Beautiful appearance is a gift from heaven, become his unique capital, and through the ages beautiful men and women have performed countless romantic legends, Drouet’s model may seem to today the routine is not exciting enough, he used women as his ladder of success, to achieve the goal by any means. The plot of this novel by Maupassant is not complicated, and it always revolves around the clue of Drouet. Most of it is straightforward and calm description, and the story is told in flat narration without revealing emotion, which is not suitable for today’s reading habits.
Considering a complete and complex person, it is obvious that there is no such thing as a person with a single personality. The definition of bad and good is sometimes clear and sometimes vague in a person. Morality is often used as a judgment standard. In this critical realist novel, which always takes a view of the rise and rise of the Daily de la Life in Paris, the most striking thing about Drouet is not the number of women he has slept with, but the harshness of his intellect. Would it be dreadful to never see him feel for anyone, not even when his sensuality was over, not love for any woman, every woman only a part of his plan, not even for Miss Cechain in his final goal?
Of course, the main purpose of the novel is to expose and lash out at Drouet’s hypocrisy and greed. As the plot unfolds, he steps into the upper class society and social situations, paving the way for himself, removing obstacles, like a textbook description of how he uses his greatest strength and potential to pry open the door to the upper class by appealing to women with his handsome appearance. In fact, Drouet was not uncommon in the social circles of the French aristocracy at that time, in which to be serious was to be considered unseemly, to be despised and marginalized.
The author uses naturalistic techniques to express the various forms of life in the real society. If it is a criticism, it is more like a realistic record. The author’s brushwork is restrained and does not show any trace, which may be the feature and advantage of this novel.
To call Drouet despicable, he had experienced women no better than he was, even worse and more shameless. Guan forest a very deep woman, she seems to have no tenderness as a woman, more is shrewd and rational not easily exposed their emotions, he sees marriage as a transaction and use. Her first marriage to the forest, and her subsequent remarriage to Drouet, had been a model family, used to facilitate the coitus of a longtime lover for whom she had never felt affection.
An emotional woman with a strong desire for possession, Mrs. Marrelle, admiring Drouet’s good looks, offers to satisfy her sexual desires by carefully renting a place where she and Drouet meet for a long time. She was furious when she learned that Drouard was seeing another woman, but Mrs. Marrelle was a wise woman who weighed the pros and cons and kept her relationship with Drouard. She knew that their relationship was dysfunctional and shady, that she was married and he was not, that he had every right to find other women, and that, above all, she did not want to destroy her family. She wanted to have a fling with Drouard.
If his relationship with Mrs. Mallerell, an unhappy woman whom Drouah had used as a pawn in his plan of advancement, was purely a matter of interest, whether physical or a test of his own charm or a sense of pity. Drouard was no longer a boy who had just entered the world, but a villain who could see the moment and do whatever he wanted to do. Mrs. Voltagel was the one who carried out his plan. Finally, when he saw his daughter, Miss Cechain, falling into Drouard’s trap step by step, he was too painful and crazy to speak out. By acquiescing to the fact that this former lover had become his son-in-law again, Drouet had triumphantly and unapologetically accomplished both his career and his marriage.
In moral terms, there was some sympathy for Mrs. Voltagel, who had been seduced by Drouard, and the two women, Drouard included, were playing with each other for their own purposes. In particular, the marriage between Drouet and Madeline (Lady of the Forest) is a model of rivalry, each using the other as a bargaining chip in order to achieve their own dark desires. Drouah, however, was more elaborate than that. He had married her only for the purpose of using her to extend his circle of high society and to advance in the press. Droua decisively ends his marriage to Madeleine when he finds that her usefulness has been exhausted and that he can use his looks to win the girl’s affections by preying on the daughter of the newspaper’s general manager, Walter Duet. And Madre Rhein this scheming smart woman finally defeated in the hands of the husband who just remarried soon after, he was caught on the spot and the current tryst with lover and embarrassed.
Droua had made a crucial step in his life by divorcing Madeleine Rhein and marrying Sicha Rhein. The defeat of the rival was good news for the dissident newspaper’s managing director, Walter, and removed one of the obstacles to Droua’s entry into politics. It follows that Drouard is shamelessly perfect in every step of the way, finally becoming the son-in-law of a millionaire, the celebrity of the press, fame and fortune, and the novel ends with Drouard in triumph, dreaming of entering the House of Representatives and fulfilling his greater ambitions.
But I think that Drouet’s writing is a little stylized, and his character is not rich enough. From Drouet’s point of view, he does not have any emotional entanglements. It is the other side that pesters him, and when he weighs power and sex, he often prefers power to sex. However, the reason why literature can achieve the power and depth that reality cannot achieve is precisely because people expect or reflect on their own desires to present multifaceted artistic effects. Don’t we want to see in the field of art the multiple contradictions and desires hidden in the depths of the soul that wake people up and cannot escape?
