The Lily of the Valley (1809,1823)

This novel has a serious tone and none of the irony and humor that Balzac crowns his other works with. The novel resurrects one of the common themes of the Romantic movement in literature: the tension between spiritual and physical love, a theme of such works such as "La Nouvelle Heloise" by Rousseau, "Lelia" by George Sand, and "Volupte" by the critic and Balzac enemy Saint-Beuve. In fact, one theory of the novel's origin is as an act of revenge for a bad review Saint-Beuve gave Balzac. As revenge, Balzac rewrote Saint Beuve's novel, improving it in the process.

While reading the novel, it is good to keep in mind that physical love became almost a mystical religion during Balzac's age. Victor Hugo himself proposed in a famous thesis that physical possession was a religious act (Hunt, 109).

In 1814 the young Felix de Vandenesse, not yet 20 years of age, who represents the adolescent Balzac to some extent, attends a ball. Sitting by himself he finds himself staring absent-mindedly at the bare shoulders of the woman sitting next to him. Forgetting where he is, the shoulders hypnotise him. Suddenly he throws himself on the woman and kisses her.

Upbraided but then pardoned for this indiscretion he soon finds himself at the woman's country manor. This woman, whose name is Henriette and nine years older than Felix, is the perfect example of a virtuous, long-suffering wife who is left with all the family responsibilities including taking care of her sick children and running the family estates because her husband is completely incapable of doing anything. Her husband, M. de Mortsauf, was one of the aristocratic emigres that fled France during the revolution and lived in exile. The only thing de Mortsauf's exile did for him was turn him into an angry old hypochondriac who has actually made himself sick through all his worrying.

Felix soon becomes close friends with Henriette's whole family. He becomes a tutor to her children, a ready ear for her husband's eternal griping, and a spiritual partner, confidant, and sharer of dreams for her. Although he comes to be more what would be expected of a husband, his role in the household becomes that of her eldest son's older brother. (cf Henriette with Mme. de Warens in Rousseau's Confessions) Only minor physical expressions of love pass between them: holding hands, pressing hands, as well as kissing her hand and forehead.

As she would for one of her own sons, Henriette becomes concerned for Felix's future and sends him away to Paris to make a career for himself as a diplomat in the court of Louis XVIII. She sends a very long letter to him, which we get to read, which tells him how to conduct himself in society and with women.

Felix develops quite a reputation in society for this chaste fidelity, and inevitably he crosses paths with someone determined to put it to a test, Lady Arabella Dudley, an English woman who is the step-mother of recurring character Henri de Marsay. Lady Dudley seduces him and provides him with everything he has not experienced yet.

Word of Felix's infidelity eventually reaches Henriette and she stops writing him letters. Felix makes the journey back to Henriette's country manor with Lady Dudley following him and taking up residence in La Grenadiere (see Balzac's short story "La Grenadiere" for a description of this house). Felix tries to explain his actions but Henriette becomes sick with a disease apparently brought on by Felix's infidelity and as she is dieing she confesses to Felix that Felix's indiscrete action at the ball many years ago had shaken her being to the very core and although she had desired him all along, Felix's lack of temerity had saved her...religiously that is. Needless to say, the calculating Lady Dudley leaves him the moment Henriette dies.

The woman to whom Felix narrates this story many years afterwards, Natalie de Manerville, finds him contemptable for betraying the woman who had devoted so much of her time and affection on him as well as helping him along with his career, a little ironic since Natalie de Manerville is herself guilty of betraying and destroying the husband who naively married her...and her mother (see "The Marriage Contract")

(Long, Le Lys dans la valise, tlotv10.txt)