Looking for short story or novel about forced marriage

December 22, 2012 4:51 PM

I am looking for the title of a nineteenth centry short story that goes: a man and a woman (acquainted but unconnected) inadvertently get lost or delayed together on an excursion and have to stay out overnight (sleeping separately). When they return, everyone is scandalised and propriety forces them to marry, which both resent, and blame each other for. But they fall passionately in love as soon as they are married. I thought this was by Guy de Maupassant, but I have searched all his stories and cannot find it.
posted by Bradfordian to media & arts (6 answers total)

This is the plot device to dozens of historical romance novels. You're going to need to be more specific.

(Heck, modern korean rom-coms misuse locking their characters together in a room overnight so often you'd think gluing locks was the major local past time.)
posted by Phalene at 5:10 PM on December 22, 2012 [2 favorites]

I actually saw it as a tv episode (in UK), that my memory says was one of a series based on Guy de Maupassant's stories or novels. So, probably French in origin - European, anyway, and nineteenth century.
posted by Bradfordian at 5:20 PM on December 22, 2012

IMDB has a list of the short stories that made up "Chez Maupassant" - any chance that's the show you saw?
posted by Angharad at 6:28 PM on December 22, 2012

Thankyou, Angharad. I did come across that site, but unfortunately it gives only a very few synopses of the episodes. The site depends on readers adding their own synopses.
posted by Bradfordian at 11:53 AM on December 23, 2012

The closest I could come on a quick ctrl-f of "Marriage" was My Wife, but I'm not sure how much it fits what you're looking for.
posted by djgh at 1:44 PM on December 24, 2012

Thanks, djgh. The syopsis is pretty close to the one I had in mind. Guess it was heavily adapted for television.
posted by Bradfordian at 9:54 AM on January 14