Cousin Bette (1838-44)

One of Balzac's greatest. The novel has over 150 characters woven in complex ways around the the two polar characters who drive the action in this novel: the Baron Hulot, addictive lust incarnate, and the cousin of his wife, Bette, vindictiveness incarnate.

The Baron Hulot is yet another Balzac mono-maniac, a mono-maniac womanizer, or as Hunt says, he is a "study in senile er*ti*ism...pathological." Like all Balzac characters who indulge in absolute forms of behavior, a tragic end looms on the horizon for him. All it takes is the puppetmaster Bette to realize it for him.

Hulot's wife is a model long-suffering, virtuous wife who at the beginning of the novel is seen rejecting the advances of Baron Hulot's rival and sometimes partner in debauchery Crevel.

Although only a minor character in Balzac, Crevel is a celebrity in other respects. Marx in his classic historical work "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Napoleon Bonaparte" uses the businessman and womanizer Crevel to evoke a picture in the reader's mind of the sort of person who set the standards of morality in Louis Bonaparte's faction that seized power in 1848. The character of Crevel was in turn based upon the real-life publisher of the "Constitutional" newspaper, also somewhat of a debauchee.

Despite being well-treated by Baron Hulot's family Bette nurses deep-seated jealousy and resentment against them. One day Bette discovers a young Polish sculptor Wenceslas, poor, living in a garret, and on the verge of suicide. She takes him under her wing and under her guidance she launches him on a promising career. Just as his career is taking off, the Baron Hulot's daughter, Hortense, catches sight of Wenceslas one day, falls in love with him, and manages to arrange for her marriage to him. This is the incident that breaks the camel's...I mean Bette's back... from this moment on she is on a vendetta against the Baron Hulot's family.... a vindictive monomaniac.

The tool Bette uses in this vendetta is yet another one of her proteges, the beautiful but poor wife of a sickly civil servant, the Machiavellian Valerie Marneffe. First, Valerie is hitched up with the Baron Hulot and reduces him to a state of penury. Next in line is Hulot's rival Crevel, followed by Bette's revengeful finishing touch, Wenceslas, who was stolen from her by the Baron Hulot's daughter. Needless to say, the weak willed Wenceslas fails to prove himself as either a husband or as an artist. Finally, the Brazilian Montejanos, bringing with him simple, more primal and manly, notions about love and possession, enters the little circle of Valerie's admirers who are often all in the room at the same time.

In Valerie's wake the Baron Hulot needs to raise some cash, so he tries to embezzle some money out of military supplies being sent to Algeria, but he gets caught. Disgraced and facing prosecution, with Bette's help he disappears into the poorer neighborhoods of Paris, living with succesively younger and poorer women as he slips down the social ladder into the depths of Paris.

In the meantime, Bette has moved on to greener pastures, working as a maid in the house of the rich Count Forzheim, from whom she anticipates marriage proposals. In his abscence, the Baron's wife joins the charitable organization "The Brotherhood of Consolation" (see "The Seamy Side of History" or the "Brotherhood of Consolation") and does work helping the poor. After a little bit of searching, the Baron's wife eventually discovers him working as a writer of letters for the illiterate poor and living with a fifteen year old. The wife brings her incorrigible husband home, but almost immediately she catches him seducing the maid and promising to marry her after her wife's death. At about this time in the novel, the Baron's wife does in fact die, but before the wife dies the whole family gets the opportunity to shed a few sentimental tears over poor old Bette whose Count has died on her before marrying her and was further stricken with grief when the Baron Hulot returns home as happy and oblivious to reality as ever.

Meanwhile, Crevel has managed to marry Valerie Marneffe, but when the Brazilian Montejanos returns from Brazil and is informed of the fact, he infects them with some nameless disease that he has secret knowledge of, that dooms them to a long and painful death during which they have plenty of opportunity to repent of their evil doing.

The plot is driven more by dialogue than is usual in Balzac's novels. There's a recent hollywood movie based on this novel, but it does not do justice to Balzac's artistry as a novelist.

(Long, La Cousine Bette, cbtty10.txt)

Cousin Pons (1844-46)

Short Summary: Two aging musicians, wrapped up in their work, naively unaware of the true thoughts and motives of those around them, take a tumultuous ride through Parisian society as one of them, Pons, dies and everyone tries to grab some of his inheritance, an inheritance that no one could have believed existed because everyone believed his hobby of antique collecting to be a useless eccentricity. One of Balzac's greatest.

Long Summary: Cousin Pons is a tragedy. Andre Gide regarded it as Balzac's greatest work. Along with Cousin Bette, and to a lesser extent Pierrette, this work belongs to Balzac's stories dealing with poorer relations in a family.

Pons and the German Schmucke are two ageing musicians who live together. They have devoted their whole life to music and this devotion has produced a sort of myopia that prevents them from seeing the sordid reality of the way society works and people think. The combined naivity of the two bachelors in the face of the continual cold-hearted, self-interested scheming of everyone around them is at the heart of the story.

The depiction of Schmucke follows the stereotype of Germans made popular during Balzac's time by Mme de Stael's book on Germany: "kindness, simplicity, sentimentality, and complete lack of practical sense." (Hunt, 388) Note that there are also two other Germans in the novel who do not share these characteristics.

Pons is also a passionate gourmet and collector of antiques The plot is woven around these two passions. Pons is not rich enough to indulge in his gourmet passions by himself, so he continually shows up at the dinner tables of friends and relations, to the point of making his presence a nuisance to them. As he grows old, fewer and fewer people are willing to accept him at their dinner table until he is reduced to an overwhelming dependence on one family, the Camusots. As he grows old and unwanted, Pons situation mirrors the plight of many senior citizens today and in the past.

Mme. Camusot has two outstanding characteristics: her cruelty and complete control over her husband. Pons has spurned the attentions of her maid who would have liked to marry him to get a step up in the world, so he already has enemies in Mme Camusot's house. When Pons presents Mme. Camusot with a rare and ornate fan as a token of his appreciation, Mme. Camusot humiliates him in return. Expected for dinner one night at their house, Pons is left to eat by himself, humiliated by Mme. Camusot, her daughter, and the servants.

The Camusots are having a hard time finding a good marriage match for their daughter because she lacks a sufficient dowery, so Pons trys to win back their good will by finding a rich young man for her to marry. But he makes his situation even worse when, after being invited to dinner, the young man reveals that he has a negative opinion of only-daughters and would never marry one. The Camusots are humiliated and Pons becomes a target for their revenge. They manage to convince friends and relations of his that were formerly well-disposed towards him, that he has cheated anad deceived them.

The humiliation and disgrace that he has sunk into is too much for old Pons to bear and he lapses into bad health and comes down with hepatitis. Bed ridden, unable to work, with death staring him in the face, the trouble really begins. The prospect of his death awakens all the true parasites who surround him, who hope to grab his inheritance when it becomes known that his antique collection is worth a considerable sum.

The wife of the porter in the building Pons lives in, Mme Cibot, a former well-known beauty who still has some pretensions, allies herself with her neighbor, a scrap metal dealer Remonencq, and the art dealer, Elie Magus, a true Balzacian mono-maniac, in this case an art collector mono-maniac.

Fraisier, a lawyer who has been expelled from his practice in a provincial town for unprofessional conduct, cuts a deal with Mme. Camusot to get the inheritance for her in exchange for an appointment as a judge. The doctor who is treating Pons, Poulain, acts as Fraisier's spy. Fraisier also recruits Mme Cibot, the porter's wife, as a spy.

Even before Pons is dead this rag-tag group of schemers manage to remove the most valuable pieces from Pons's collection.

As the death of Pons approaches, the action reaches a crescendo. The porter's wife in league with her neighbor Remonencq, poisons her husband in a nice little Film-Noir-like touch. The death bed of Pons is literally swarming with underhanded intrigue.

With the death of Pons all the Parisian institutions surrounding death are put under a microscope and exposed by Balzac (as they are at the end of the novelette "Ferragus"). At the very end Balzac provides a little ironic spice when he reveals that the final possessors of the Pons collection are the Camusots. He even has them utter a few sentimental words in memory of dear Pons.

(Long, Le Cousin Pons, cspns10.txt)

Pierrette (1827-28)

This is not officially part of Balzac's "Poor Relations" series of tales, but it fits logically into this category. It is "...one of his [Balzac's] cruellest tales. The tragic end of the little orphan,' enslaved, tortured, and maimed by her foster-parents." (Robb, 325) It actually began as a cinderella story. The transformed story reflects the mood Balzac was in after his friend was executed for murdering his wife and servant.

An unmarried brother and sister, sent to work when they were very young by their parents, become successful shopkeepers in Paris. Neglecting other aspects of life they also become narrow-minded, ignorant bores. In their 40's they retire to a provincial town, get rejected by society and then get adopted by everyone who opposes the existing ruling order in the town.

They decide to adopt an orphaned relative, Pierrette, only when they see a clear advantage in it. Like cinderella, they abuse the orphan Pierrette physically and mentally. Pierrette suffers from a life threatening dietary deficiency, and injures her head, all of which they neglect.

A lawyer Vinet becomes politically powerful and supports Bathilde, a clever aristocrat in her marital campaign against the brother, who, despite his age, has enough wealth to make him an attractive match. An old colonel lays siege to the sister.

When the local physician and priest dash the sister's plans for marriage by advising her that it is impossible or immoral for a woman over 40 to have children and that children are the only legitimate reason for marrying, the lawyer takes advantage of the situation and redirects the colonel's marital campaign to the young Pierrette. The colonel realizes he's been manipulated and redoubles the assault on the old sister, but the old sister, writhing in jealousy believes the colonel is courting the young orphan behind her back, passing letters to her at night through her window. One night, trying to pry what she believes to be letters out of Pierrette's hand, the old sister breaks Pierrette's hands and just in the nick of time her grandmother, who by a stroke of luck has had her fortune restored to her, arrives to rescue her.

A court case for custody of the child begins with the two main factions of the town arrayed on each side. All the local doctors plus Horace Bianchon, a famous doctor from Paris, sign a report detailing the child abuse. The grandmother and her side win custody, but the question of criminal culpability for child abuse remains. The child finally dies and just as they are about to bury her the lawyers for the accused arrive with a court order to perform an autopsy in front of all the bereaving relatives. The relatives heroically refuse and lose the case.

Several years later, the brother and sister's influence in the town has increased and most people have learned to retell the story of Pierrette in a way that's favorable to the brother and sister, explaining away the true story told by others as the biased product of vested interests, using the very argument that could be used against them.

The final crowning irony is the series of biographies in which all the unsympathetic characters who manipulate the world for their own selfish interests achieve success in the end.

Even though the work as a whole is a little slow moving, not really a literary masterpiece, it stands as an indictment of legal chicanery and expose of the sort child abuse that probably goes undetected and unpunished. Also a little reminiscent of the OJ Simpson case.

Balzac issues his own judgement in the final sentence of the work: "We must all agree that legality would be a fine thing for social scoundrelism IF THERE WERE NO GOD." So the punishment of these people, successful by immoral means, apparently awaits them in heaven.

(Medium to Long, Pierrette, prrtt10.txt)