Œuvres complètes de Guy de Maupassant - volume 26

The narrative follows a nobleman and his beautiful wife whose routine outing becomes a prolonged confrontation when she denounces years of coercion: he has driven her into repeated pregnancies to spoil her beauty and parade their children as trophies. She recounts humiliation, enforced isolation, and a possession-driven affection for the offspring that masks cruelty. The story examines marital violence, gendered ownership, and the social performance of parenthood, portraying the physical and psychological toll of treating motherhood as an instrument of control through incisive domestic scenes that reveal brutality beneath polite appearances.