large and appreciative audience among general readers and critics with his highly developed powers of observation. He is saying that real virtue is something people have; it is not something they talk about. Women characters in Maupassant's stories monopolize heroic efforts. It was evident to him that conventional morality was shaped in such as to suppress the female in favor of the male. He depicts the situation of the unhappy and undutiful married woman. In his personal life he had the reputation for being a misogynist. Most of his characters are Normandy peasants. Subject to autoscopic hallucinations, pathological loneliness, and suicidal tendencies, reflect some of the pain of struggle with fatal malady. He is continually troubling himself with the question of why mind was given dominion over its own futility, just as the hero of the masterpiece, Pierre and Jean, troubles himself over the absurdity of being forced to accept the unacceptable. Such, for Maupassant, was the profit of giving thought to the meaning of life. That is why he preferred to observe and present what could be seen with the eye. (Wallace 199) The "Madame Tellier’s Establishment", is critiqued by Dylan Blackman. And in his review of the story he states the following. Maupassant is regarded as one of the best short story writers of all time; a reputation based on his gift for detailed observation, his sinful prose style, and his incisive characterization. "Madame Tellier's Establishment' features a juxtaposition of apparently incongruous elements common in Maupassant's fiction in this case, prostitution and religion. Although this story is similar to the earlier, much respected "Boule de Suif 'in its use of prostitutes as characters, "Madame Tellier's Establishment" is farcical in intent and lighthearted in tone. Nevertheless, it provides a revealing glimpse into human nature in a relatively nonjudgmental portrayal. The story is also distinguished for its re...
