SOURCE: "Maupassant's Inhibited Narrators," in Neophilologus, Vol. 81, No. 1, January, 1997, pp. 35-47.

In the following essay, Cogman discusses how Maupassant, in his disgust for censorship of any kind, demonstrated his desire to expose the shocking and the explicit (especially with regard to sexual matters) in his work.

"Ça se fait, tout le monde le sait, mais ça ne se dit pas, sauf nécessité."

Hautot père et fils¹

Early in his writing career, Maupassant had (like Flaubert before him) difficulties with the public censorship of the written word at the time. His poem Une Fille had been threatened with prosecution for "outrage à la morale publique et religieuse et aux bonnes moeurs" in 1880, and in 1883 Hachette had briefly banned Une Vie from sale on railway bookstalls. It is therefore not surprising to find him expressing vigorously opposition to censorship in his correspondence and his chroniques. He may be ready...