Balzac, whom I consider a far greater master of realism than all the Zolas, past, present, or future, gives us in his Comedie Humaine a most wonderfully realistic history of French "society," describing, chronicle fashion, almost year by year from 1816 to 1848, the ever-increasing pressure of the rising bourgeoisie upon the society of nobles that established itself after 1815 and that set up again, as far as it could (tant bien que mal) the standard of the vieille politesse francaise. He describes how the last remnants of this, to him, model society gradually succumbed before the intrusion of the vulgar moneyed upstart or was corrupted by him. How the Grande Dame, whose conjugal infidelities were but a mode of asserting herself, in perfect accord with the way she had been disposed of in marriage, gave way to the Bourgeoise, who acquired her husband for cash or cashmere. And around this central picture he groups a complete history of French society from which, even in economic details (for instance the redistribution of real and private property after the French Revolution) I have learned more than from all the professional historians, economists, and statisticians of the period together.
Well, Balzac was a political legitimist; his great work is a constant elegy on the irreparable decay of good society; his sympathies are with the class that is doomed to extinction. But for all that, his satire is never keener, his irony never more bitter, then when he sets in motion the very men and women with whom he sympathizes most deeply--the nobles. And the only men of whom he speaks with undisguised admiration are his bitterest political antagonists, the republican heroes of the Cloitre Saint Mery, the men who at that time (1830-1836) were indeed representatives of the popular masses.
That Balzac was thus compelled to go against his own class sympathies and political prejudices, that he saw the necessity of the downfall of his favorite nobles and described them as people deserving not better fate; that he saw the real men of the future where, for the time being, they alone were to be found-- that I consider one of the greatest triumphs of realism, and one of the greatest features in old Balzac.
(Source: This is an extract from a famous letter to Margaret Harkness. It can be found in two anthologies: