# The Mad Woman explained — Short Fiction > Chapter companion for Short Fiction by Guy de Maupassant. ## What happens Monsieur d'Endolin recounts a harrowing story from the Franco-Prussian War about a neighbor, a mad woman who had lost her mind after losing her father, husband, and child within a month. She remained bedridden and silent for fifteen years. When Prussian soldiers occupied her home, a major, irritated by her refusal to get up, ordered his men to carry her mattress into the forest of Imauville. She was left there and never seen again. The following autumn, the narrator finds her skull in the woods and realizes she must have lain still under the snow until wolves devoured her. ## Themes in this chapter ### Cruelty and Suffering The Prussian major's cruel treatment of the helpless mad woman, culminating in her abandonment in the freezing forest, exemplifies the theme of cruelty and suffering. ### Isolation and Loneliness The mad woman's fifteen years of bedridden silence and her ultimate abandonment in the forest highlight profound isolation and loneliness. ### Obsession and Delusion The mad woman's fixation on remaining motionless in bed, even to the point of death, reflects an obsessive and delusional state. ## Character check-ins ### Monsieur d'Endolin The narrator of the story, who lived next to the mad woman during the Prussian occupation and later discovered her remains. ### The Mad Woman A neighbor who lost her senses after losing her father, husband, and child within a month; she remained bedridden and silent for fifteen years before being abandoned in the forest by Prussian soldiers. ### The Prussian Major A violent and surly officer billeted in the mad woman's house who ordered her to be carried into the forest on her mattress. ### The Old Servant The mad woman's devoted servant who cared for her and tried to protect her from the Prussian major; she died during the winter. ## Key lines > When death has once entered a house, it almost invariably returns immediately, as if it knew the way Death tends to revisit a home soon after its first visit, as though it remembers the path. _Reflects the narrator's observation on the series of losses that drove the woman mad._ > They had abandoned her on that mattress in the cold, deserted wood; and, faithful to her obsession, she had allowed herself to perish under that thick and light counterpane of snow, without moving an arm or a leg. The soldiers left her on the mattress in the frozen forest, and true to her fixation, she remained still and died beneath the snow. _Clarifies the fate of the mad woman and her unwavering adherence to her immobility._ ## Links - HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/short_fiction_23_se/chapters/the-mad-woman - Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/short_fiction_23_se - All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/short_fiction_23_se/chapters