In an example of situational irony, Miss Rousset’s nine traveling companions all convince her to sleep with the German commander so that they can leave the town of Totes, but then they promptly judge and shun her for doing so. The following passage captures the irony (and hypocrisy) of the travelers’ decision to ignore the woman who just sacrificed herself for them:
The heavy carriage began to move and the remainder of the journey commenced. No one spoke at first. Ball-of-Fat dared not raise her eyes. She felt indignant toward all her neighbors, and at the same time humiliated at having yielded to the foul kisses of this Prussian, into whose arms they had hypocritically thrown her.
Miss Rousset feels “indignant” toward her neighbors because of the painful irony of “having yielded to the foul kisses” of the German commander “into whose arms they had hypocritically thrown her” only to end up an outcast for the rest of the journey. While Miss Rousset is the one who ends up weeping alone in the carriage at the end of the story, Maupassant is clearly on her side. This moment of irony is meant to highlight the undignified nature of well-off people who see themselves as superior to lower class sex workers like Miss Rousset but who are actually morally inferior.
Maupassant also adds another layer of situational irony to the scene by having none of Miss Rousset’s traveling companions share any of their food with her on their way out of Totes. This is ironic because, when they were all starving on the way to Totes and she was the only one who brought a food basket, she shared everything that she had with all of them, so readers would expect them to do the same in return.
In an example of situational irony, Mr. Loiseau, Mr. Carré-Lamadon, and Count Hubert de Bréville journey into the town center of Totes and find the occupying Prussian soldiers acting in kind and caring ways. This is ironic because all three men hold fierce judgements (that they have shared throughout the story) about the Prussians, considering them to be both cruel and lazy occupiers. The following passage captures their surprise at this ironic twist:
The first [Prussian soldier] they saw was paring potatoes. The second, further off, was cleaning the hairdresser’s shop. Another, bearded to the eyes, was tending a troublesome brat, cradling it and trying to appease it. [...]
The Count, astonished, asked questions of the beadle who came out of the rectory. The old man responded:
“Oh! those men are not wicked; they are not the Prussians we hear about. They are from far off, I know not where; and they have left wives and children in their country; it is not amusing to them, this war, I can tell you!”
Describing the Count as “astonished” is Maupassant’s way of communicating the three men’s surprise at the soldiers doing menial and caring tasks like “paring potatoes,” “cleaning the hairdresser’s shop,” and “tending a troublesome brat, cradling it and trying to appease it.”
Maupassant likely included this scene to challenge his French readers’ biases toward the Prussians. Here, Maupassant speaks through the beadle (or local church official) when he says, “It is not amusing to them, this war, I can tell you!” Maupassant understood clearly that war only benefits the wealthy on both sides and that, like the French foot soldiers, the poorly paid Prussian foot soldiers are merely being used as pawns. They “are not wicked” like the Prussians with power.
