# The Will explained — Short Fiction

> Chapter companion for Short Fiction by Guy de Maupassant.

## What happens

René de Bourneval recounts the dramatic reading of his mother's will, which reveals her secret love affair with Monsieur de Bourneval, declares René to be his son, and exposes the hypocrisy and cruelty of her marriage to Monsieur de Courcils. The revelation leads to a duel and René's choice to embrace his true father.

## Themes in this chapter

### Marriage and Domesticity

The will exposes the misery of a marriage based on money and social expectation, where the wife is oppressed and neglected.

### Hypocrisy and Social Convention

The mother's posthumous confession challenges the hypocritical moral codes that forced her to live a lie.

### Love and Desire

The mother's secret love for Monsieur de Bourneval is portrayed as a genuine, sustaining force, contrasted with her loveless marriage.

## Character check-ins

### Duc de Servigny

The narrator and friend of René de Bourneval, to whom the story is told.

### Guy de Maupassant

Authorial presence implied as the narrator recounts the tale.

## Key lines

> I hold that my mother's will was one of the most beautiful and loyal, one of the greatest acts that a woman could accomplish.

René believes his mother's will was a courageous and honest declaration.

_René defends his mother's posthumous revelation as an act of integrity._

> Dead, I fling aside disgraceful hypocrisy; I dare to speak my thoughts, and to avow and to sign the secret of my heart.

In death, the mother rejects pretense and openly declares the truth of her love.

_The mother's will is framed as a liberation from social constraints._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/short_fiction_23_se/chapters/the-will
- Book: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/short_fiction_23_se
- All chapters: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/short_fiction_23_se/chapters