Emotional Crisis and Prognosis in the Selected Stories of Guy de Maupassant

Abstract

The research focuses on female characters and their personality traits to refle mimicry, emotional crisis in the French society and their search for identity. The female characters of the selected stories are studied from the perspective of emotional crisis, mimicry and manifest how social mobility and upper class consciousness was reflected. In course of studying this, I have made use of theories and ideas mainly from: Georg Lukacs, Emily Cappo, Bhabha, Louis Crompton, M. H. Abrams, Antonio Gramsic, Marvin Harris, Howard Wallace, and Raymond William about class have been used in this thesis. Its main focus lies on the female characters and the process of alienating higher mobility and initiating higher class desires. This research explores the connection between French author Guy de Maupassant‘s realistic writing style a his observations of 19th century French social classes. A literary analysis of three of Maupassant‘s short stories; The Diamond Necklace, The Jewelry, and Boul de Suif is taken into account while carrying this research work, which determine key elements of naturalism, realism and an unequal class structure, discriminating between the peasantry, the working class, and the rich bourgeois. My research aims to study evidence that Maupassant uses a realistic writing style to advocate for social justice.