Mont-Oriol Reading Order

How does Mont-Oriol treat the theme of speculation?

Mont-Oriol (1887) treats the theme of speculation — the transformation of the natural landscape into a commercial property for financial gain — as one of the defining activities of the Third Republic bourgeoisie and as a moral corruption that is both satirized and accepted as inevitable. Andermatt the banker arrives in the Auvergne village of Enval, discovers the mineral spring, and immediately begins the process of converting a natural resource into a commercial product: the spring becomes the Spa of Mont-Oriol, the peasant landscape is transformed into a resort, and the local people become employees and dependents of the commercial enterprise. Maupassant's attitude toward this transformation is characteristically ambivalent: he clearly sees the destructiveness of the process (the natural landscape is ruined, the peasants are dispossessed, the social fabric of the village is destroyed), but he also sees it as the natural and inevitable operation of capitalist energy — something as unstoppable as the natural forces it exploits. The character of Andermatt himself is drawn with the same combination of satirical precision and reluctant admiration that characterizes Maupassant's treatment of all forms of energy and intelligence: he is clearly morally limited (his treatment of his wife Christiane is callous), but he is also genuinely competent, and his competence is not something Maupassant can bring himself to simply condemn.