have run away, but the farmer rubbed his hands and said: “I wanted to adopt one, and now we have found one. I asked the cure about an orphan some time ago.” Then, still laughing, he kissed his weeping and agitated wife on both
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cheeks, and shouted out, as though she could not hear him: “Come along, mother, we will go and see whether there is any soup left; I should not mind a plateful.”

[Forked Radish · Rating 3 out of 5]

Those who live amongst animals (farmers) tend to adopt their behavior. Whilst those who live amongst criminals and prostitutes (urbanites) tend to adopt their behavior as well. Hermits have their reasons.

[Red Kedi · Rating 2 out of 5]

http://bit.ly/2KIfLr8

Questo è un lampante esempio su come la sincerità possa risolvere molte cose.

Rose è una donna abbastanza felice della sua posizione. Le permette di esser tranquilla e appaga il suo senso di "protezione" verso le altre persone. Però, come molte donne, cede all'idea del matrimonio e si concede alla persona sbagliata.
Con l'improvviso abbandono, il figlio in arrivo e le condizioni della madre, Rose prende una decisione drastica e molto severa. Cercherà di metter via più soldi possibile per poter mandarli al figlio ma per quanto si impegni, poco cambia.
Vallin, il suo padrone, cerca di convincere la donna a sposarlo ma solo con l'inganno riuscirà ad ottenere quello che vuole. Eppure, per quanto burbero, non è un'uomo così cattivo. Stima veramente Rose e vorrebbe creare una famiglia ma lei, non riesce.
I due arriveranno ad uno scontro aspro, fatto di paure e delusioni. Fino a che la donna, non svela il suo grande segreto.

Dicevo, la sincerità può risolvere molte grane e Rose, anche se involontariamente e senza cattive intenzioni, rimane invischiata nel silenzio.
In ottanta pagine c'è poi poco da dire però, mi ha lasciato di stucco la delusione di Vallin quando non riusciva a diventare padre. Lo so che non è lui il protagonista ma ci soffermiamo sempre su cosa provano le donne, tralasciando invece ciò che provano gli uomini.
Non giustifico alcune reazioni, però un po lo capisco.

[C.Elegans · Rating 4 out of 5]

Dies ist die erste aus meiner Sammlung von Maupassants Liebesnovellen (herausgegeben von Marcel Reich-Ranicki in der Bertelsmann Club GmbH). Genaugenommen geht es aber kaum um Liebe, sondern um die Fremdbestimmtheit einer Magd im Frankreich des 19. Jahrhunderts. Zu Beginn überzeugt die Geschichte mit detaillierten Beschreibungen, zum Ende hin wird sie für die Protagonistin verzweifelnt. Ein guter Auftakt.

[Maël Paris · Rating 2 out of 5]

Une histoire ancrée dans le monde paysan et traversant les duretés de la vie telle qu'on en retrouve plusieurs chez Maupassant
Celle-ci m'a un peu rappelé Une Vie dans une certaine mesure avec une bonne implication émotionnelle et sensorielle mais je n'ai pas été très convaincu par la résolution finale qui, comme parfois, manque d'impact

[Marianne Evans · Rating 5 out of 5]

Beautiful descriptions of an outdoor kitchen, of the emotions of fear and regret; this is the story of a girl who didn't have the right or confidence to tell the healing truth.

[Sarah | The Marsies · Rating 3 out of 5]

Je suis sûrement passée à côté de ma lecture, on ne va pas dire que j’ai apprécié l’histoire. Je suis juste là pour la plume de Maupassant

[Barbe-Bleue · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cette nouvelle décrit le parcours d’une jeune campagnarde du XIXe siècle sur une période d’environ 7 ans. J’aime particulièrement deux aspects de la narration : sa simplicité et son réalisme.

[Abbie · Rating 2 out of 5]

Brings to mind "Labour" by Paris Paloma in the worst way possible.

[Tom · Rating 4 out of 5]

AKA: A Farm Girl’s Story, Story of a Farm Girl

[Virginie Dolléans · Rating 3 out of 5]

La dure vie d’une fille de ferme qui se finit bien.