Bel Ami by Guy de Maupassant (1885)

A virile fantasy--the novel follows George Duroy, who, penniless at the start of the novel, ends up as one of the crème de la crème in Parisian high society.

Women are the conduit through which he achieves his great success. He seduces them through his youth, his beauty, and his moustache. (In one of Maupassant's short stories, a couple of Parisian women fantasize about the moustache; the moustache is a signifier of masculinity.) One by one, they name him as he ascends the hierarchy of Parisian society: he is baptized Bel Ami by the daughter of a lover, and from humble George Duroy he becomes George du Roy de Cantel; at the end of the novel, the premonition of his family name is realized as he reaches the top of the secular world (and figuratively becomes du roi).

Through the unlikely personage of George Duroy, was the masculine Maupassant displacing some of his own manly desires? Philippe Bonnefis in the Introduction remarks on the figure of Duroy that he is "le comble de la virilité. Armé d'un sexe à soulever les montagnes. Baguette magique [lol] des contes de notre enfance, le sexe de Duroy, tout simplement, accomplit des miracles." As noted above, the narrative reads like a fantasy, a myth, a Frenchman's wet dream; French high society succombs to the virility (i.e. magic baguette) of Duroy. It is a myth that promises unlimited social mobility.

The ideology of social mobility that the novel demonstrates interests me. The story was written almost 100 years after the fall of Louis XVI, the last king of France. There are rich parvenus and nouveau riches that socialize with the old landed gentry in the novel; Duroy names himself Baron of Cantel at some point, suggesting the plasticity of these titles. The Paris depicted in the novel seems to have transitioned well past these former feudal arrangements; Duroy originally comes to Paris to "faire fortune."

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