Boule De Suif

Guy de Maupassant’s “Boule de Suif” is an example of a short story written in the Naturalist tradition. Its omniscient narrator operates at a distance, offering detached and often wry insight into the characters’ motivations. Ultimately, the characters’ actions are a product of their experiences (like class background) and environment (the war). If the resulting picture of human nature is pessimistic, lingering on the characters’ destructive and self-serving behavior, this too is typical of Naturalism, and the bleak description of the defeated French troops retreating from battle, coupled with the images of the cold, snowy weather that blankets the landscape, foreshadows the story’s dark tone.

The narrative centers in large part on The Inescapability of Social Class, with the coach, full of people from all different walks of life, symbolizing French society. Broadly, these characters fall into four groups: the upper and middle classes (the Count and Countess Hubert de Breville, Monsieur and Madame Loiseau, and Monsieur and Madame Carré-Lamadon), representatives of the Church (the nuns), the antimonarchist movement (Cornudet), and the common people (Boule de Suif). The narrator does not paint a flattering portrait of most of these characters, implying a correspondingly cynical view of the classes they represent. The Carré-Lamadons, for instance, are political opportunists with no real principles: “All the time of the Empire he had remained leader of a friendly opposition, for the sole purpose of making a better thing out of it when he came round to the cause which he had fought” (10). Even Cornudet seems motivated by self-interest; his activism consists largely of patronizing “democratic café’s [sic],” and he “look[s] forward with impatience to the Republic, when he should obtain the well-merited reward for [drinking] so many revolutionary draughts” (12).

As a symbol of France’s marginalized classes, Boule de Suif comes across comparatively well. She is a heroic figure and a woman of more moral integrity than the members of supposed polite society. Her story of attacking an enemy soldier characterizes her as brave and patriotic, while her choice to share her basket of food with the others in the coach points to her generosity. She is also the only one who thought to bring food, which suggests that she is practical—better equipped to deal with challenges than those whose money insulates them from many inconveniences. When the other characters accept her offer of food, it seems as though resourcefulness and courage, combined with circumstance (the war, hunger, etc.), might facilitate a certain degree of social mobility.

This makes it all the more ironic that it is precisely Boule de Suif’s compassion and patriotism that the other characters exploit in arguing that she would be doing not only them but France a service in sleeping with the Prussian officer. Ominously, the story repeatedly associates her with imagery related to both food and war. An early comparison of her fingers to sausages and her face to an apple foreshadows how the travelers will deliver her to the Prussian officer for figurative consumption—something the narrator likens to “an epicurean cook preparing a toothsome delicacy for somebody else” (41). The narrator also compares that process of “preparation” to a military campaign:

They were long in preparing the blockade, as if against an invested fortress. Each one agreed upon the part they would play, the arguments they would bring forward, the maneuvers they would execute. They arranged the plan of attack, the stratagems to be employed, and the surprises of assault for forcing this living citadel to receive the enemy within its gates (41).

The extended metaphor is partly comedic (though darkly so), using the image of a breached fortress as sexual innuendo. However, the military language also aligns Boule de Suif not merely with the working class generally but with the common soldier in particular. In conjunction with the story’s wartime setting, Boule de Suif’s self-sacrifice resembles that of the rank-and-file servicemembers who die to satisfy the whims of the “great people who make the wars” (31).   

The story’s treatment of class inequality is therefore closely related to its exploration of The Dangers and Hypocrisies of Patriotism. The story’s wealthiest characters are not particularly patriotic themselves, their only real concern being how the war will affect their finances. Nevertheless, they manipulate Boule de Suif’s loyalty to her country, which implies that the privileged classes similarly play on the patriotism of the average French citizen to exploit them, convincing them of the nobility of sacrificing themselves for their country. The story’s denouement reveals how little the wealthiest members of society appreciate or even recognize this sacrifice. As their journey continues, all the characters refuse to acknowledge Boule de Suif or share their food with her, despite (if not because of) her actions.