Everand Logo

Welcome to Everand!

  • Discover millions of ebooks, audiobooks, and so much more with a free trial

    Only $11.99/month after trial. Cancel anytime.

    A Study Guide for Guy de Maupassant's "The Jewels"
    A Study Guide for Guy de Maupassant's "The Jewels"
    A Study Guide for Guy de Maupassant's "The Jewels"
    Ebook36 pages17 minutes

    A Study Guide for Guy de Maupassant's "The Jewels"

    By Gale and Cengage

    ()

    Read preview

    About this ebook

    A Study Guide for Guy de Maupassant's "The Jewels," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Short Stories for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Short Stories for Students for all of your research needs.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherCengage Learning - Gale
    Release dateJul 27, 2016
    ISBN9781535837613
    A Study Guide for Guy de Maupassant's "The Jewels"

    Read more from Gale

    Related to A Study Guide for Guy de Maupassant's "The Jewels"

    Related ebooks

    Teaching Methods & Materials For You

    View More
    View More

    Related podcast episodes

    Related articles

    • Article

      Holiday Reads By The Recently Departed

      Jul 27, 2023

      FOR THIS YEAR’S HOLIDAY READING special — where The Critic suggests some older fiction that might more profitably fill your beach-y or gîte-y afternoons than the latest screamers from the bestseller lists — the theme is, well, death in summer. We off

      6 min read

    • Article

      Autumn Reading

      Mar 25, 2020

      A charming novel about a ready-to-retire Paris psychiatrist, who is counting the hours until his final session. Our protagonist has never spoken to his next-door neighbour, although he hears the old gent rattling around at night. He has never enquire

      7 min read

    • Article

      Family Matters

      Oct 16, 2023

      WATCH US DANCE by Leïla Slimani, translated by Sam Taylor (Faber, $36.99) French Moroccan Leïla Slimani shot to fame with her second novel, Chanson Douce (Lullaby), inspired by the murder of two small children in New York by their nanny. This was Sli

      3 min read

    • Article

      Great Read

      Nov 2, 2023

      Great Read
      8 min read

    • Article

      Temporary Paradise

      Oct 7, 2020

      Temporary Paradise
      6 min read

    • Article

      THE Reading room

      Mar 25, 2020

      THE Reading room
      5 min read

    • Article

      Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Scott, Bucak, Zeh, Steinberg, and More

      Aug 20, 2019

      An intriguing near-future dystopian thriller, two innovative short story collections, and a remarkable portrait of Britain at its Brexit inflection point. The post Tuesday New Release Day: Starring Scott, Bucak, Zeh, Steinberg, and More appeared firs

      5 min read

    • Article

      Books

      May 25, 2020

      In this novel, set amid the Spanish Civil War, Isabel Allende gives us a short but incisive account of the horrors of war, as seen through the eyes of the Dalmau family from Barcelona, the Republican forces’ centre. It’s 1938, and the Republicans are

      5 min read

    • Article

      Previews

      May 12, 2019

      Previews
      2 min read

    • Article

      Great Read

      Jan 26, 2022

      Great Read
      5 min read

    • Article

      Great Escape

      Oct 29, 2021

      This enthralling novel is set during the Wars of Religion, the conflict that took place between Catholics and the Protestants known as Huguenots in 16th-century France. It’s a sequel that opens in 1572, 10 years after the nail-biting events of the pr

      2 min read

    • Article

      Stranger Than Fiction

      Apr 12, 2024

      Stranger Than Fiction
      5 min read

    • Article

      Dust & grit

      Feb 28, 2021

      Dust & grit
      2 min read

    • Article

      The William Trevor Reader: “The Bedroom Eyes of Mrs. Vansittart”

      Nov 3, 2022

      This story shows an author at the height of his powers, trying something he hasn't done before. The post The William Trevor Reader: “The Bedroom Eyes of Mrs. Vansittart” appeared first on The Millions.

      3 min read

    • Article

      Book Club

      Oct 12, 2023

      Book Club
      5 min read

    • Article

      Great Read

      Apr 18, 2024

      Great Read
      7 min read

    • Article

      Great Read

      Nov 2, 2023

      Great Read
      3 min read

    • Article

      Have Pen, WILL TRAVEL

      Jun 15, 2020

      Have Pen, WILL TRAVEL
      6 min read

    • Article

      Going Round In Crop Circles

      Aug 17, 2022

      Going Round In Crop Circles
      6 min read

    • Article

      Books

      Feb 27, 2023

      Books
      5 min read

    Related categories

    Reviews for A Study Guide for Guy de Maupassant's "The Jewels"

    0 ratings

    0 ratings0 reviews

    What did you think?

    Tap to rate

    Review must be at least 10 words

      Book preview

      A Study Guide for Guy de Maupassant's "The Jewels" - Gale

      10

      The Jewels

      Guy De Maupassant

      1880

      Introduction

      The Jewels, first published in 1880, is one of several hundred stories penned by Guy de Maupassant during his meteoric ten-year writing career. In theme and style it is similar to many of his other stories Through the dispassionate eye of an invisible narrator, it examines the hypocrisy of humankind and implies that the roots of this hypocrisy lie in the capitalist system.

      The Jewels recounts the story of Monsieur Lantin, an unimportant clerk in a government ministry similar to the ones in which Maupassant himself toiled for many miserable years. Through various plot twists it is revealed that Monsieur Lantin's wife had extensively cheated on him during their marriage, receiving from her lovers many pieces of expensive jewelry, which Monsieur Lantin had assumed were fake. After her death he cashes them in for an enormous amount of money and drowns whatever grief he may have felt at her death in a new life of conspicuous consumption and ostentatious displays of his newfound wealth.

      Like all of Maupassant's best writing, The Jewels is a short and direct piece. The characters pursue their needs in the blind and desperate fashion of animals and learn nothing from their disappointments and failures. Through such characters, Maupassant espouses a bleak view of human nature—it seems that he holds out no hope for people changing unless the conditions that create their selfish desperation change first.

      Author Biography

      Guy de Maupassant was born on August 5, 1850, into a wealthy and artistic family with pretensions of greater grandeur: just before his birth, his parents rented the eighteenth-century Chateau de Miromesnil near Dieppe, France, so he could be born into luxury. However, baby Guy came early and so was actually born at the modest home of his grandmother thirty miles away. Maupassant was christened at Miromesnil, though, and his mother, Laure, maintained the fiction throughout her life that her son had been born at the chateau. Such social pretension, and its tragic futility, would become Maupassant's main subject matter as a writer.

      After years of unhappiness, Maupassant's parents separated when he was eleven, a situation that caused the first of many

      Enjoying the preview?
      Page 1 of 1