SOURCE: "Variations on a Theme: Five Tales of Horror by Maupassant," in Studies in Short Fiction, Vol. 17, No. 4, Fall, 1980, pp. 475-81.

In the following essay, Morris discusses the structural similarity of Guy de Maupassant's "Lui," "La Chevelure," "Le Horla," "La Nuit," and "Qui sait?"

Considering Guy de Maupassant's voluminous production of short stories, Michael G. Lerner points out in his biography of this prolific author that an intriguing aspect of these tales is "the way Maupassant manages to use the same situation time and time again merely by altering the circumstances in some small way—a change in the location, a difference of age, a switching of relationships, or a fresh perspective from a new angle."¹ This persistent repetition of structure is particularly prominent in five apparently disparate tales of horror published within the last ten years of Maupassant's life, when the author began to suffer from increasing...