Month: September 2012

The short story Toine by Guy de Maupassant presents the narrative of a man whose sudden medical condition turns into an opportunity to become a father. I will first discuss themes of the story then the writing style .

Toine is a bon vivant greatly appreciated by the people of his county. Right at the beginning, the reader can grasp his character by the way Maupassant introduces several positive monikers to name Toine (le gros Toine, Toi-ma-fine, Brûlot). The name Toine – the story title – itself is a nickname. Toine is an important person of his county ; the whole hamlet seems to be his property.

He seems however to be the antithesis of his wife, who’s described as beeing ‘‘born ill-tempered, and (going) through life in a mood of perpetual discontent.’’ They constantly fight – Toine in an humoristic way, his wife with real anger. Her anger towards her husband surely comes from the fact thet he doesn’t contribute much to the production while she constantly works to be more efficient. The wife’s expression, ‘‘Wait a bit! Wait a bit! You’ll see what’ll happen. He’ll burst like a sack of grain!”, mentionned at the end of every argument, foreshadows Toine’s sad destiny. (It is important to note that Maupassant’s use of past tenses to describe Toine’s life also hints at Toine’s life change – his attack and new condition).

After the attack, Toine is confined to his bed. His friends start to visit him in his room and Toine enjoys life almost as before, which upsets his wife. At this point the balance of power changes and Toine must now follow his wife’s orders. The jovial Toine becomes anxious and docile in front of his wife who’s quite decided to make her husband productive. She makes him brood eggs under his big arms as if they are wings (what he had mentioned – but surely not thought true – earlier in the story).

At the end, Toine becomes proud when finding a paternity that he never had : the chicks that he brooded became, in some way, his children. And when he calls his friend son-in-law, that time it is almost true.

Style

The writing has interesting, constrasting aspects in both its form and register. The text has a fluidity almost as though it is told in oral tradition. Many sentences or paragraphs start with a coordinating conjunction (and, but) as if the story was coming out of a mouth without pausing. While it possesses this characteristic, the writing style is highly literary. In the narration, the simple past – a literary tense – is constantly used.

Another important contrast is the gap between the register used in the narration and that of the dialogue. The use of the simple past, sentence constructions and vocabulary used in the narration contribute to the literary register. On the other hand, dialogue is written such that we can almost imagine French peasants speaking in the 19th century countryside. From the simple syntax and colloquial words used as well as ellipsis (like in these lines: ‘‘J’verrons c’qu’arrivera’’, ‘‘Qué que tu veux ?’’, ‘‘Pourquoi que tu ne bé point la mé, pé Toine ?’’), the register used for dialogues is popular.

Finally, the story has the feel of a legend. Toine’s and his wife’s personalities seem exaggerated, but it really is the description of the brooding and the chicks’ birth that make the story special : there was a great ‘‘commotion’’, ‘‘newcomers filled the bar’’ asking how many chicks there were, it was a ‘‘triumph’’ ! This singular paternity surely contributes to making Toine a legendary character.

Karen O’Regan

The Uncanny in Guy de Maupassant’s Toine

In Toine, Guy de Maupassant’s realistic style evokes the familiar images of peasant life only to subvert reality with the uncanny predicament of a paralyzed innkeeper forced to hatch eggs. Initially, the humorous description of rural life entertains the reader as impartial observer. Soon, however, the author’s use of the absurd forces his audience to participate in the creation of the text and reflect on the unresolved denouement.

While the linear narrative begins in a deceptively traditional manner, interpreting the text becomes increasingly problematic as the tale unfolds. An omniscient narrator introduces the characters and the environment that governs their behaviour. As with the rest of the natural world, the peasants’ physical needs are the focus of their lives. Thus, Toine resembles a pig, his wife a bird of prey, and later their friends are compared with a fox and a tree. The dehumanizing descriptions are humorous at first while the reader retains the position of spectator. However, the distance between the observer and the observed soon diminishes.

The reader begins to identify with the characters when they display certain human qualities. The innkeeper is first likeable because of his social nature and his affinity for physical pleasure, and his wife less so for her puritan work ethic. However, when the second and central action of the text reveals the unsettling strangeness of Toine’s situation, his weaknesses appear less comical and more disturbing. The unfortunate innkeeper has become a rather pathetic figure, inspiring both sympathy and revulsion. This ambivalence undermines a binary world of good and evil, and reflects the ambiguity of social mores. In this way, the text presents a mirror (the same yet different) image of the world that challenges the reader’s perception of reality. As a result, the reader participates actively in the narrative in an effort to interpret the text.

The rupture with reality is complete when Toine is asked to hatch the eggs. A plausible situation becomes fantastical, and the resulting confusion of the reader reflects that of the villagers. This blurring of the line between the possible and the impossible creates a liminal space in which the reader can create a new ‘truth’ or understanding of the world.

The concluding scene invites the reader to contemplate a reality outside of common experience. The protagonist has come to terms with his fate, yet the reader remains unsure of the outcome. Accustomed to the short story format, which traditionally propels the narrative towards closure, the reader is left perplexed and forced to examine why it is difficult to appreciate the character’s happiness. Ultimately, the innkeeper is imprisoned in a hell of his and his puritanical wife’s making. Moreover, all those around him are both products of and fodder for his insatiable pursuit of pleasure and her determination to control this weakness. Even Prosper Horsville falls victim to Toine, the progenitor of all his gendres, for his cleverness has turned him into yet another of Toine’s chicks. The characters in Maupassant’s looking glass are both victims and perpetrators of the violence done to them, and as their doubles his readers must re-evaluate their conception of reality.

FHIS 501

Toine: Staying on Top

Sometimes it is difficult to determine what is good and/or what is bad. The difficulty lies, perhaps, in the subjective experience or learned values of he or she who gazes at a situation to be contemplated. Determining then whether something is good or bad may be irrelevant because of the varying opinions the situation or object in question may generate. There is however something that remains from anyone who gazes. It is precisely the gaze that remains. Then, if the gaze was not altered with the subjective values or the use of polarizing language to describe or explain, the gaze is an objective text that can be read and effectively argued. Guy de Maupassant offers an “objective” gaze of a place and of a people in the short story Toine.

Toine is the man that gives his name to the story and therefore much attention, focus, is vested onto his character. In this story he is the character that would be impossible to say that he is anything but a good man. That however does not seem to be the stories objective to show that he is good or to show that he is bad. In this objective gaze, let’s remember that that is realisms objective, we easily see what ‘seems to be’, Toine is a Jolly good fellow who gets fat, has a nagging wife, and then has health problems, but it is also easy to miss, perhaps because of this happy, pleasant fellow, the connections that can be made with the material which makes up this gaze, the words, the language. In his town, in his land, Toine is a man of power, and as such must maintain that power, stay on top, by any means, even in the sneakiest of ways, sneaky because he doesn’t resort to violence but rather other undetected methods that allow things to go on as they should, as he wants them to be.

It would be difficult to make a full analysis in a short blog post but the argument, an observation in the text, has been made. A few examples can be given in support of this, although without deep explanation. First there is the opening of the text. It is the start of the gaze into Toine’s life but also into the dynamic of the town area where the story takes place. It describes Toine and his importance in the land. He is talked about and recognized as a focal point, perhaps he is even liked. Then the story presents him personally. He is a man that ‘gives back to the people’, even if just a drink or one meal, a man that uses language, humor, to maintain those important around him. The use of this language can be said to create subjects for Toine; people whom he has persuaded. After this, there is an underlying fact that is also symbolically connected to his growing body, this is his growing wealth. He takes and he grows without giving anything substantial back. The contrast to him is his wife, nagging wife who hates him, and has been described as a “peasant woman”.  This is the only person whom he has a problem with, and the only person who hates him for his bodily and wealth growth while she herself must do peasant work.

At the end we have a particular situation. Toine seems to be emotionally changed by the birth of the chicks, which “he has birthed”.  But in a matter of moments he turns to having no care for life in order to give a gift, perhaps a gift of persuasion, perhaps a gift of pleasure. At work in the text are politics such as politics of life, social division, and wealth distribution shown in conjunction with, or underneath, the image of a pleasant man and the land of which he is lord.