Analysis of Guy de Maupassant’s “Old Mother Savage” Essay

We be all taught that our identicalness lies in the roles we play throughout life, in different words, in our actions. William Shakespeare wrote, All the introductions a stage / And all the men and women merely players. / They stimulate their exits and their entrances (As You Like It, II, vii). Whenever people act outside of their parts whenever we miss our entrance, our individuality is altercated. This sewer be seen everyday in all walks of life and in all arenas. For example, a teen father who takes responsibility for his child is vista upon with surprised admiration while a teen mother is enumerate up with distain for becoming pregnant in the first place. Placing standards and expectations upon people nonify be a vastly good thing, alone what happens when those standards and expectations become withal rigidto all consuming?Rigid, all-consuming, roles swallow been required of women since time remembered. withal in the twenty-first century, the career woman is still expected to support a family. Gloria Steinhem puts it succinctly I survive yet to hear a man ask for advice on how to combine marriage and a career. hands are expected to place high priorities on their careers. The implication is that a man will receive less criticism for neglecting his family for his career, while a woman will be criticized sharply for having a career without also being an excellent wife and mother. Many of these personal identity operator feminine roles have been so inflexible that many women cannot break free in sound out to discovery the woman inside.When circumstances force them out of their traditional roles, they obtain themselves wondering, Who am I? What is my take aim? Guy de Maupassant in his short bill Old Mother Savage (1885) depicts a classic example of this. His master(prenominal) character is a mother in German occupied France who is divest of her identity roles i.e. wife and mother. Since she has nil else to give her life purpose, she becomes homicidal and a bit suicidal. In this romance, Maupassant is arguing that women who have uncompromising and limited identity roles can become violent to themselves and others.Maupassant paints a vivid picture of how nineteenth century countrywomen of France presented themselves to the world at large. The narrators help,Serval, describes her as not at all timidtall and gaunt, neither given to intercommunicate nor to being joked withthe men folk come in for a atomic fun at the inn, but the women are always very decorous (p. 161). Victoire Simon, Old Mother Savage, is a kind, yet reclusive woman. She had once offered the Maupassant wine-coloured when he passed by her bungalow fifteen years earlier tire and thirsty an obvious kindness (p. 160), yet Serval, Maupassants friend who tells the story of Old Mother Savage, implies that a staid attitude is normal for the women of the area.Maupassant presents his readers with a woman who has been taught very specific actions for conduct. She dresses so that her tightly bound gray-headed hair is never seen in public. She was taught indebtedness and never learned how to blossom out her mouth in laughter. By the time Maupassants readers meet Victoire, her identity is irrevocably tied to acting the duties of wife and mother. Just the equivalent all the other wives of the region, she is nothing without the duties of either wife and/or mother.Victoire has her identity challenged thrice. The first challenge occurres many years before when the father, an old poacher, had been centering by gendarmes police (p. 160). This provides a serious blow to her wife identity but she buries the lose because after all half her identity is still intactshe is still a mother. The role of mother is more prevalent than that of wife since, she cannot control the actions and their consequences of her husband. He, to approximately extent, failed in his role of husband and father by getting caught at poaching and subsequently sh ot for the offense. Victoire, on the other hand, is still around to perform all the motherly duties of keeping a basis, cooking meals, and jam clothes, which she does religiously.The second challenge to her identity comes when war is declared and her son, now thirty-three, goes to campaign in the Franco- Prussian War. Victoire is alone. She knows her duty but has no one to perform it for save for herself. Her life consists of going to the village once a week, to buy herself dinero and a little meat then get back home at once (p. 161). She does only what is necessary to keep herself alive until she can resume her duty as mother. In her mind there is nothing else for herno gossiping with the village ladies no sewing a tonic garment for herself no cups of tea with aneighbor. Her world ceases to function without her duty to her son.The death stroke to her identity began with the arrival of the Prussians. She is required to billet quadsome of the occupying German soldiers, since she was known to be well off (p. 161). These young men, somewhat the same age as her son would clean up the kitchen, set off the flagstones, chop wood, peel potatoes, wash the house-linendo, in fact, all the housework, as four good sons might do for their mother (p. 161). She would cook and mend for them, as a good mother would do. She still had a purposeto be a mother even if it was to surrogate sons. For a month these soldiers are sons not enemies then she receives word that her son has been killed in the war. Suddenly, her world is shatter without her son she has lost her last shred of purpose. The gendarmes had killed the father, the Prussians had killed the sonand suffering fill her heart (p. 162). With her husband buried for years, her son dead she has no identity and consequently no purpose in life. Within moments, she plans a finical form of revengenot only will others suffer as she has, not only will someone die for to avenge her son, but she will be sure to die in con sequence of her actions.Suddenly, the four German sons become four German soldiersthe enemy. Simple folk forefathert go in for the luxuries of patriotic hatredthe poor and lower-rankingpay the heaviest pricetheir masses are killed off wholesale (p. 162). Ones like these German soldiers billeting in her home murdered her boy. It is quite possible that she would have assumed a German mother was caring for her son like she was caring for the German men. She is, after all, a simple folk, who would not have much knowledge of the intricacies of war beyond the billeting of the German soldiers. Therefore, not only did German soldiers kill her son, but also a German mother failed in her duty toward her son. Through a carefully put to death plan conceived in the brief afternoon of discovering the fate of her son, Victoire kills the soldiers. She burns her cottage to the ground with the soldiers trapped inside. When the German Officer asks her how the fire started, she said, I illumine it, myself. She tooktwo papers from her pocket.Thats about Victors her son death. Thats their names, so that you can write to their homes. Tell them the German mothers how it happened, and tell them it was I whodid it, Victoire Simon, that they call the Savage. Dont forget. In order to ease her grief, she cherished other mothers to suffer as much as she was suffering. She knew she would be shot for her actions she was probably counting on it. She could easily have lied. She could have told the German Officer just about any excuse, but she didnt. What did she have to live for? She had no purpose for living without her husband and son. Her society, by placing limited and continue identity roles on its women, robbed her of the ability to discover an identity within herself shed light on from family. Therefore, she did the only thing she could dotake revenge on the closest target and be sure she did not survive the experience.Maupassant, in 5 short pages, presents a compelling argumen t for the avoidance of limiting women with sumptuary identity roles. Disastrous consequences are all too likely to consequent from their removal. Consequences that go beyond the death of four soldiers and their murder, the narrators friend Serval had his chateau burned down by the Prussians due to Victoires actions. If her identity had been broaderif she knew herself outside of societal-imposed roles, she then may have had something to cling toa purpose in life rather than a kamikaze plan of revenge.