4 h 33 minAudiobook4 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at costPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What if beauty is a gift that gives you nothing you need?
In Useless Beauty, Guy de Maupassant takes you into wealthy drawing rooms and onto country roads, where people want more than they admit. They seek a person, a position, or a little more money. Beneath their manners lies a harder question: how does society treat the people within it, especially women?
The title story, Inutile beauté, asks what beauty is for when the world has no use for it. Across this collection of French short stories, Maupassant explores desire and the cruelty hidden in custom. Each brief story gathers around a sharp situation, letting a single scene reveal what respectable appearances can conceal.
What you’ll discover
- Beauty as a burden Explore the title story’s unsettling question about a gift that may serve no real need.
- Wants left unspoken Meet people whose hunger for love, position, or money stays hidden beneath what they say.
- Cruelty in good manners Look beneath respectable customs to see the harsh expectations they place on people.
- Drawing rooms and roads Move between wealthy interiors and country roads, following people who conceal how much they want.
- A scene that stays Discover how a brief, precise story lets one situation carry a sharp and lasting point.
Who will love it
For readers who love short, precise fiction and stories about money, marriage and manners, or anyone seeking a first taste of Maupassant’s explorations of beauty, desire and polite society.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- Beauty can be a burden, not a prize
- Desire drives people more than they admit
- Society hides its cruelty behind good manners
- Brief form, clear eye, lasting effect
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- Large print hardcover
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La inútil belleza
by Guy de Maupassant · 1890
In a wealthy Parisian marriage, a woman's beauty brings admiration but little freedom.
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From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1 of 4
Beauty can be a burden, not a prize
The title story starts from a hard question. What is beauty for, if the world around it has no use for it? Maupassant sets this inside a wealthy Parisian marriage, where a woman admired for her looks lives under the control of a husband who thinks of her as his possession.
In his view, beauty brings attention but not freedom. People praise a lovely woman and then expect her to serve their wishes. The praise is a kind of ownership, and it gives her little power over her own life.
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What is Useless Beauty by Guy de Maupassant about?
It is a collection of short stories centered on beauty, desire and the unspoken cruelty of social life. The title story looks at a woman whose looks bring admiration but little freedom inside a wealthy Parisian marriage.
What does the title Useless Beauty mean?
The French title is Inutile beauté. It points to the idea that beauty can be admired yet serve no real purpose for the person who has it, or for a world that treats it as a possession.
When was Useless Beauty written?
The title story, Inutile beauté, appeared in 1890, late in Maupassant's short career. The stories are fiction, but they draw on the real society of nineteenth century France, especially Paris and Normandy.
The author
Guy de Maupassant
1850–1893 · French novelist and story writer
Guy de Maupassant was a French writer born in Normandy in 1850. He wrote short stories and novels, including A Woman’s Life (1883), Bel-Ami (1885), The Horla (1887), and Pierre and Jean (1888). He lived in France, worked as a government clerk in Paris, and died in Paris in 1893.
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