Nick Marsico

FR334

14 December 2016

Insanity, the Invisible, and the Unfamiliar in Maupassant’s Le Horla

In Guy de Maupassant’s short story Le Horla, the author constructs psychological horror

as a method to penetrate the sanity of the mind. An invisible spirit called the Horla terrorizes the

narrator, creating a dichotomy between the rational world and the fantastic thoughts of the mind.

Dichotomies such as the visible versus the invisible and the familiar and the unfamiliar both in

and outside of the home create a sense of constant terror and a lack of safety that drive the

narrator to insanity. Maupassant uses fantastic mechanisms of psychological horror such as

detracting from the narrator’s sense of identity and self-control and using perception as a tool to

block the truth in order to display an account of mania in the nineteenth century.

In order to first understand the series of dichotomies and psychological tools that

Maupassant inserts in Le Horla, a definition of the fantastic relating to the loss of perception and

fantasy in the midst of reality must first be realized. When first thinking of how Le Horla creates

a fantastic feeling, we think of the obvious horror arising in the form of spirits and apparitions,

which can be seen in other fantastic short stories of Charles Nodier, for example. In Stéphanie

Lebon’s “The Horla, or the Frontiers of the Real”, the theorist Roger Callois defines the

fantastic, noting that “La démarche essentielle du fantastique est l’apparition : ce qui ne peut pas

arriver et qui se produit pourtant, en un point et à un instant précis, au cœur un univers

parfaitement repéré et d’où l’on avait à tort estimé le mystère à jamais banni” (Lebon 98).

Callois mentions that a recurring theme of the fantastic is the inability to pinpoint a specific

reality; reality is blurred in a way that pushes the reader make conclusions for themselves. In
addition, reality is made to be questioned in fantastic literature; we wonder what is real and what

is not. Lebon characterizes the fantastic as “l’intrusion brutale du mystère dans la vie réelle”

(98), while noting that the psychological fantastic revolves around the fear of the uncertain. In

looking at psychological horror, she explains the fear as coming from the uncertainty of reality in

the presence of realism and rationalism. “Dans un nouveau monde où la raison triomphe, où les

croyances disparaissent, le genre fantastique va devenir l’expression d’un moi incertain, d’une

réalité dont les contours peuvent-être flous” (94). Psychological terror is disturbing in this sense,

as the fear of penetration of the mind and the lack of control is overwhelming. Some theorists,

like Stéphanie Lebon, argue that the terrorizing of the mind is more intimidating than anything

else, due to the loss of identity and agency that come along with it.

Fantastic literature is full of dichotomies that illustrate the inability to determine reality or

perceptions. These opposites can be symbolic of a greater feeling that the author attempts to

convey. The literary theorist Nathalie Prince writes of paradoxes present in 19th century fantastic

literature; she writes, “Littérature de l’entre-deux, le fantastique est constamment le lieu des

écritures paradoxales : figuration de l’informe (spectre, fantôme), seul, devant nous faire croire à

l’incroyable, et devant nous séduire à partir du plus horrifiant” (Prince 65). Specifically, we can

understand her position on the presence of the formless in fantastic literature and the fear

surrounding the lack of similarity and the in-between by reading Le Horla. The presence of the

spirit forces the reader to think of otherworldly concepts, as we consider the possibility of

apparitions who roam the same world as us. This type of thinking leads to questions of what is

able to be perceived and what is not, what is familiar and what is not, and what can be visualized

in reality and what cannot. Lebon extends the clarification on why specific dichotomies and

paradoxes appear in fantastic literature, as she writes, “Le fantastique serait donc un lieu
d’hésitation et s’inscrirait en creux, entre le merveilleux et l’étrange, le réel et l’irréel, le normal

et l’anormal, l’acceptable et l’inacceptable dans ce perpétuel mouvement d’hésitation” (Lebon

101). The addition of hesitation as a fantastic trait is interesting, although it can imply fear and

confusion. We can imagine how hesitation leads to uncertainty, which creates the dichotomies

such as the ones Prince and Lebon mentioned.

Viewing the divide between the visible and the invisible allows the reader to see visualize

the fear of the uncertainty and where the uncanny comes into play in Le Horla. The narrator is

cognizant of the differences between the visible and invisible realms, as he interprets the two

dimensions to be similarly connected through means of powerful effects. He writes in his

journal, “everything that surrounds us, everything we see without looking at it, everything we

brush against without recognizing it, everything we touch without feeling it, everything we

encounter without discerning it, everything has on us, on our organs, and, through them, on our

ideas, on our heart itself, swift, surprising, and inexplicable effects. How profound this mystery

of the Invisible is!” (Le Horla May 11th). What appears strange to the reader, in hindsight, is that

the narrator was not afflicted by the Horla when he wrote this entry. Therefore, it may give the

impression that he is just mentally ill, as he may have anticipated interactions with the invisible

realm. While the narrator and the Horla have arguably more concrete interactions later

throughout the story, the reader still wonders what effects he means, and exactly what these

effects evoke in him. When looking at critical theory to determine the relationship between the

visible and the invisible, Nathalie Prince writes that Maupassant’s goal is to show that the

invisible is transcribed by the visual. If this is the link between the two realms, I would imagine

that the visual would not always desire to transcribe the world of the invisible. The narrator of Le

Horla, although appearing content with the link between worlds at first glance, is driven to burn
down his home and have suicidal thoughts, thus we are unsure if the visual always attempts to

note the invisible. The story could be a prescriptive tale as well, convincing the reader to not

enter the world of the invisible. One critic, Laurent Dubreuil reads the invisible as an inhabited

area, as he describes, “l’invisible porte sa capitale comme une marque de puissance. L’Invisible

est presque dans le monde, il lui est plutôt coextensif, il forme un domaine pour tout ce qui est

surnaturel. L’Invisible est une zone habitée” (Dubreuil 87). He crafts the invisible as a powerful

entity, as it has the ability to carry capital in itself. He then goes on to argue that the Horla is a

synthetic principle of the invisible. All of these definitions of the differences between what is

able to be seen and what is not share the common factor of the importance and power of the

invisible realm.

Another crucial pair of opposites to analyze is the presence of fantasy throughout an age

of realism and rationalism. If the Horla is a real being, then it is difficult to determine if that can

be even considered fantasy, or if it has crossed over into the dimension of the real. Coming from

the perspective that the Horla is a figment of the narrator’s imagination, the spirit leads the

narrator to suffer from extreme anxiety and experience major psychological effects. At the same

time, the detriments take place in a modern age, where we are expected to not believe in foolish

concepts such as otherworldly creatures. We can view the visible as matching with the real and

the invisible as being part of the fantastic. Although it is expected that society only takes part in

the real and visible realms, the story of Le Horla makes the clash of the two concepts inevitable.

In looking at this relationship, Laurent Dubreuil writes, “le visible stimule l’âme ; il devient le

réel, et, uniment, le rationnel. Du coup, l’invisible-inconnaissable ne peut passer pour du réel

qu’à condition de supposer que cet invisible puisse être vu” (Dubreuil 89). Dubreuil posits as if

the invisible is not commonly seen and therefore disregarded, unless seen by those like the
story’s narrator.

The commonly used fantastic trope of the contrast between light and dark imagery appear

in Le Horla to determine the inner state of the narrator’s mind at different points in the short

story. The use of lightness and darkness correspond to the narrator’s increasing thoughts of the

invisible, fantasy realms. Surprisingly, the text begins quite differently from the rest of the story,

as the tone and mood of the narrator appears untouched as he begins his journal. He writes,

“What a wonderful day! I spent all morning stretched out on the grass in front of my house,

beneath the huge plane tree that completely covers, shelters, and shades the lawn. I love the

country here, and I love living here because this is where I have my roots, those profound and

delicate roots that attach a man to the land where his ancestors were born and died…” (Le Horla

May 8th). In this phase of the narrator’s life, he is comfortable with the predictability and control

in his life. The theorist Jack Abecassis describes his life as a cycle that turns from peace to chaos,

saying, “the metaphorical loop begins with the house/tree/earth/air as a grounding of identity and

ends with the burning house as a metaphor for loss of identity and an explicit descent into

psychotic chaos” (Abecassis 399). Abecassis describes the most powerful effect of the narrator’s

insanity as the loss of identity, as his obsession with the Horla has caused him to lose control of

his life. The sharp difference between the light imagery of the grass and the connection to the

land compared to the mania-induced house fire represents a complete change in the narrator, and

it is meant to serve as a point to realize how much psychological horror and trauma can take a

toll on people.

A further dichotomy exists between domestic fear and safety. Specifically, the familiar

and the unfamiliar both in and outside of the household play an important role in Le Horla, as the

narrator’s home is infiltrated by the spirit. Irony exists in the fact that the home would normally
exist as a comfortable space without fear or dread; instead, one of the most sacred places is

turned into a living nightmare, leaving the narrator to lose his sense of self-control and identity.

Although the presence of the unfamiliar mainly takes place in the narrator’s home with the

Horla, we can also observe the feelings of fear and unfamiliarity when the narrator is outside.

When he is out one day, he writes in his journal, “little by little, however, an inexplicable

uneasiness penetrated me. A force, it seemed to me, an occult force was making me go numb,

stopping me, preventing me from going further, was calling me back. I felt that painful need to

return that oppresses you when you have left an ailing loved one at home, and you suddenly feel

a premonition that the sickness has grown worse” (Le Horla August 7th). What stands out in this

passage is that the reader views the safe space as being outside of his home; instead, he is drawn

back while he knows that the Horla is still there. It seems surprising that more dangerous spaces

exist outside of the home than inside, as the fear of the unknown and the invisible would appear

petrifying to most. The unfamiliar is further shown to be horrifying through the presence of the

Brazilian outsiders on the ships at beginning of Le Horla. The narrator writes, “after two English

schooners, whose red flags rippled on the sky, came a superb Brazilian three-master, all white,

admirably clean and gleaming. I saluted it, I don’t know why, it made me so happy to see this

ship” (May 8th). When he later determines that this saluting is what led the Horla to him, he

regrets his decision to wave to the ship; in a way, he curses risking a gesture for the unfamiliar,

which cannot be proven to be safe. Furthermore, when looking at other forms of familiarity, we

notice the title constructed of the French words hors and là. The title conveys the lack of

familiarity and “outsiderness” throughout the short story, as the invisible, fantasy world of the

Horla feels distanced from our world of realism, rationalism, and order. Upon analyzing this title,

the literary theorist Stéphanie Lebon writes, “La dimension phonétique du mot « Horla »- sous-
entend « hors là », lui attribuant une valeur d’invisible, et d’inconnu” (Lebon 94). The ability of

the unknown to be personified through the title of the nouvelle displays the importance of the

theme of blending in as an invisible outsider.

The narrator has various moments of clarity and confusion, another dichotomy that is

contingent on the involvement with the Horla. As the story continues, questions by both the

reader and the narrator constantly increase and less questions are answered compared to the

beginning of the story. This phenomenon is mainly due to increased involvement in the

unknown, unfamiliar, invisible, fantasy mindsets created by the presence of the Horla. In Jack

Abecassis’ article, “On Reading Maupassant’s Le Horla problematologically”, the

philosopher/literary critic examines Le Horla through a problematological perspective, in which

he examines how questions and answers are used. As context, problematology is “above all the

study of questions and answers dynamically understood in their specific contextual dimensions,

which include historical, cultural, and psychological considerations. Problematology focuses on

the tensions between questions” (Abecassis 391). Problematology explores the ‘whatness’ of

language analysis (what is really at question here) compared to the ‘thatness’ (the sentence states

that…). The school of thought assumes that we mainly focus on the ‘thatness’, and rarely focus

on what everything is all about. Connecting problematology to Le Horla, Abecassis finds it to be

a perfect problematologic text. “The apparent textual simplicity, combined with the concentrated

layering of problematological topics such as the declarative-interrogative nature of the text and

the conceptual difficulties of relating a particular event or being to an idea” allow Maupassant’s

short story to focus more on the proposed concept of ‘whatness’ (Abecassis 396). While not

explicitly stated, the blurring of reality, perceptions, and visibility lead the reader to accumulate

many questions upon reading. Questions prevail over answers as the short story continues. Many
questions lead to a state of confusion, especially for the narrator who is driven to insanity by his

mass of questions in which he receives no answers. This metaphorical lack of visibility and

difficulty of perception makes him unsure and takes away his self-control and agency, leading to

the formation of psychological horror.

Going away from dichotomies, fantastic mechanisms of psychological horror are a direct

response to the lack of clear reality, perception, and truth. These reactions are what specifically

drive the narrator to the point of destruction and possible suicide. For example, the invasion of

privacy and the inability to predict the presence of the Horla takes a debilitating psychological

toll on the narrator as all sense of control is taken away. The narrator writes, “I sleep—for a long

time—two or three hours—then a dream—no—a nightmare grips me. I am fully aware that I am

lying down and sleeping.... I feel it and I know it ... and I also feel that someone is approaching

me, looking at me, feeling me, is climbing into my bed, kneeling on my chest, taking my neck in

his hands and squeezing ... squeezing ... with all his strength, to strangle me” (Le Horla May

25th). The fear from this passage may come from the blurring of the line of dreams. If the

narrator is perhaps dissociating, then it is difficult to tell if this incident was a dream or real. In

addition, the imagery of the pressure on the narrator’s chest and throat is so personal and up

close that it appears if there would be no escape; this lack of escape is one of the leading factors

of psychological fear. When the narrator says “last night, I felt someone squatting over me, who,

with his mouth over mine, was drinking in my life through my lips. Yes, he was sucking it in

from my throat, just like a leech” (July 4th), all comfort and control is fully taken away. A large

part of the fear also comes from the inability to guess when the encounters with the Horla are

going to happen. When the narrator does not know when and what to expect, a state of fear is

implemented, resulting in psychosis of the mind.

 Maupassant also uses the concept of possession to explain the psychological fear of the

loss of control and agency. When the narrator’s cousin, Madame Sablé, is hypnotized, the reader

imagines what it would be like to be hypnotized. Her hypnosis is feared, as “the other young

women, terrified, said, ‘That’s enough! Enough! Enough!’” (July 16th). With loss of control, we

fear hypnosis in the fact that we are nervous in what we will be coerced into; the fear of the

unknown is again the major limiting factor. Hypnosis is a very fantastic concept in the sense that

it results in a different, unnatural state of mind that is between reality and fantasy; yet it is not a

state of mind that is easily defined. Instead, hypnosis acts as an in-between, artificial state in

which the body and mind are stolen. In looking at the past dichotomies, hypnosis represents

fantasy over rationalism, and the invisible over the visible. The narrator describes his own

possession, saying “I am lost. Someone possesses my soul and governs it. Someone controls all

my actions, all my movements, all my thoughts. I am nothing inside, nothing but a slave

spectator, terrified of all the things I do” (August 14th). While possibly not possessed by other

standards, he appears in this state because of the anxiety and fear surrounding the Horla.

In addition, social influence is used to sway the narrator’s thoughts and change his

beliefs. Used in Le Horla, social influences block the truth and create stories that are easily

accepted. When the narrator is in Mont Saint-Michel, he converses with a monk, and says, “And

the monk told me stories, all the old stories of this place, legends, always more legends. One of

them particularly struck me. The local people, the ones who live on the hill, claim they hear

voices at night in the sands” (July 2nd). It does not appear like he questions these stories, as it

seems like he is very easy to accept them without proof of being true. Later on, he is once again

swayed by the report from Brazil that says “a madness, an epidemic of madness, like the

contagious dementias that attacked the population of Europe in the Middle Ages, is raging now
in the province of Saõ Paulo. The inhabitants, distraught, are leaving their houses, deserting their

villages, abandoning their crops, claiming they are pursued, possessed, ruled like human

livestock by invisible but tangible beings, sorts of vampires, which feed on their life while they

sleep…” (August 19th). He immediately accepts that they are being possessed by a creature

similar to the Horla instead of investigating the story. Furthermore, he makes the link that the

Horla must have attached onto him when he waved to the Brazilian ship, just off of the basis of

this last news story. Therefore, he makes assumptions that may prove to not be true; instead, the

stories prove to lead him towards insanity, as they increase his time spent thinking about the

ship, the Brazilians, and the Horla.

A final mechanism of psychological horror that is used in Maupassant’s Le Horla is

skewed perceptions and the inability to see. In many cases in the nouvelle, the ability to see is

blocked, like in the invisible. The narrator has a few encounters in which he comes across the

lack of access to sight. When he comes closer to the Horla, he writes, “I was terrified. Then

suddenly I began to see myself in a mist, in the depths of the mirror, in a mist as if through a

sheet of water. It seemed to me that this water shimmered from left to right, slowly, making my

image more precise, from second to second. It was like the end of an eclipse. Whatever was

obscuring me seemed not to possess any clearly defined outlines, but just a sort of opaque

transparency, little by little becoming clearer (August 19th). This lack of perception serves as the

unfamiliar, invisible task that is unavoidable at first. While it was resolved, the narrator and the

reader is left with many questions (more unanswered than not, endorsing the theory of Le Horla

to be a problematologic short story). Perception is an important skill in fantastic literature, as it is

required to survive. Laurent Dubreuil remarks that “le fantastique transforme la perception.

Alors, plutôt que de s’intéresser aux évidences des prétendues « lois du genre », on doit étudier
le fantastique à travers ce qu’il propose : la thématisation et le réseau philosophique du voir, de

l’apparition, de l’invisible” (Dubreuil 1). Therefore, we must see perception linked with the

realms of the visible and invisible, and analyze how they work together in creating the fantastic.

When reading Guy de Maupassant’s Le Horla and relating it to the fantastic tradition, the

fantastic comes from the concept of fear and the confusion surrounding reality. A deep sense of

psychological horror is ingrained into the short story as the mind is seen to be vulnerable to

dread and doubt. The problematological nature of Le Horla allows for constant inquiry, as the

questions asked aim towards the meaning of the story as a cohesive unit rather than explanations

of pieces. The dichotomies created between the visible and the nonvisible, fear and safety, and

realism and fantasy all allow both the narrator and the reader to ask questions on the basis of

what exists and what is in the mind. The text is used to explore the outside; it pushes boundaries,

how we ask questions, and what we perceive as real.

Word Count: 3984

 References

Abecassis, Jack. On Reading Maupassant's "Le Horla" Problematologically. Revue

Internationale De Philosophie. 2007. 61(242(4)), 391-413.

Dubreuil, Laurent. Maupassant et la vision fantastique. Paris, Revue Labyrinthe, 2005. 4, 87-

100.

Lebon, Stéphanie. Le Horla ou les frontières du réel. Revista de Lenguas Modernas. 2011. 15,

93-114.

Maupassant, Guy de. « Le Horla » (deuxième version de 1887). Hachette Livre, 2006. Print.

Prince, Nathalie. « Écrire la peur : de la poétique fantastique » dans Le Fantastique. Paris :

Armand Colin, 2008. 65-81.