SOURCE: Mead, Gerald. “Social Commentary and Sexuality in Maupassant's ‘La Maison Tellier.’” Nineteenth Century French Studies 24, nos. 1-2 (fall-winter 1995-1996): 162-69.

In the following essay, Mead investigates Maupassant's broad social vision in his story “La Maison Tellier.”

To most readers, Maupassant offers two faces. On the one hand, he is widely read as a lucid and ironic observer of the petty vices, crude passions and stupidities of otherwise unremarkable individuals populating the peasant and urban classes of nineteenth-century French society. More intriguing to current criticism is a face that appeared later in Maupassant's work, that of the sick, tormented schizophrenic, haunted literally to death by the frightening and inescapable “other” of “Le Horla” and “Lui.” Maupassant the realist or Maupassant the psychotic. Relatively scant attention, though, has been given to his work as representing broader historical, social, and cultural problems. While it is true that his vision, particularly...