Yvette
1884
In Parisian society, innocence is a commodity and youth is prey. Maupassant follows Yvette, a beautiful young woman whose mother has groomed her for an advantageous marriage, into a world of predatory suitors and hollow social rituals. When Jean de Servigny cruelly reveals the truth, that Yvette is considered desirable for pleasure but not for marriage, the girl's entire understanding of her world shatters. She flees like a wounded animal, carrying within her the first wound of adult knowledge: that she has been marked as a mistress, not a wife. This is Maupassant at his most incisive, dissecting the machinery of a society that celebrates youth and beauty while systematically destroying both.
