Mother Sauvage quiz

Questions and answers

1. 1

   Question 1. Which literary movement best describes "Mother Sauvage"?

   • Correct answer: Realism
   • Romanticism
   • Gothic Horror
   • Naturalism
   • Modernism

   Realism is the best fit: the story depicts ordinary peasants in a recognizable historical conflict, rendered with precise, unsparing detail and no idealization — hallmarks of literary realism.

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2. 2

   Question 2. How is the story structured and narrated?

   • Mother Sauvage narrates her own story directly to the Prussian officer before her execution
   • An omniscient narrator tells the story from a neutral, all-knowing point of view throughout
   • Correct answer: An unnamed narrator hears the story from his friend Serval during a hunting trip years later
   • Victor Sauvage tells the story in letters sent home from the front before his death

   Maupassant uses a frame narrative: an unnamed narrator visits the ruined cottage with his friend Serval fifteen years after the events. Serval recounts the story of Mother Sauvage, creating emotional distance that makes the violence all the more chilling.

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3. 3

   Question 3. How is Mother Sauvage characterized at the start of the story?

   • A timid widow who relies on village charity to survive the harsh winter
   • Correct answer: A tough, self-sufficient Norman farmwoman, feared and respected for her hardiness
   • A grief-stricken mother whose neighbors pity her for being left alone
   • A bitter nationalist who hates the Prussians from the moment they arrive

   Mother Sauvage is described as "a hardy old woman, tall and thin, who seldom laughed and with whom one never jested." She has money, carries her son's gun, and is emphatically not pitied — she does not need to be.

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4. 4

   Question 4. How many Prussian soldiers are billeted in Mother Sauvage's cottage?

   • Two
   • Three
   • Correct answer: Four
   • Six

   Four Prussian soldiers — described as tall, fair-haired, blue-eyed, and kind — are quartered at the cottage because Mother Sauvage is known to be wealthy enough to support them.

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5. 5

   Question 5. How do the four Prussian soldiers behave in Mother Sauvage's home?

   • Correct answer: They are considerate and hardworking, doing chores and treating her with kindness
   • They are arrogant occupiers who demand service and show no interest in her welfare
   • They are quiet and suspicious, offering no help and keeping to themselves entirely
   • They are cruel soldiers who threaten her and eat all her food without thanks

   The soldiers clean, split wood, peel potatoes, and do all manner of housework. They spare her expense and fatigue as much as possible. Maupassant describes them as behaving "like four good sons around their mother" — a devastating irony given what follows.

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6. 6

   Question 6. What question does Mother Sauvage ask the soldiers every day?

   • Whether the war would end soon so she could reclaim her home and privacy
   • Whether the soldiers planned to write to their own mothers back in Germany
   • Whether the Prussians had found her son's stolen game traps in the forest
   • Correct answer: Whether they knew where the French marching regiment No. 23 had been sent

   Each day she asks whether they know where the French marching regiment No. 23 was sent — because her son Victor is in it. The soldiers cannot tell her, but they understand her anxiety and treat her kindly as a result.

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7. 7

   Question 7. What does "Bellicose" mean in this story?

   • Cowardly or unwilling to fight in defense of one's homeland
   • Deeply sorrowful or consumed by mourning and loss
   • Correct answer: Eager or aggressive in spirit; warlike in feeling or attitude
   • Obedient or deferential to those with military authority

   Maupassant writes that peasants "hardly understand at all those bellicose ardors" — meaning the warlike eagerness that drives nations into conflict. He argues this martial passion belongs to the upper class, not the peasants who suffer the most.

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8. 8

   Question 8. What does the letter tell Mother Sauvage about her son Victor?

   • He was captured by Prussian forces and taken prisoner somewhere in Germany
   • Correct answer: He was killed by a shell that almost cut him in two
   • He was wounded in battle and is recovering in a field hospital near Paris
   • He went missing during a retreat and his body was never found or recovered

   The letter from his fellow soldier Cesaire Rivot informs her that Victor "was killed yesterday by a shell which almost cut him in two." Rivot took Victor's watch to return to her and wrote at Victor's request. The letter was dated three weeks earlier.

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9. 9

   Question 9. What does Mother Sauvage do immediately after reading the letter about Victor's death?

   • Correct answer: She hides it in her pocket and receives the soldiers with a calm face
   • She weeps openly and the soldiers gather around to comfort her
   • She confronts the soldiers immediately and demands they leave her home
   • She goes to the village to report the news to the priest and neighbors

   She hides the letter in her pocket and composes herself before the soldiers return. She receives them "quietly, with her ordinary face, having had time to wipe her eyes." This emotional control marks the beginning of her deliberate plan for revenge.

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10. 10

    Question 10. What does the rabbit scene symbolize in the story?

    • The futility of everyday domestic life during wartime occupation
    • The kindness of the soldiers, who steal food to feed an old woman
    • The harsh reality that peasants must kill to eat, just as soldiers must kill to survive
    • Correct answer: Her dead son cut in two, mirroring the bloody animal in her hands

    When Mother Sauvage skins the rabbit the soldiers stole for dinner, the sight of blood on her hands makes her tremble. She "kept seeing her big boy cut in two, bloody, like this still palpitating animal." The rabbit is a stand-in for Victor — the moment grief crystallizes into purpose.

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11. 11

    Question 11. Why does Mother Sauvage ask the soldiers for their names and home addresses?

    • Correct answer: So their families can be notified after she burns the cottage with them inside
    • To report them to the French resistance operating in the nearby village
    • To write a kind letter of thanks to their mothers for raising such helpful sons
    • To identify which soldier had written the letter to her about Victor's death

    Though she frames it as friendly curiosity, she asks for their names and addresses so she can hand the list to the Prussian officer after burning them alive. She wants their families notified — a chilling act of witness that shows her revenge is premeditated and purposeful.

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12. 12

    Question 12. How does Mother Sauvage kill the four soldiers?

    • She poisons their soup with hemlock gathered from the forest near the cottage
    • She shoots each soldier in turn with her son's gun while they sleep in the loft
    • Correct answer: She fills the loft with hay, removes the ladder, then ignites the cottage from below
    • She locks the trapdoor from outside and bars the windows before setting a small fire

    She carries hay into the loft where they sleep, removes the ladder so they cannot escape, then ignites bundles of straw in her kitchen and scatters them until the whole interior blazes. She stands outside with her son's gun in case any man escapes the flames.

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13. 13

    Question 13. What parallel does Maupassant draw between Victor's death and Mother Sauvage's execution?

    • Both Victor and Mother Sauvage die far from home, surrounded by strangers who do not understand them
    • Correct answer: Victor is "almost cut in two" by a shell, and Mother Sauvage sinks "as though they had cut off her legs"
    • Victor's watch is taken as a keepsake, and Mother Sauvage's gun is thrown into the fire as a final act
    • Victor is killed without warning, and Mother Sauvage is shot without a trial or any formal process

    The parallelism is devastating: the letter says Victor was killed by a shell that "almost cut him in two," and when Mother Sauvage is shot by the firing squad, "she sank as though they had cut off her legs." Her body at death mirrors her son's destruction — the cycle of war consuming both.

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14. 14

    Question 14. What does Mother Sauvage do after the cottage burns down and the Prussians arrive?

    • She flees into the woods and hides until the Prussians give up searching for her
    • She weeps and begs forgiveness, then collapses before the officer in grief
    • She denies all knowledge and claims the fire began by accident in the kitchen
    • Correct answer: She calmly confesses, identifies herself by name, and gives the officer the soldiers' names to send to their families

    She sits calmly on a tree trunk, confesses fully, and gives the officer the list of the soldiers' names and addresses. She demands he tell their families it was "Victoire Simon, la Sauvage" who did it. Her insistence on being named is an act of maternal justice, not madness.

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15. 15

    Question 15. What does the story suggest about the cycle of violence in war?

    • Correct answer: War creates an endless cycle of violence where each act of killing generates another
    • Patriotic hatred is the natural response of any mother whose son dies in battle
    • The peasant class is morally superior to the aristocracy because they suffer more directly
    • Revenge is justified when the cause is just, and justice requires personal sacrifice

    Victor is killed by the Prussians; Mother Sauvage kills four Prussian soldiers in retaliation; she is executed by the Prussians in turn. Serval's chateau is then destroyed as reprisal. Each act of violence spawns another, and no one wins. Maupassant refuses to break the chain with a moral judgment.

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16. 16

    Question 16. What does "Billeted" mean in this story?

    • Arrested and imprisoned by military authorities pending a formal investigation
    • Correct answer: Quartered or lodged in a civilian home under military authority
    • Hired as paid labor to help a household during wartime economic hardship
    • Assigned to guard a specific location or person as part of official military duty

    "Billeted" means quartered or housed in a civilian residence under military order. During the Franco-Prussian War, occupied towns were required to house Prussian soldiers. Four were billeted with Mother Sauvage because she was known to be wealthy.

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17. 17

    Question 17. What is the central dramatic irony of the story?

    • The narrator admires the Norman countryside, but the war has destroyed its beauty forever
    • Mother Sauvage is named "Sauvage" meaning savage, but she is initially the least violent person in the story
    • Correct answer: The soldiers who are kind as sons to Mother Sauvage are killed by the very woman they treated like a mother
    • The postman brings a letter that appears routine but contains news that changes everything

    Maupassant lingers on how the soldiers behave "like four good sons around their mother," caring for her with genuine kindness. The reader senses impending tragedy while they do not. The men who treated her as a mother are murdered by the very woman they tried to comfort — this is the story's devastating irony.

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18. 18

    Question 18. What truly motivates Mother Sauvage to kill the soldiers?

    • Patriotic hatred for Germany and everything it represents as an occupying power
    • Fear that the soldiers will expose a secret she has been hiding from the village
    • Bitterness at being forced to feed four men on her limited wartime rations
    • Correct answer: Primal maternal grief that transforms love for her son into an act of devastating vengeance

    Maupassant is explicit: peasants lack "those bellicose ardors" of patriotic hatred. Her motive is not national feeling — it is the loss of Victor, her child. The grief of a mother pushed past its breaking point transforms into an act that mirrors the violence that destroyed her son.

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19. 19

    Question 19. Which of these events actually happened in the story?

    • The story is set during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870-1871.

      Happened

      The Franco-Prussian War is the historical backdrop. Victor enlists when "war was declared," and the four soldiers are Prussian occupiers billeted in a Norman village.

    • Mother Sauvage immediately weeps when she reads the letter about Victor.

      Didn't happen

      She does not cry at first. She is "motionless, so overcome and stupefied that she did not even suffer as yet." The tears come later, slowly. Her emotional control allows her to hide the news from the soldiers.

    • The four Prussian soldiers do chores and housework for Mother Sauvage.

      Happened

      They clean the kitchen, rub the tiles, split wood, peel potatoes — all voluntarily, treating her as their own mother. This kindness makes the irony of their fate all the more devastating.

    • Victor's body is returned to his mother after the war.

      Didn't happen

      Victor's body is never returned. Mother Sauvage imagines his death and notes that at least her husband's body had come back with the bullet in his forehead — Victor gives her no such comfort.

    • Mother Sauvage stands guard with her son's gun while the cottage burns.

      Happened

      She stands before the blazing cottage armed with her son's rusty gun, ready to shoot any man who escaped the fire. When it is over, she throws the weapon into the embers.

    • The Prussian officer believes Mother Sauvage immediately when she confesses.

      Didn't happen

      They did not believe her at first — they thought the disaster had made her crazy. Only after she told the full story from beginning to end, without omitting a detail, did they accept her confession.

    • Mother Sauvage is executed by a Prussian firing squad.

      Happened

      Twelve soldiers line up twenty paces from her. She does not move; she has understood what is coming and waits. She sinks when they fire, "as though they had cut off her legs" — a detail that echoes Victor's death.

    • The narrator picks up a fire-blackened stone at the end of the story.

      Happened

      The final sentence: "And I picked up a little stone, still blackened by the flames." This small relic connects the present moment to the past atrocity, suggesting war's scars never fully disappear.

    • Victor's regiment number is 45.

      Didn't happen

      Victor is in the French marching regiment No. 23 — the regiment Mother Sauvage asks about each day. His comrade Cesaire Rivot is also in "March. Reg. No. 23."

    • Serval's chateau was destroyed by the Prussians as a reprisal for Mother Sauvage's act.

      Happened

      Serval mentions this at the close of his account: "It was by way of reprisal that the Germans destroyed the chateau of the district, which belonged to me." The cycle of retaliation continues even after her death.

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