SOURCE: "Figures of Male Repute," in The Art of Rupture: Narrative Desire and Duplicity in the Tales of Guy de Maupassant, University of Michigan Press, 1994, pp. 111-41.

In the following excerpt, Stivale examines Maupassant's portrayal of the struggle between prostitutes and their environment through their relationships with les hommesfilles (men-harlots). The critic does this in three ways: by analyzing Maupassant's depiction of registered prostitutes; by studying the interactions between filles (prostitutes) and hommes filles; and by considering how women are depicted as "other" (for example, the lesbian woman, the exotic woman, or the anonymous woman).

Maupassant's strategic maneuvers of narrative desire and duplicity situate the social type that he calls I'hommefille as an ambiguous agent in various scenarios of the art of rupture. Writing in the Gil Blas, where he also published such chroniques as "Politiciennes" ["Women politicians"] and "La Guerre," Maupassant seems implicitly to identify himself, through...