The Collapse of Personal and National Identity in Maupassant's "Le Horla"

This article analyzes the representation of two opposed discourses of French national identity from the late 1800s in 'Le Horla,' through the text's cultural geography. Its narrator makes two journeys, first to Mont Saint-Michel, then to Paris. Where Mont Saint-Michel embodies a France that is pre-Revolutionary, Catholic and folkloric, Maupassant portrays Paris as secular, republican, modern and scientific, notably through the hypnotism episode. Yet despite his attempts to flee the Horla's malign influence through these trips, neither succeeds in preserving the narrator's personal identity or sanity: the text rejects both discourses of national identity, just as Maupassant rejected ideology and political engagement in all their many forms.