"Une Vie" (AKA "A Woman’s Life") is a French novel from 1883 written by Guy de Maupassant. It is his first novel, published during a period of French history where literature was blossoming.

The most popular and perhaps the greatest of Maupassant´s full-length novels, "Une Vie" is the story of the unfortunate Jeanne, a Norman gentlewoman. The book begins with her returning home after five years in a convent. She is aged seventeen and is happy to be returning to the Poplars, the home of her loving parents. Little by little she will become an adult and create a family...

Avarice and lechery, cruelty and greed, conspire against Jeanne wherever she goes: her husband turns out to be a lascivious boor, her son a heedless spendthrift. In the end she is forced to sell her old family house just to stay alive...