SOURCE: Hadlock, Philip G. “(Per)versions of Masculinity in Maupassant's ‘La Mère aux monstres.’” French Forum 27, no. 1 (winter 2002): 59-79.

In the following essay, Hadlock discusses the function of the monster in “La Mère aux monsters.”

Few subjects seem to have intrigued Guy de Maupassant as much as monsters. His short stories are replete with deformed and disfigured beings whose presence conditions the trajectory of the narrative as well as the relationship between the narrator and the reader. It is perhaps not surprising that Maupassant would so heavily populate his tales with monsters. As he suggests in his chronicles, the male author himself is “un monstre autant par ses qualités que par ses défauts, car, en lui, aucun sentiment simple n'existe plus” (“La Femme de lettres.” II, 430), and thus, Maupassant's very identity as an homme de lettres is entwined in the plight of the monster...