"What is the most perfect life in your opinion?" ”
In many answers, I saw different answers: where there is a perfect life, life has never been perfect, but a life of ups and downs, everyone is trying to live a good life.
Indeed, people's lives are long and short, from children crying and crying to twilight flowers, the long road of life everyone experiences different life encounters.
But the end of our lives is the same.
No one's life is perfect, and no one's life is terrible.
In the vast universe, we are so small that we are even like a floating dust, falling somewhere in the world after experiencing the wind and frost of the years, becoming eternal.
In "A Lifetime", Maupassant uses the life of a noble girl Yana to explain to us the meaning and value of this life.
As he says in the book, "Life can't be as good as you think, but it can't be as bad as you think." ”
01
A girl's love vision
Yana was born into an old-fashioned aristocratic family, and her father, Baron Devo, advocated theory and developed a whole plan for Yana's education.
He wanted to raise his daughter to be a kind, upright and gentle woman.
At the age of 12, Yana was sent to the monastery by the Baron to board, and began a 5-year period of seclusion and isolation.
Growing up in such an environment, Yana is simple and kind, and has beautiful fantasies about love.
Yana has a maid Rosalie who grew up with a green plum bamboo horse, a tall girl with a healthy posture.
In their youthful age, at night, they had fantasized about beautiful love together.
In her dreams, Yana fantasized about what Prince Charming would be like for the rest of her life.
She envisions the future of living with the people she loves, and also envisions the happy scene of raising a pair of children with her partner.
Although all this is the dream of Yana's maiden, it is also the kind and simple Yana who believes that life should be as it should be.
Yana's parents also loved each other, and the family sold their original manor and moved to the poplar farm, living a peaceful and fulfilling life.
It was not until Jana and the Baroness met the young Viscount Julien de Lamar through the priest's introduction at a Sunday Mass.
Yulian was gentle and elegant, and his appearance was outstanding, and Yana was deeply impressed by him.
The Baroness also admired the young man, and since then, Jullien has become a regular visitor to the Poplar Farm.
The two young men get closer and closer, and under the pursuit of Yu Lian, Yana soon falls in love.
02
Expose the ugly face
Soon after Jullien and Yana were together, they proposed to Yana. After that, they quickly got engaged and had a wedding.
It all seemed like a dream to Yana, she and her "Prince Charming" entered into marriage, and she also changed from a girl to someone else's wife.
Yana is still dreaming of a better life in the future, looking forward to entering the married life she dreamed of as a teenager.
Before entering marriage, Yana was like a flower protected by her parents in the greenhouse, pure, kind, and at the same time innocently fantasizing about the beauty of her future life.
But everything was different from what Yana had imagined.
From the wedding night, Jullien became strange to Yana, Yana rejected Yulian's physical contact with her, and she was still so strange to the love and desire between the two people.
It wasn't until their honeymoon trip to Corsica, when the newlyweds were playing in the valley springs, that Yana completed her transformation of sexual awakening.
But after marriage, Jullien is very different from before marriage, he is no longer gentle with Yana, only physical carnal desire for her, and he no longer does his best to please Yana.
Jullien became miserly and rude, and after returning from his honeymoon, he stopped going to Yana's room, and he no longer deliberately decorated his appearance.
At the same time, Jullien entered the Poplar Farm as a son-in-law, took charge of the size of the Poplar Farm, and treated the servants with meanness and miserliness, as did Yana and her parents.
Yana endured this kind of Yu Lian.
We are often carried away by love and unable to see the true face of a person, Jullien's disguise and insidiousness, Yana's kindness and simplicity, and their union is destined to be the beginning of tragedy.
Yana's little maid Rosalie also became more and more strange, until Rosalie gave birth unexpectedly, and Yana discovered Rosalie's abnormality.
Rosalie decided not to mention who the father of the child was, and Jullien was determined to kick Rosalie and the child out, which was a scandal for their family.
However, Yana stumbles upon Lian sleeping in Rosalie's room, only to discover that they have an abnormal relationship.
Yana is devastated and tries to jump off a cliff to end her life, but is saved, after which Yana falls seriously ill.
Yana, who had just recovered from a serious illness, found herself pregnant.
The Barons saw that Yana, whom they had grown up with care, was treated in such a way and wanted to punish Yulian.
But the priest was no longer surprised by the adultery, and he regarded even his actions as the mistakes of men, just as the baron himself would cheat on his maid.
Yana and the Baron could only choose to forgive Yulian.
Yana's parents found a family for Rosalie and gave her a high dowry to marry with her children, which was also the last kindness to Rosalie.
03
Good and evil will bear fruit
Yana had already given birth to a child with Jullien, named Paul.
The arrival of the child rekindled the hope of life, and she no longer focused her mind on Jullien, but loved her son wholeheartedly.
Marriage shatters all the beautiful fantasies of Yana's girlhood, the birth of a child makes her look forward to a better life, and her love for her son is almost fanatical.
Jullien was still stingy with the family, but Yana didn't care so much about his behavior.
And Yu Lianjiangshan's easy to change his nature, he and the Countess of Fuville's wife secretly had an affair, all of which Yana saw in her eyes, but she did not think so.
Yana's mother tragically died, and Yana was immersed in the pain of losing her mother, but found evidence of her mother's secret affair while sorting through her mother's letters.
Everything looks so beautiful, but under all the beauty there are many untold dirt and secrets, just like Yana's parents, they are good and pure in Yana's heart, but they betray each other.
Yana's fantasy of beautiful love was completely shattered.
Paul's serious illness frightened Yana, and after Paul recovered from her illness, Yana had the idea of having another daughter, but Yana was unable to act like a mother.
With the help of the priest, she finally got her wish to conceive the child.
When everyone, including Yana, felt that happiness was coming, Jullien and Madame Foveier's affair was denounced by the new priest, who was pushed off a cliff by count Fuville in retaliation and died a terrible death.
Yana was in great pain, and she collapsed under extreme sadness, and because of this, she miscarried and gave birth to a dead baby, a girl.
Even if Jullien betrayed her, after Yulian's death, Yana remembered the good times she and Yulian had together.
In the relationship between Yana and Jullien, there is no equality and no deep understanding, and the kind Yana is deceived by Yulian's appearance and rushes into marriage, which is also the main reason for her tragic marriage.
04
The consequence of coddling
From the day julian died, her son Paul was the source of Hope and Happiness for Yana to live, and Yana gave all her love to Paul.
But when the moon is full, it loses, and when love is full, it overflows.
Paul, who had not been loved by his father, Jullien, since birth, was suddenly a single-parent family.
His mother's doting made Paul idle, unlearned, and eloped with prostitutes at a young age.
Paul is obsessed with gambling, deeply involved in speculative business, and in debt to the next ass, but Yana still can't bear her son's desperation.
When the whole family was in a pot of porridge, the little maid Rosalie returned and did not hesitate to help Yana sell the poplar farm.
The Poplar Farm is where Yana and Rosalie grew up, and it has the most innocent and beautiful memories of the young master and servant.
But without selling the Poplar Farm, how can we repay paul's huge debts?
Rosalie helps Yana buy a very small house again and brings back Paul and the prostitute's child.
This is the last good and hope that the cruel life has left for Yana.
Yana sighed that "life is not as good as imagined, but it is not as bad as imagined."
05
epilogue
Everyone has the right and freedom to control their own life, but we will always experience a lot of pain and growth to truly understand that life is not all good for us, but it is not all dark.
Only by embracing the mentality of loving life after seeing through the truth of life can we live ourselves in this noisy world.
Keep the sincerity of kindness, do not easily pin the hope of life on anyone, only you can decide the fate of your life.
May all people be able to harvest their own happiness in this ordinary life.
Share.
Author: Zhou Yao, a member of the Intensive Reading Friends Association. Cultivate in the dust and survive in the world.