Le genre représente l'un des sujets les plus populaires dans les discussions sur les romans de Margaret Atwood. Les Testaments, le roman le plus récent d'Atwood, n’est pas d’exception. La plupart de ces études, cependant, sont dépourvues d'une étude politique dédiée analysant les systèmes et les gouvernements et leur rôle dans la création de la condition actuelle. Par conséquent, le but de cette étude est d'adopter une approche différente et de se concentrer sur le régime de Gilead en tant que système politique et de l'analyser sous le prisme d'une théorie politique dédiée. En choisissant le politique plutôt que le politique, cette recherche peut aller au-delà de l'action et enquêter sur l’incitation et le principal moteur des actions du régime de Gilead, qui ne sont pas nécessairement sexospécifiques. La recherche actuelle se concentre sur le concept de politique de Carl Schmitt et analyse les relations ami-ennemi et les raisons de sa production telles qu'elles se manifestent dans le roman. Étant donné que la théorie de Schmitt ne suffit pas à couvrir les compréhensions multidimensionnelles et radicalement différentes du politique, la lecture des Testaments basée sur la définition du terme de Hannah Arendt est nécessaire. La définition d'Arendt se concentre sur le politique comme une force de manipulation et un contrat partagé entre les individus. Elle distingue le social et le politique et explique la fonction du politique dans l'espace public et privé. Bien que le genre ne soit pas une priorité absolue pour lire Les Testaments dans cette recherche, il est également discuté en fonction de ses relations avec le politique. Les résultats indiquent que, pour Gilead, le maintien du pouvoir et de la sécurité, ainsi que la manipulation de l'espace privé pour garantir la souveraineté, importent plus que le genre. De plus, le roman, tout en discutant des horreurs genrées du régime religieux de Gilead, tente d'attirer notre attention sur l'importance d'étudier les gouvernements plutôt que les sociétés et les discours seuls. Mots-clés : politique, souveraineté, espace public, espace privé, ami, ennemi / Gender represents one of the most popular topics in discussions of Margaret Atwood’s novels. The Testaments, Atwood’s most recent novel, is no exception. Most of these studies, however, are devoid of a dedicated political study that analyzes the systems and governments and their role in creating the present condition. Hence, the purpose of this study is to take a different approach and focus on the Gilead regime as a political system and analyze it through the lens of dedicated political theory. By choosing the political instead of political, this research can move beyond the action and investigate the incentives and the main driving force behind the actions of Gilead’s regime, which are not necessarily gender-oriented. The present research focuses on Carl Schmitt’s concept of the political and analyzes friend-enemy relationships and the reasons behind its production as manifested in the novel. Since Schmitt’s theory is not enough to cover the multi-dimensional and drastically different understandings about the political, reading The Testaments based on Hannah Arendt’s definition of the term is necessary. Arendt’s definition focuses on the political as a manipulative force and a shared contract between the individuals. She distinguishes the social and the political and explains the function of the political in the public and private space. While gender is not a top priority to read The Testaments in this research, it is also discussed based on its relations to the political. The results indicate that, for Gilead, sustaining power and security, as well as the manipulation of private space for securing sovereignty, matters more than gender. Furthermore, the novel, while discussing the gendered horrors of Gilead’s religious regime, tries to attract our attention to the importance of studying governments rather than societies and discourses alone. Keywords: the political, sovereignty, public space, private space, friend, enemy

Transforming the aging electric grid to a smart grid is an active area of research in industry and the government. One of the main objectives of the smart grid is to improve the efficiency of power generation, transmission and distribution and also to improve the stability and the reliability of the grid. In order to achieve this, various processes involved in power generation, transmission, and distribution should be armed with advanced sensor technologies, computing, communication and networking capabilities to an unprecedented level. These high speed data transfer and computational abilities aid power system engineers to obtain wide area measurements, achieve better control of power system operations and improve the reliability of power supply and the efficiency of different power grid operations. In the process of making the grid smarter, problems existing in traditional grid applications can be identified and solutions have to be developed to fix the identified issues. In this dissertation, two problems that aid power system engineers to meet the above mentioned smart grid's objective are researched. One problem is related to the distribution-side smart grid and the other one is a part of the transmission-side smart grid. Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI) is one of the important distribution-side smart grid applications. AMI is a technology where smart meters are installed at customer site which gives the utilities the ability to monitor and collect information related to the amount of electricity, water, and gas consumed by the user. Many recent research studies suggested the use of 3G cellular CDMA2000 for AMI network as it provides an advanced and cost effective solution for smart grid communications. Taking into account both technical and non-technical factors such as extended lifetime, security, availability and control of the solution, Alliander, an electric utility in Netherlands deployed a private 3G CDMA2000 network for smart metering. Although 3G CDMA2000 satisfies the requirements of smart grid applications, an analysis on the use of the current state of the art 3G CDMA2000 for smart grid applications indicates that its usage results in high percentage of control overhead, high latency and high power consumption for data transfer. As a part of this dissertation, we proposed FLEX-MAC - a new Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol that reduces the latency and overhead in smart meter data collection when compared to 3G CDMA2000 MAC. As mentioned above the second problem studied in this dissertation is related to the transmission-side grid. Power grid transmission and sub-transmission lines are generally protected by distance relays. After a thorough analysis of U.S. historical blackouts, North American Electric Reliability Council (NERC) has concluded that the hidden failure induced tripping of distance relays is responsible for 70% of the U.S. blackouts. As a part of this dissertation, agent based distance relaying protection scheme is proposed to improve the robustness of distance relays to hidden failures and thus reduce the probability of blackouts. This dissertation has two major contributions. First, a hierarchically distributed non-intrusive Agent Aided Distance Relaying Protection Scheme (AADRPS) is proposed to improve the robustness of distance relays to hidden failures. The problem of adapting the proposed AADRPS to a larger power system network consisting of thousands of buses is modeled as an integer linear programming multiple facility location optimization problem. Distance relaying protection scheme is a real time system and has stringent timing requirements. Therefore, in order to verify if the proposed AADRPS meets the timing requirements or not and also to check for deadlocks, verification models based on UPPAAL real time model checker are provided in this dissertation. So, the entire framework consisting of AADRPS that aids in increasing the robustness of distance relays and reducing the possibility of blackouts, the multiple facility location optimization models and the UPPAAL real time model checker verification models form one of the major contributions of this dissertation. The second contribution is related to the MAC layer of AMI networks. In this dissertation, FLEX-MAC - a novel and flexible MAC protocol is proposed to reduce the overhead and latency in smart meter data collection. The novelty of the FLEX-MAC lies in its ability to change the mode of operation based on the type of the data being collected in a smart meter network. FLEX-MAC employs Frame and Channel Reserved (FCR) MAC or Frame Reserved and Random Channel (FRRC) MAC for scheduled data collection. Power outage data in an AMI network is considered as a random data . In a densely populated area, during an outage, a large number of smart meters attempt to report the outage, which significantly increases the Random Access CHannel (RACH) load. In order to reduce the RACH traffic during an outage, this dissertation proposes a Time Hierarchical Scheme (THS). Also, in order to minimize the total time to collect the power outage data, a Backward Recursive Dynamic Programming (BRDP) approach is proposed to adapt the transmission rate of smart meters reporting an outage. Both the Optimal Transmission Rate Adaption and Time Hierarchical Scheme form the basis of OTRA-THS MAC which is employed by FLEX-MAC for random data collection. Additionally, in this work, Markov chain models are presented for evaluating the performance of FCR and FRRC MACs in terms of average throughput and delay. Also, another Markov model is presented to find the mean time to absorption or mean time to collect power outage data of OTRA-TH MAC during an outage. / Ph. D.

The power grid has changed a great deal from what has been generally viewed as a traditional power grid. The modernization of the power grid has seen an increase in the integration and incorporation of computing and communication elements, creating an interdependence of both physical and cyber assets of the power grid. The fast-increasing connectivity has transformed the grid from what used to be primarily a physical system into a Cyber- Physical System (CPS). The physical elements within a power grid are well understood by power engineers; however, the newly deployed cyber aspects are new to most researchers and operators in this field. The new computing and communications structure brings new vulnerabilities along with all the benefits it provides. Cyber security of the power grid is critical due to the potential impact it can make on the community or society that relies on the critical infrastructure. These vulnerabilities have already been exploited in the attack on the Ukrainian power grid, a highly sophisticated, multi-layered attack which caused large power outages for numerous customers. There is an urgent need to understand the cyber aspects of the modernized power grid and take the necessary precautions such that the security of the CPS can be better achieved. The power grid is dependent on two main cyber infrastructures, i.e., Supervisory Control And Data Acquisition (SCADA) and Advanced Metering Infrastructure (AMI). This thesis investigates the AMI in power grids by developing a testbed environment that can be created and used to better understand and develop security strategies to remove the vulnerabilities that exist within it. The testbed is to be used to conduct and implement security strategies, i.e., an Intrusion Detections Systems (IDS), creating an emulated environment to best resemble the environment of the AMI system. A DoS flooding attack and an IDS are implemented on the emulated testbed to show the effectiveness and validate the performance of the emulated testbed. / M.S. / The power grid is becoming more digitized and is utilizing information and communication technologies more, hence the smart grid. New systems are developed and utilized in the modernized power grid that directly relies on new communication networks. The power grid is becoming more efficient and more effective due to these developments, however, there are some considerations to be made as for the security of the power grid. An important expectation of the power grid is the reliability of power delivery to its customers. New information and communication technology integration brings rise to new cyber vulnerabilities that can inhibit the functionality of the power grid. A coordinated cyber-attack was conducted against the Ukrainian power grid in 2015 that targeted the cyber vulnerabilities of the system. The attackers made sure that the grid operators were unable to observe their system being attacked via Denial of Service attacks. Smart meters are the digitized equivalent of a traditional energy meter, it wirelessly communicates with the grid operators. An increase in deployment of these smart meters makes it such that we are more dependent on them and hence creating a new vulnerability for an attack. The smart meter integration into the power grid needs to be studied and carefully considered for the prevention of attacks. A testbed is created using devices that emulate the smart meters and a network is established between the devices. The network was attacked with a Denial of Service attack to validate the testbed performance, and an Intrusion detection method was developed and applied onto the testbed to prove that the testbed created can be used to study and develop methods to cover the vulnerabilities present.

Ce travail porte sur les fragments du Discours véritable de Celse, du Contre les chrétiens de Porphyre, du Discours ami de la vérité adressé aux chrétiens d’Hiéroclès et du Contre les Galiléens de Julien. Son but est d’étudier la façon dont ces traités antichrétiens se rattachent à la tradition littéraire de l’Antiquité. Dans une première partie, nous discutons des problèmes liés à l’étude de ces œuvres. Dans une deuxième partie, nous étudions l’emploi polémique des références littéraires chez les polémistes. Une troisième partie est consacrée aux attaques ad hominem contre les personnages bibliques et contre les chrétiens. Enfin, une quatrième partie étudie la forme littéraire de ces œuvres : le choix du titre et du public, mais aussi la structure et le genre littéraire. / This work deals with the fragments of Celsus’ True Discourse, Porphyry’s Against the Christians, Hierocles’ Truthful Discourse to the Christians and Julian’s Against the Galileans. Its purpose is to study the way these anti-Christian treatises use the literary tradition of Antiquity. In the first part, we discuss some problems related to the study of these works. In a second part, we study the polemical use of literary references in these texts. A third part is devoted to ad hominem attacks against biblical characters and against Christians. Finally, a fourth part studies the literary form of these works : the choice of the title and the audience, but also their structure and their literary genre.

Cette thèse explore le comportement quantique des appareils de mesure avec des illustrations en optique quantique. Il s'agit de la première étude des propriétés quantiques de mesures effectuées par n'importe quel type d'appareil de mesure. Nous montrons que les propriétés quantiques d'une mesure, comme son caractère projectif ou non-classique, ne peuvent être révélées que par les états quantiques d'une approche inhabituelle de la physique quantique : l'approche rétrodictive. Cette approche consiste à faire des rétro-prédictions sur les préparations d'états conduisant à un certain résultat de mesure, contrairement à l'approche prédictive avec laquelle nous faisons habituellement des prédictions sur les résultats d'une expérience. En précisant les fondations mathématiques de l'approche rétrodictive, nous mettons en évidence une procédure générale de reconstruction des états quantiques de cette approche : les états rétrodictés. Nous avons réalisé ces reconstructions pour des détecteurs de photons uniques, très utilisés dans les protocoles de cryptographie quantique par exemple. Il s'agit de la première tomographie d'états quantiques entièrement fondée sur l'approche rétrodictive et des choix de préparation, contrairement aux reconstructions habituelles basées sur des résultats de mesure. Ces tomographies nous ont permis d'étudier expérimentalement l'influence du bruit sur les propriétés quantiques des mesures effectuées par ces détecteurs, en particulier leur transition d'un comportement fortement quantique vers un comportement plus classique. Enfin, nous proposons un détecteur d'états " chat de Schrödinger " de la lumière qui sont des superpositions d'états quasi-classiques de la lumière. Dans une version moderne d'une expérience de pensée imaginée par Eugène Wigner en 1961, un tel dispositif permettrait à " l'Ami de Wigner " de détecter un chat de Schrödinger, contrairement à l'œil humain dont nous précisons certaines propriétés quantiques. Nous généralisons l'usage d'un tel détecteur non-classique à un protocole d'estimation de paramètre, entièrement fondé sur l'approche rétrodictive et des choix de préparation. Une telle procédure permettrait de réaliser des estimations optimales, en atteignant la limite de Cramér-Rao quantique, qui est un enjeu très actuel de la métrologie quantique.

The reduction of the impact of energy consumption is a priority issue and a major challenge that concerns every country in the world. This is a complex task that needs to be tackled from several angles in the search for areas where optimizations and savings can be made. In Sweden an electricity meter reading reform was fully implemented by 1st July 2009, including 5.2 million customers, and this created new set of circumstances in the Swedish electricity market. The main purpose of this thesis work has been to investigate the possibilities of increasing the use of remote meter readings. Two research questions have been: “How can the electricity market benefit from remote collected meter readings?” and “Where do barriers appear when utilizing meter readings?”. The work started in 2000/2001 to study Internet based applications that visualize electricity consumption patterns. Over these years the daily internet users have increased from approximately 40 % to 73 % and new markets for web-based applications have evolved. These solutions can be important in the forthcoming years as energy portals that hold new energy services. Experiences from new installations indicate that at least interested customers do submit information concerning building and household properties through internet. Still, it is challenging to enable the majority of customers to take part in these new solutions. It may therefore be important to remind customers on a regular basis in order maintain the frequency using the application and to make it habitual. Further the introduction of demand-based pricing allows electricity distribution utilities to achieve a stronger correlation between peak loads in the distribution network area and their revenues.

Coronary heart disease (CHD) is a leading cause of morbidity and mortality in the industrialised world, and places a heavy burden on society in terms of personal disability and health care costs. The first signs of CHD often present acutely as a myocardial infarction (AMI), commonly known as a heart attack. Survivors of a heart attack remain vulnerable to poor health-related quality of life (HRQOL), further cardiac events, and increased morbidity due to a progression of CHD. Thus, the implementation of interventions to reduce these risks is an important public health strategy. To date, secondary prevention and rehabilitation efforts post-AMI focus primarily on the patient. However, it is argued that recovery from AMI occurs within a social context, and that risk reduction strategies are likely to be enhanced if interventions take into account the impact of the event on the quality of life of patients and their partners. Evidence from a review of couple relationship literature indicates that a significant proportion of couples experiences poor HRQOL (i.e., physical and emotional wellbeing) when coping with stressful life events, and that interactive aspects of a couple relationship (i.e., dyadic functioning and behaviour) are associated with individual well-being at such a time. Information from studies of couples dealing with recovery from heart attack is sparse, but tends to reflect the findings from the broader literature. Further research is required with post-AMI couples, though, as there are a number of shortcomings associated with the existing evidence. For instance, it is derived from studies conducted with, mostly small, samples of convenience; many different instruments are used to collect the data; and no studies specifically measure HRQOL. Analytically, most evidence is obtained with univariate and bivariate statistics, and data are analysed as groups of patients or partners, as opposed to dyads. Where multivariable analyses are undertaken a number of bivariate relationships are no longer significant after accounting for covariates such as age and gender; and few researchers investigate predictive associations between dyadic functioning/behaviour and HRQOL outcomes. Finally, there is a paucity of information from comparative analyses. Thus, it is not known whether the well-being of post-AMI couples over time is better than, similar to, or worse than, for example, that in the general population. The research program underpinning this thesis, the QUT-AMI Project, comprised two studies designed to address these methodological issues. The first was an observational, cross-sectional, pilot study conducted in 1998 with 26 post-AMI couples. The main investigation was a prospective cohort study of 93 post-AMI couples undertaken in 1999-2000. In both studies the samples comprised a consecutive series of adult males younger than 75 years who had experienced a first AMI, and their female partners. The average couple in both studies was middle-aged, had been married for many years, and both members of the dyad were working at the time of the heart attack. Prospective participants were identified in major clinical centres that admit cardiac patients, and couples were recruited to the project soon after the patient's heart attack. Clinical data were collected in hospital. Further data were collected with self-administered questionnaires during a home visit at 1 month (pilot and main study), and by mailed questionnaire or during a home visit at 6 months(main study) after the heart attack. The pilot study was undertaken to test recruitment and data collection procedures in preparation for the second (main) study, measure couples' HRQOL at 1 month after the event using the SF-36, and qualitatively investigate life issues for couples coping with recovery from AMI. In the main study couples' HRQOL outcomes were measured at 1 and 6 months post-AMI using the SF-36, and examined for changes over that time. The outcomes were also compared with those from matched population norms to estimate the impact of a heart attack on couples' HRQOL during the early and later recovery period. Additionally, the following relationships were investigated to determine the extent to which:* patients' dyadic functioning (e.g. happiness/satisfaction with relationship, measured with the Marital Adjustment Scale) and use of dyadic behaviour (e.g., hiding concerns and negative feelings from the other member of the dyad, measured with the Protective Buffering Scale) at 1 month predicted patients' emotional well-being at 6 months post-AMI;* partners' dyadic functioning and behaviour at 1 month predicted partners' emotional well-being at 6 months post-AMI;* patients' and partners' dyadic functioning at 1 month predicted patients' or partners' emotional well-being at 6 months post-AMI; and* patients' and partners' dyadic behaviour at 1 month predicted patients' or partners' emotional well-being at 6 months post-AMI. Exploratory analyses were also undertaken to determine the effect of dyadic discrepancies in functioning and behaviour, at 1 month after the heart attack, on patients' and partners' emotional well-being at 6 months after the event. Important findings were as follows:* At 1 month after an AMI the HRQOL of couples is impaired. The major impact is on physical well-being for patients, and emotional well-being for their partners.* In general, couples' HRQOL improves between 1 and 6 months after an AMI.* At 6 months after an AMI, the HRQOL of average couples is similar to that of their peers in the normal population.* There are subgroup variations in the quality of life of post-AMI couples, and these are associated with age, clinically poor physical health, and depression.* The combination of patients' and partners' use of dyadic behaviour at 1 month after an AMI explains 7% of the variation in patients' emotional well-being at 6months after the event, after adjustment for patients' concurrent physical wellbeing and prior levels of emotional well-being, as well as duration of couple relationships.* The combination of partners' perceptions of dyadic functioning and use of dyadic behaviour at 1 month after an AMI explains 5% of the variation in partners' emotional well-being at 6 months after the event, after adjustment for partners' concurrent physical well-being and prior levels of emotional well-being, as well as duration of couples' relationships.* Patients have poorer emotional well-being at 6 months after an AMI if partners use dyadic behaviour infrequently at 1 month after the event.* Partners have poorer emotional well-being at 6 months after an AMI if they are not satisfied/unhappy with the functioning of their relationships at 1 month after the event. Adjusted exploratory analyses, undertaken to determine the extent to which dyadic discrepancies in perceptions of functioning or use of protective buffering behaviour, predict emotional well-being, show that patients who are less satisfied/unhappier with functioning than their partners at 1 month after an AMI have poor emotional wellbeing at 6 months after the event; patients who use the behaviour more frequently than their partners at 1 month after an AMI have poor emotional well-being at 6months after the event; and partners who are less satisfied/unhappier with functioning than their patients at 1 month after an AMI have poor emotional well-being at 6months after the event. The evidence from the QUT-AMI Project supports the proposition that the interaction that occurs within a couple relationship, combined with individual characteristics of members of a dyad, influences the extent to which a heart attack impacts on couples' HRQOL. It is argued that it is not enough to merely focus on implementing secondary prevention strategies with post-AMI patients. Given that poor emotional well-being is known to predict adverse cardiac events, and premature mortality due to cardiac disease, it is recommended that a couple-focused intervention designed to meet specific needs should be implemented with at-risk couples as a public health strategy to improve not only the patients' quality of life but also that of his partner. Further research is recommended to determine the extent to which such an intervention improves post-AMI couples' quality of life.

This master thesis deals with the implementation of various types of recurrent neural networks via programming language lua using torch library. It focuses on finding optimal strategy for training recurrent neural networks and also tries to minimize the duration of the training. Furthermore various types of regularization techniques are investigated and implemented into the recurrent neural network architecture. Implemented recurrent neural networks are compared on the speech recognition task using AMI dataset, where they model the acustic information. Their performance is also compared to standard feedforward neural network. Best results are achieved using BLSTM architecture. The recurrent neural network are also trained via CTC objective function on the TIMIT dataset. Best result is again achieved using BLSTM architecture.

Au lendemain de la Deuxième Guerre mondiale, Camus comptait parmi les intellectuels engagés qui avaient défendu les droits de l'homme pendant l'Occupation allemande. Camus écrivit des articles pour le journal Combat, dans lesquels il incitait le peuple français à résister collectivement contre les forces de l'ennemi. Témoignent également de son engagement, les quatre Lettres à un ami allemand, écrites pendant l'Occupation, et dans lesquelles il justifie les raisons de son engagement dans la Résistance. Après avoir documenté l'histoire de la Résistance en France, l'objectif du présent mémoire est de procéder à une analyse sémiotique des valeurs défendues par Camus dans ses articles tirés de Combat et dans ses lettres publiées dans le recueil Lettres à un ami allemand. Dans un deuxième temps, le mémoire interroge la possible mise en fiction de ces mêmes valeurs dans son oeuvre romanesque La Peste. Il s'agit d'examiner, par le moyen d'une analyse sémiotique, les valeurs véhiculées par le /faire/ des différents personnages.

Dans Le Père Goriot de Balzac (1835) et Bel-Ami de Maupassant (1885), romans d’éducation réalistes, certains personnages féminins jouent un rôle d’adjuvants auprès du héros en l’aidant dans son ascension sociale. Si les héros exercent un pouvoir sur leurs adjuvants féminins afin de parvenir à leurs fins, ces derniers sont également puissants à la fois avec les héros et au sein de leur milieu social. L’hypothèse de départ de cette étude est que la nature des relations entre les héros et les adjuvants féminins a une influence sur le partage des pouvoirs entre les sexes. En utilisant des approches sociocritique et historique, cette étude montre que dans les deux romans, les adjuvants féminins possèdent des capitaux à la fois économique, social, culturel et symbolique qui leur permettent d’aider les héros dans leur quête. Les adjuvants féminins peuvent être placés dans deux catégories : les « femmes-mentor » et les « femmes-escalier » . Les relations entre les héros et les adjuvants féminins sont caractérisées d’une part par le renversement des pouvoirs dans les deux romans et par la violence dans Bel-Ami. Tandis que dans le roman de Balzac, la dynamique des pouvoirs entre Eugène de Rastignac et ses adjuvants féminins demeure la même tout au long du récit, celle entre Georges Duroy et ceux-ci varie au cours du roman de Maupassant. Bien que les adjuvants féminins retirent des bénéfices de leur pouvoir sur le héros, leur capital économique est limité. De plus, dans Bel-Ami, si certains adjuvants restent puissants à la fin des romans, d’autres connaissent un destin tragique et s’épuisent en aidant le héros. / In Le Père Goriot by Balzac (1835) and Bel-Ami by Maupassant (1885), two realist coming-of-age novels, female characters play the role of adjuvants with respect to the protagonist, assisting in his social ascension. While these male characters exert power on their female adjuvants in order to achieve their objectives, the latter also hold their own in the relationship as well as within their social environment. The hypothesis of this study is that the nature of the relationships between the heroes and the female adjuvants in these works bears a significant influence on the negotiation of power dynamics between the sexes. By using socio-critical and historical approaches, this study shows that in both novels, female adjuvants possess economic, social, cultural and symbolic capitals that enable them to help the heroes in their quest. Female adjuvants in this context may be placed in two categories : the « woman-mentor » and the « woman-stepping stone » . The relationships between heroes and female adjuvants are characterized here on one hand as being the vehicle of shifting power dynamics in both novels, but also of violence in the case of Bel-Ami. Whereas in Balzac’s novel the dynamics of power between Eugène de Rastignac and his female adjuvants stay the same throughout the whole story, those between Georges Duroy and his own vary in the course of Maupassant’s novel. Although these adjuvants benefit from their vantage with respect to the heroes, their economic capital is limited. Furthermore, in Bel-Ami, while some tend to remain powerful at the end of the novels, others meet a tragic destiny and exhaust themselves, specifically by helping the hero.