Bel Ami by Guy de Maupassant

Guy de Maupassant (1850 -1893) is a writer that I had vaguely heard about over the years but as to what he wrote I could not have told you. Then two years ago my blogging friend Ruthiella (please check out her excellent website ruthiellareads@blogspot.com) reviewed his novel Bel Ami for the 2018 Back to the Classics Challenge and gave it high praise.  Now having also read the book I heartily agree.  This is a remarkable novel well deserving its status as a classic.

And so when Bel Ami begins we are introduced to George Duroy, a handsome young man who arrives in Paris around 1880 determined to rise high in Parisian society.  For George his good looks have always been his fortune and so though he arrives with very little money he knows that won't be the case for long.

After a few months in Paris, George runs into an old army buddy, Charles Forestier, who he served with when he was stationed in Algeria.  Charles is now an editor at La Vie francaise and he helps George get a job at the paper.  George has trouble writing his first article but that's no problem.  Charles tells George to go see his wife Madeleine Forestier who will write the article for him.  The Forestiers also invite George to a dinner party at their home and it's there that George meets Clotilde de Marielle.  She is a friend of Madeleine Forestier and Clotilde and George begin an affair.

Clotilde is alot like George, young, beautiful, adventurous with a taste for the seedier side of Paris.  George is very familiar with this part of town and is happy to accompany Clotilde on these outings.  Clotilde is also married but she assures George that this fact is irrelevant as long as one is discreet.  George has a good time with Clotilde.  She provides him with money, pays for their secret apartment and the restaurant bills etc.

George meanwhile begins to make his way at the newspaper and becomes rather good at his job but his position has no future.  He begins thinking about Madeleine Forestier.  She is beautiful, smart and has the drive and connections that can help a young man like George go far.  He professes his love to Madeleine but she is not interested. And in a cold way explains:

"My dear friend, for me, a man who's in love is erased from the roll of the living.  He becomes a half-wit, and not just a half-wit, but a dangerous one.  With men who are really in love with me, or who claim they are, I break off any close relationship, first because they bore me, but also because I don't trust them, just as I don't trust a rabid dog who might go on the rampage.  So I put them into moral quarantine until their sickness is over.  Don't ever forget this". 

It's quite a declaration and of course Madeleine sees through George quite clearly knowing he cannot love anyone but himself.  Still, when her husband dies, George is a help to Madeleine during Charles' final hours.  She decides to marry George with no illusions.  It's a partnership, a way for Madeleine to advise George so that as a couple they can rise high in French society.  George for his part has not given up his relationship with Clotilde and has also begun a new affair with the wealthy publisher's wife, Mme Walter.  As to how George's juggling act involving three society women and a fourth on the way resolves itself I will leave it to the reader to discover.

Bel Ami presents a very cynical picture of 19th century Parisian society and more generally a pessimistic view of life and love in general.  Some may ask therefore why read Bel Ami?  Well, for me two reasons.  First Guy de Maupassant is a masterful writer, very detail oriented in terms of describing what Paris in the late 19th century must have been like.  But also I noticed that the subject of death takes up a powerful place in this novel.  Charles Forestier for example is dying of tuberculosis which when he first meets George he dismisses as bronchitis but his increasingly terrible coughing alerts the reader.  Charles tries to remain in denial but everyone around him is not.  And then there is the elderly poet, Norbert de Varenne who walking home with George one evening tries to warn the young man about the kind of life he's living:

"Life is a hill.  While you're climbing up, you look towards the summit, and you're happy; but when you reach the summit, suddenly you can see the slope down, and the bottom, which is death.  It's slow going up, but coming down is quick.  At your age you're happy.  You hope for so many things, which moreover never happen ... get married my friend, you don't know what it means to live alone at my age".  

The author, Guy de Maupassant died at age 42 in an asylum.  He found out he had syphillis in his twenties and back then there were no good treatments.  When he published Bel Ami he was 35 and one can't help seeing parellels between George and the author who was also quite the ladies man, a cautionary tale perhaps? And what I am discovering the more 19th century literature I read is how many classic authors never reached 50 years of age but fortunately they live on through their great writing.

Bel Ami fulfills my 2020 Back to the Classics category - choose a classic in translation.  The translator being Margaret Mauldon.