4 h 33 minAudiobook14 minSummaryRead it, hear it, the 15-minute summary, and print and large print at cost
Audiobook edition · 4 h 33 minPaperback · 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 enjoy incisive short stories about love, jealousy and vanity will love this collection. It suits those drawn to Paris, Provence and Normandy, darkly wry humor, and hidden lives.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- A secret becomes a weapon
- Beauty stands apart from nature
- The past arrives at the door
- Tenderness and fear share the water
- Doubt and vanity disturb ordinary lives
- Appearances leave important things unseen
- Private dreams loosen reality's hold
- Protecting an image carries a cost
- Pride meets what it cannot control
Who’s who
- Countess Gabrielle de MascaretA beautiful mother of seven who has had enough of her jealous husband and fights back with a single oath.
- Count de MascaretA rich, tall, violent husband who rules his house through jealousy and cannot bear not knowing the truth.
- Abbé VilboisA strong, proud village priest in Provence who left a rich Paris life after a love betrayed him.
- Philippe-AugusteA ragged young drifter who arrives at the priest's door with an old photograph and wants to be recognized as a son.
- MoucheA quick-tongued Parisian girl who steers the boaters' skiff and dreams up a glorious future for her unborn child.
- PatinA Fécamp fishing skipper and brute who curses and beats the wife he blames for his own choice.
- Captain RevalièreA former army officer who lost both feet in the war and travels home by train with gifts for children.
- PavillyA lanky, red-haired farm clown who makes everyone laugh and wants only pleasure, drink and a soft bed.
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Useless Beauty
by Guy de Maupassant · 1890
A wife tells her husband that one of their seven children is not his, and he cannot find out which.
Medium level2–5 hours to read16 languages
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In short
What would you do if your wife swore before an altar that one of your seven children belongs to another man, and then refused to say which one? Useless Beauty begins in a Paris courtyard, where a victoria waits on a warm June afternoon.
Useless Beauty at a glance
- Reading time
- About 2 h 40 min2 h 5 min fast, 3 h 10 min slow
- Length
- 37,600 words
- Library level
- Medium longer sentences, everyday words
- First published
- 1890by Guy de Maupassant
Reading time at 238 words a minute (fast 300, slow 200). How long the classics take to read · Updated
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
A wife turns one secret into a weapon
Useless Beauty opens at half past five on a June afternoon. The Countess de Mascaret steps into her victoria. Her husband comes through the gate, and the sight of her stirs the old jealousy that has eaten at him for years.
The carriage rolls up the Champs-Élysées, and he tries to speak kindly. She is thirty, she says, and she has borne seven children in eleven years. She claims he did it on purpose, because a jealous man hopes that a woman who is always pregnant will stop drawing other eyes. The count seizes her wrist and says the law is on his side. She does not give way.
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Which edition is right for me
- 15-minute summary
- The key ideas of the whole book in about 14 minutes. A good first look, or a refresher.
Details
- First published
- 1890
- Language
- English
- Reading time
- 2 h 55 min
- Level
- Medium level
Cite this edition
Maupassant, Guy de. Useless Beauty. Library of Alexandria, 2026, libraryofalexandria.com/products/useless-beauty.
Maupassant, G. de. (2026). Useless beauty. Library of Alexandria. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/useless-beauty (Original work published 1890)
Maupassant, Guy de. Useless Beauty. Library of Alexandria, 2026. https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/useless-beauty.
@book{maupassant2026useless,
author = {Maupassant, Guy de},
title = {Useless Beauty},
publisher = {Library of Alexandria},
year = {2026},
url = {https://libraryofalexandria.com/products/useless-beauty},
note = {First published 1890}
}
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What is Useless Beauty by Guy de Maupassant about?
It is a collection of eleven short stories about love, jealousy, vanity and hidden cruelty. The title story follows a countess who defies her controlling husband, and the other tales visit priests, boaters, fishermen, clowns, couples and a man haunted by his own furniture.
Is Useless Beauty a novel or a set of separate stories?
It is a set of separate short stories. Each tale has its own characters and setting, from a Paris carriage to a Provençal olive grove and a Normandy fishing town, and each can be read on its own in one sitting.
What does the title Useless Beauty mean?
In the title story, a young man at the Opera argues that beauty, art and elegance serve no purpose for nature but are the best things humans have made. The countess is his chief example of beauty that exists only to be admired.
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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