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from Yport: '''Life is not all fun" [Jeanne observes.] The Baron sighed: "I'm afraid not, my child, and there's nothing we can do about it"' (p. 92). In a novel which claims in its subtitle to be presenting 'the humble truth', the homespun character of these observations is perhaps appropriate; and of course in the case of Rosalie the comment is entirely in keeping with her resilient practicality, which has seen her through a life of wildly fluctuating fortunes. But does her remark constitute a 'message'? Is this Maupassant's final word?
    For all its mediocrity it does underscore the suggestion of a 'resurrection' at the end of the novel, and yet perhaps it is only Jeanne and Rosalie who see things in such a light. A more sceptical reader might interpret this moment (and several critics have) as merely the first stage in a further cycle of failure and disillusionment. On the other hand, the generality of the remark may remind us that while Jeanne's life has been almost unrelievedly grim, hers has not been the only life on display; and thus it may encourage us to look back on the narrative and realize that the almost exclusive focus on Jeanne's point of view may have obscured the degree to which fortunes have indeed been mixed. For this is a novel which opens with a picture of joy marred by rain and ends with a portrait of despair illuminated by sunshine and hope (represented not only by the baby but by the possibility that Paul, despite all previous evidence to the contrary, might actually arrive by the same train on the following day). Through-  out the novel we see that sexual desire, while it may be an instinctive urge which makes human beings no different from dolphins or ladybirds, is indeed natural . Chastity is a perversion and breeds prurience (the Abbé Picot), pathological violence and fanaticism (the Abbé Tolbiac), or lonely misery (Lison). The sexual appetites of the young men and women of Normandy are part of life; and the sexual act, like nature, can be variously good or bad, both a source of joy, to Jeanne (briefly), to her parents (whether maritally or extra-maritally), to Julien and Gilberte, and yet also a brutal act of rape. Love does exist: Mama has known it, perhaps her husband too, Jeanne knows it (briefly), the Comte de Fourville knows it (illusorily and unrequitedly), Paul and his mistress know it (unto death). But hatred too exists, and the hurt that comes with betrayal. For all 'the sad procession of her miseries' (p. 229) Jeanne should at least count herself fortunate to have known the joy of parenthood when she can see how both her aunt and the Comte de Fourville are conscious of having missed out. They have been prevented from engendering and nurturing a life.
    As one who learned many lessons from Flaubert, Maupassant will not have failed to be aware of the Master's favourite dictum: 'Human stupidity lies in wanting to conclude'; and the author of A Life would seem to have concluded his first novel with the most ambivalent and inconclusive of aphorisms. Yet if there is one unambiguous villain in Maupassant's first novel, it must surely be the Abbé Tolbiac, because people of his sort, as the Baron puts it, 'hate the physical': 'Such people must be resisted, it is our right and duty to do so. They're inhuman' (p. 170). Life is for living; Jeanne needs something to live for; the warm, living flesh of a baby brings her back to life. What a terrible and poignant irony it must, therefore, have been for Maupassant himself that his first (and illegitimate) child should have been born on the very day that the first instalment of his first novel was published, and that midway through its publication he should have been told by an eye specialist, Dr Landolt, what he had already suspected: that he had syphilis, a disease contracted, and passed on, in the very act of creating a life. Or perhaps it was not an irony. He first mentions his syphilis (in the letter to Pinchon) nine months  before he tells