La Cousine Bette and Allegorical Realism
1971; Cambridge University Press; Volume: 86; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês
10.2307/460949
ISSN1938-1530
Autores Tópico(s)French Literature and Poetry
ResumoLa Cousine Bette was written at a time when the classification scheme of La Comédie humaine no longer seemed adequate for its raw materials and was marked by a prodigious expansion in the length of Balzac's customary exposition. The ending of that exposition (desire gratified, desire frustrated) hints at the thematic unity of the work. Thus Bette embodies frustration, negativity, and ultimately the death wish itself: this drive is then parceled out among the other destructive women characters as well. Hulot in contrast expresses the force of Eros. Not only are both characters allegorical: they are shown in the process of becoming allegorical, and the deeper subject of the book is the very history of obsession itself. Balzac is able to record this instinctual system because his work is pre-individualistic: at the same time, the very symmetry of the instincts requires a third character, Madame Hulot, to function as consciousness or ego, and it is from this third pole that Balzac's sentimentalism (and his political ideology) derive, as necessary and inherent structural distortions.
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