4 h 33 minAudiobook12 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
Readers who love sharp, short tales of marriage, vanity and desire will find eleven of them here, from Paris ballrooms to a Provençal olive grove, each told with a clear eye for what people hide from one another.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A countess defies her jealous husband
- Years pass but the doubt stays
- A priest meets the son he never knew
- Two river tales of love and ghosts
- Husbands, wives and the lies of charm
- Strange loves and a furniture that walks
- A haunted house and what binds the tales
Who’s who
- Countess de MascaretA beautiful mother of seven who refuses to be treated as a breeder of heirs and strikes back at her jealous husband.
- Count de MascaretA proud, red-bearded husband whose jealousy shapes his marriage and leaves him tormented by one question about his children.
- Abbé VilboisA strong, proud village priest in Provence who once loved an actress and now faces a young man claiming to be his son.
- Philippe-AugusteA ragged, drunken vagabond with the priest's face, who wants money and shelter and boasts of his crimes.
- MoucheA funny, tipsy Parisian girl who steers the boat of five friends and dreams extravagant futures for her unborn child.
- Mother PatinA timid fishwife, beaten for ten years by her husband, who hears his voice again after his death at sea.
- PavillyA tall, ugly peasant clown who makes people laugh and wants only wine, women and a little pleasure.
- MadeleineThe faithful wife of an aging hairdresser who dances in a mask, and who has loved him through years of pain.
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- Large-print eBook
- The same book in bigger, clearer type, from the first page.
- Audiobook
- 4 h 33 min, complete, read by Lucas Linden.
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas in about 12 minutes, to read or to hear.
- Paperback
- 6 × 9 in. Printing soon: leave your email under Paperback or Hardcover above.
- Hardcover
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- Large print paperback
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- Large print hardcover
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Useless Beauty
by Guy de Maupassant · 1890
A countess tells her husband in a church that one of their seven children is not his, and he cannot guess which.
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In short
Useless Beauty is a collection of eleven short stories by Guy de Maupassant, the French storyteller who died in 1893. The tales are set in Paris, on the Seine, in Normandy and in Provence, and most of them last only a few pages.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A countess defies her jealous husband
The title story opens on a June afternoon in Paris. The Countess de Mascaret steps into her victoria, drawn by two black horses, just as her husband comes home. He is a tall, red-bearded man whom society thinks a perfect husband and father. She is thirty, slender and strikingly lovely, and she has borne seven children in eleven years. He climbs in beside her and tries to touch her gloved hand, and she pulls away in open disgust.
Then she tells him everything she has kept inside. She says he married her against her will, buying her from parents in money trouble. She says his jealousy of every admirer led him to a cruel plan, which was to keep her pregnant so that no man would look at her. He loved the children, she says, as trophies won over her beauty and her youth. He seizes her wrist and reminds her that the law makes him master, and she answers with tears of pain and no fear.
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What is Useless Beauty about?
It is a collection of eleven short stories by Guy de Maupassant about marriage, desire, jealousy and vanity. The title story follows a countess who refuses to bear more children, and the others range from a haunted house to a hospital farce.
Which stories are in Useless Beauty?
The book holds Useless Beauty, The Olive Grove, Memories of a Boater, The Drowned Man, The Test, The Mask, A Portrait, The Crippled Man, The 25 Francs from the Mother Superior, A Divorce Case and Who Knows.
Why is the story called Useless Beauty?
The title points to a woman admired by all of Paris, whose beauty seems to serve no purpose except admiration. A friend argues that civilization exists to create such beauty, while her husband treats her as a breeder of heirs.
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.
More by Guy de Maupassant
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