Having belatedly discovered that Marina Sofia has been posting for #FrenchFebruary I scoured the TBR for something I could read quickly so that I could contribute. I don’t know who to thank for my purchase of Guy de Maupassant’s Butterball (‘Boule de suif’) but it is a perfect little novella to share. With the added bonus that I can use it to make a contribution to my long-neglected collaborative Marvellous Maupassant site.
Butterball was first published as part of the collection known as Les soirées de Médan by authors Émile Zola; Joris-Karl Huysmans; Henri Céard; Léon Hennique; Paul Alexis and Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893). The authors were all associated with French Naturalism (of which Zola is the best known exponent) and all six stories all concern the Franco-Prussian War. As Wikipedia explains:
The aim of the collection was to promote the ideals of Naturalism, by treating the events of the Franco-Prussian War in a realistic and often unheroic way, in contrast to officially approved patriotic views of the war.
Well, Butterball certainly does that!
It’s a satire of bourgeois hypocrisy set in the wake of the occupation of Rouen by Prussian forces in the Franco-Prussian War (1870-1871). It begins with streets deserted and shops closed as the inhabitants await the arrival of the Prussians. Hasty preparations are made to secure vital interests, and strategic relationships covertly emerge when Prussian officers billet themselves in the comfort of bourgeois homes. And so it is that before dawn a carriage is able to set out for Dieppe without interference.
When the sun rises the passengers are able to see who their companions are. They are a microcosm of bourgeois French society: two nuns; a wine merchant and his wife; a wealthy cotton merchant and his wife; a count and countess; and the terror of respectable folk, the Democrat Cornudet who has spent his inheritance in anticipation of The Republic.
And there is Elisabeth Rousset.
The woman, one of the so-called ‘women of easy virtue’, was famous for her precocious corpulence, which had earned her the nickname of Butterball. She was small, round all over, as fat as lard, with puffed-up fingers congested at the joints so they looked like strings of short sausages; with a glossy, taut skin, and a huge and prominent bosom straining out from beneath her dress, she nonetheless remained an appetising and much sought-after prospect, so fresh that she was a pleasure to see. (p.14)
In the Introduction, Andrew Browne discusses the way Butterball is characterised. In the 21st century this characterisation makes us feel uncomfortable because of our awareness of fat-shaming, and I think he has tried to address that but I’m not entirely convinced by his argument. It seems anachronistic to ascribe it to feminism.
Fat is a feminist issue. Why else does Maupassant make the prostitute in one of his most famous stories, ‘Butterball’, excessively well endowed with feminine tissue? This is a story about food, sex, and politics, and about the impossibility of separating them out or establishing a secure order of priority between them. Which comes first, need (the need to eat, the need to stave off or compromise with an occupying military force if one is to survive), or desire (the desire for other bodies, the more symbolic desire for recognition of oneself as a full person)? (p.xiii)
(He also discusses in some detail the multiple allusions that her name has in the French, less crude and more symbolic than the English Brown has chosen to use.)
FWIW I think the characterisation is meant to represent abundance, generosity, enjoyment of life, and a rejection of strait-laced hypocrisy.
Anyway…
The company sniffs in disapproval, overcoming their disdain only when she offers to share her picnic basket. The weather is foul, and the snow has delayed their journey by hours: they are all hungry though only one of them needs to effect a graceful faint before succumbing to these ‘tainted’ provisions. But their real test, brilliantly satirised by Maupassant, comes when the carriage has to stop for the night at an inn, and the Prussian officer presiding there refuses to let them travel onward unless he can have a night with the whore.
Butterball refuses. Unlike the rest of them, she is no collaborator, and the novella shows how brittle their solidarity is when their own self-interest is at stake.
My Hesperus edition comes with a Foreword by Germaine Greer and an Introduction by translator Andrew Brown. (It’s full of spoilers, so defer reading it until after reading the story.) The cover image isn’t credited, and while it’s apt, I prefer the saucy wench and the Prussian officer on the cover of the 1907 edition that I found at Wikipedia.
There are five other short stories in this collection:
- The Confession (La confession)
- First Snow (La Première neige)
- Rose (Rose)
- The Dowry (La Dot)
- Bed 29. (Le Lit 29)
Links to all of these at Project Gutenberg can be found at Marvellous Maupassant.
You can also read Jonathan’s thoughts about Boule de suif here. He read a different translation, which judging by the excerpt that we have both chosen, I prefer to Brown’s. (I didn’t much like his translation of Zola’s The Dream (Le Rêve) either.)
Image credit: ‘Boule de suif’ cover of the 1907 edition from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Boule_de_Suif.jpg
Author: Guy de Maupassant
Title: Butterball (‘Boule de suif’)
Foreword by Germaine Greer
Introduction and translation by Andrew Brown
Design by Fraser Muggeridge
Publisher: Hesperus Books, 2003, first published in in the collective collection Les soirées de Médan in 1880, first published together in French as ‘Boule de suif’ in 1901
ISBN: 9781843910473, pbk., French flaps, 106 pages.
Source: Personal library, purchased from Wormhole Books
This review is cross-posted at Marvellous Maupassant.
ANZ LitLovers LitBlog 
A really interesting story, I remember it well and wish my sons had read this for their A Level French instead of the worthy but dull Sac de billes by Joseph Joffo. The cover at the top is horrendous!
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By: MarinaSofia on February 22, 2023
at 6:37 pm
Yeah, it’s not what I would have chosen for a cover!
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By: Lisa Hill on February 22, 2023
at 9:13 pm
It was good to be reminded of this story. I don’t seem to have posted on it, so must have read it pre-blog. I read your post over at Marvellous M, and was reminded that I never acted on your invitation to post my Maupassant reviews there.
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By: Simon at Tredynas Days on February 22, 2023
at 7:20 pm
I’ve replied to your comment there. I’m not sure if I sent you an invitation to join as a contributor, let me know if not and I will send one and very happily welcome your contributions!
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By: Lisa Hill on February 22, 2023
at 9:13 pm
Ahhhh, I SO want to read this—fat women and sex workers being among my academic and personal literary interests! (I actually kind of love the cover at the top of the post: an unapologetically cheerful woman of size posed saucily is a rare sight…)
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By: Elle on February 23, 2023
at 5:36 am
On reflection, there’s another side to its theme which I hadn’t thought of. It’s about women being the spoils of war. Maupassant focusses on her inner conflict, her patriotic rejection of The Enemy and her compassionate wish to help people stranded by the enemy’s demands. But in our age, when we know how women are abused in war, it’s a sanitised version of what really happens, because Maupassant gives her a choice, when really, she wouldn’t have had one whether she was a sex object or not.
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By: Lisa Hill on February 23, 2023
at 9:02 am
That’s a great point, and speaks to a feature of my PhD research: to what extent are depictions of choice and consent in historical sex work realistic, and to what extent are they fantasy representations of work that could often be profoundly extractive and exploitative?
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By: Elle on February 23, 2023
at 10:52 am
Have you ever come across the work of Tankard and Reist?
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By: Lisa Hill on February 23, 2023
at 12:19 pm
No, but I’ll have a look, thank you! (Just to clarify my position on contemporary sex work: I believe it’s work, that in much of the Western world it is largely engaged in by people who are choosing it (over, eg, low-paid, unstable contracts in retail or hospitality) and that it should be decriminalised in all jurisdictions because that is what the research suggests is the safest policy for sex workers. Historical sex workers generally engaged in the industry because their viable earning options were even more curtailed, which is why I tend to approach older depictions of sex work with a more critical eye on voice and agency, but within that framework there are many examples of people who exercised agency and built fulfilling lives for themselves by selling sex.)
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By: Elle on February 23, 2023
at 1:03 pm
That, pretty much was my view of it. But T&R’s perspective is different, as I understand it, it’s not about morality blah blah, or who gets charged and who doesn’t and why, it’s about the nature of the things explicit on the Dark Web that workers are asked to do these days, that are actually physically harmful to them.
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By: Lisa Hill on February 23, 2023
at 1:18 pm
Ah! The Internet has definitely changed the sex industry almost beyond recognition—most obviously with the availability of free porn—but the dark web is surely an influence too.
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By: Elle on February 23, 2023
at 1:55 pm
And we all thought the Internet was going to be a force for good…
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By: Lisa Hill on February 23, 2023
at 2:01 pm
Thank you for reminding me of Boule de Suif. I studied it in Year 12 French and it made – of course – a big impression. I still have my old copy which is yellowing and falling into disrepair.
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By: carmelbird on February 23, 2023
at 1:50 pm
Gosh, Carmel, I bet it did indeed make an impression. *chuckle* I’m guessing this was not in a Catholic girls school?
(I discovered in my later years that even our Shakespeare was (a-hem) edited to be suitable for young minds.)
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By: Lisa Hill on February 23, 2023
at 2:03 pm
Heavens no! Launceston High School, very academic, taught French by French people. I insisted on going there for that very reason.
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By: carmelbird on February 23, 2023
at 2:12 pm
Very sensible.
Because we travelled so much, my parents thought that the best way for us to get a consistent education was for us to be taught by a specific order of Catholic nuns. We started off with French Catholic nuns in London, but had to switch to Irish ones somewhere along the line.
In those days, you were supposed to be Catholic to go to a Catholic school, but neither of my parents believed in God, and I never had a baptismal certificate so I suspect some kind of skullduggery.
The good thing was that I never learned that it was the natural way of things for men and boys to be in charge. This has served me well!
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By: Lisa Hill on February 23, 2023
at 2:53 pm
OMG – French nuns and then Irish nuns – I am all fleur-de-lis and shamrock with envy!
(I imagine that the French ladies secretly baptised you when you were not looking. It is quite a common practice. No need for a priest – just sprinkle with holy water and whisper the words.) Please tell me which order, if you would like to.
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By: carmelbird on February 23, 2023
at 4:19 pm
I don’t know who the French ones were, I was too little to remember. They wore a blue-grey habit.
The Irish ones were Presentation nuns, the same ones that taught Germaine Greer (but not her school). My mother’s standard procedure was to stake out the postman and when he arrived she would ask him where the nearest black-and-white nuns were.
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By: Lisa Hill on February 23, 2023
at 4:41 pm
The detail of your mother’s strategy with the postman is glorious. Please forgive me if I am asking too many questions, but was this education in New Zealand? If so, the French nuns could have perhaps been Notre Dame des Missions
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By: carmelbird on February 23, 2023
at 4:51 pm
No, they were in London. Somewhere in Chelsea.
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By: Lisa Hill on February 23, 2023
at 5:01 pm
The Faithful Companions of Jesus (French order – are at Genazzano in Kew) had a school in Hampstead which is 16 minutes from Chelsea. Could have been thqt…
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By: carmelbird on February 23, 2023
at 5:28 pm
Yes, maybe. But we used to walk, and I was only four. 16 minutes isn’t much to an adult, but to a child…
TBH I’m resigned to the fact that there are great swathes of my childhood where the details are lost. We were only there for six months, and I remember things much more interesting than school: watching the Guy Fawkes fireworks from the rooftop (where Joyce Grenfell used to snipe at my mother about the nappies drying in ‘her’ roof garden) and spending my pocket money on miniatures for my dolls house in the toy shop on the ground floor of the flat we were living in. (It became a Bang and Olafsen sound system shop in the Lady Di/Sloane Square era, but now it’s just a popup shop, either a victim of the pandemic or of Brexit or possibly both.)
I still have the china grandfather clock I bought, which is amazing because we shed so much stuff in our travels.)
And the stairs. Oh, my little legs hated those stairs!
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By: Lisa Hill on February 23, 2023
at 5:49 pm
Right. Long walk. However – I walked to primary school and it took about half an hour. Sometimes we got the tram
I love your memories of the china clock, and shopping in the toy shop
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By: carmelbird on February 23, 2023
at 6:17 pm
Yes, me too, when we were older. And yes, about half an hour, more when walking back up the hill in the hot afternoons.
When I come up to your neck of the woods for that cup of tea, I’ll tell you all about the strictly forbidden things we used to do when walking home. It’s a wonder I’m alive to tell the tale.
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By: Lisa Hill on February 23, 2023
at 6:31 pm
Ah – I can’t wait.
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By: carmelbird on February 23, 2023
at 7:16 pm
Ouf – I had to “do” Boule de Suif et autres contes de guerre for A-level French and I haven’t touched Maupassant since, I’m afraid!
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By: Liz Dexter on February 26, 2023
at 7:07 pm
Such a common story with books that are set texts.
I was so lucky… my Y12 English teacher at University HS was a wonderful man called Alec Pillar, and I’ve never forgotten the books we did with him.
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By: Lisa Hill on February 26, 2023
at 10:26 pm
I was fortunate not to have Hardy, Austen or Shakespeare ruined but our French teacher wasn’t great!
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By: Liz Dexter on February 28, 2023
at 7:23 pm
I don’t think any of our French teachers had ever been to France. My mother used to correct our accents all the time.
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By: Lisa Hill on February 28, 2023
at 9:51 pm