Product Description

Butterball is Maupassant's most critically acclaimed short story. Set during the Franco-Prussian war, it is a sympathetic and original portrayal of a prostitute's mistreatment at the hands of a cold-hearted bourgeoisie. When Butterball's carriage is halted by Prussian soldiers, they demand her sexual services in ransom. Her fellow passengers - hitherto so disdainful of her company - are suddenly more than happy to benefit from her 'immoral' trade. But Butterball is a loyal French nationalist: and she refuses on principle to sleep with the enemy. Through the warmth and generosity of his prostitute heroine, Maupassant exposes the hypocrisy of the French middle-classes.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #799765 in Books
• Published on: 2003-05-29
• Original language: French
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 128 pages

From the Back Cover
Guy de Maupassant was a brilliant French novelist and short-story writer. Mentored by Flaubert and writing alongside Zola, Maupassant was acclaimed in his lifetime for his penetrating psychological realism and the lucid objectivity of his writing. Among his best-known works are the novels Bel-Ami and Une vie, but it is his short stories on which his reputation largely stands. Maupassant’s style has been widely imitated and his influence can be seen in such prose writers as O. Henry and Somerset Maugham.

Writer and feminist Germaine Greer is most famous for her hugely influential feminist treatise The Female Eunuch.

About the Author
The French writer and novelist Guy de Maupassant (1850-1893) was a literary disciple of Flaubert and Zola. He is most famous for his short stories which depict the humdrum fate of the middle- and working-classes. Born in Australia, writer and feminist Germaine Greer is most famous for the hugely influential feminist treatise: The Female Eunuch.

Excerpted from Butterball by Guy Maupassant de, Andrew Brown. Copyright © 2003. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.
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. Her face was a russet apple, a peony bud about to flower; above, two magnificent black eyes opened wide, shaded by great thick eyelashes that cast a shadow all around; and below, a charming mouth, with pursed lips all moist for kissing, well furnished with gleaming microscopic baby teeth.
Furthermore she was said to be full of the most inestimable talents.