Verisoara Bette

La Comédie Humaine #56

by Honoré de Balzac, Mioara Izverna (Translator, Introduction)

«On ne marie pas aujourd'hui, sans dot, une fille aussi belle que l'est mademoiselle Hortense, reprit Crevel. C'est comme un cheval de luxe qui exige trop de soins coûteux pour avoir beaucoup d'acquéreurs. Vous ne pouvez, dans la situation où vous êtes, marier votre fille que de trois manières : par mon secours, vous n'en voulez pas ! et d'un ; en trouvant un vieillard de soixante ans, très riche, sans enfants, et qui voudrait en avoir, c'est difficile, mais cela se rencontre. Et de deux ! La dernière manière est la plus facile...»

Genres: Classics, Fiction, France, French Literature, 19th Century, Literature, Novels

456 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1846

About the author

French writer Honoré de Balzac (born Honoré Balzac), a founder of the realist school of fiction, portrayed the panorama of society in a body of works, known collectively as La comédie humaine .

Honoré de Balzac authored 19th-century novels and plays. After the fall of Napoléon in 1815, his magnum opus, a sequence of almost a hundred novels and plays, entitled, presents life in the years.

Due to keen observation of fine detail and unfiltered representation, European literature regards Balzac. He features renowned multifaceted, even complex, morally ambiguous, full lesser characters. Character well imbues inanimate objects; the city of Paris, a backdrop, takes on many qualities. He influenced many famous authors, including the novelists Marcel Proust, Émile Zola, Charles John Huffam Dickens, Gustave Flaubert, Henry James, and Jack Kerouac as well as important philosophers, such as Friedrich Engels. Many works of Balzac, made into films, continue to inspire.

An enthusiastic reader and independent thinker as a child, Balzac adapted with trouble to the teaching style of his grammar. His willful nature caused trouble throughout his life and frustrated his ambitions to succeed in the world of business. Balzac finished, and people then apprenticed him as a legal clerk, but after wearying of banal routine, he turned his back on law. He attempted a publisher, printer, businessman, critic, and politician before and during his career. He failed in these efforts From his own experience, he reflects life difficulties and includes scenes.

Possibly due to his intense schedule and from health problems, Balzac suffered throughout his life. Financial and personal drama often strained his relationship with his family, and he lost more than one friend over critical reviews. In 1850, he married Ewelina Hańska, his longtime paramour; five months later, he passed away.

Reviews

[Emily May · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book had good moments but I'm disappointed I didn't enjoy it more than I did. It's about a jealous old spinster paying her family back for decades of being treated as inferior for being the ugly cousin. She teams up with the beautiful Madame Marneffe (cue the homoerotic undertones) to destroy the treacherous Hulots. It sounded pretty juicy if you ask me, but there's a lot of slow stretches. Not nearly as fun as I was hoping for, but still entertaining in parts.

[Anne · Rating 4 out of 5]

Pro Tip:
Honoré de Balzac isn't a name that someone with a Southern accent has an easy time with, and I walked around for a week telling everyone that I was reading a book by someone whose name was Ballsack. Honestly, I should have just listened to the book, shut up, and kept my redneck pronunciation tucked under my hat.
It's hard to be taken seriously when you have a drawl.



Okay, first things first. Cousin Bette isn't as sympathetic as I thought she'd be when I read the blurb. She's a bit of a dick.
Now there are moments when you can get behind her, but most of the time, she's just as selfish and unlikable as the rest of the characters in the book. So don't go into this thinking you'll get to root for some downtrodden heroine.



And yet, by the end of the book I was convinced the true villain was Adeline.
Now, I'm not saying it was her fault that her scumbag husband, Baron Hector Hulot, cheated on her. But I am saying that it's probably not the best idea to comfort your husband when his mistress throws him over for a wealthier man.
Balzac did this thing where he wrote her as this pseudo-sympathetic character, full of what everyone thinks the virtues of a good wife are, then perfectly pointed the finger at why all of those virtues are bullshit.
Led by her long-suffering example, her entire family fell into one ruinous situation after another.
Put a foot up his ass, Madame!



Ok. So the skinny gist is that Bette is this swarthy peasant who is jealous of her family. They're not terrible to her but they treat her like she's...well, a swarthy peasant.



BUT THEN.
You find out Bette has been financially supporting this sexy little artist in her building. She says she thinks of him as a son but...oh-ho-ho, methinks not!
So imagine her surprise when Adeline's beautiful daughter flits in like the Hamburgler and steals her young man right out from under her.



Now she's pissed.
In an effort to screw with them, she teams up with Valérie, an unscrupulous married woman in her apartment building. Valérie seduces (I use that term loosely) Adeline's husband and takes him for everything he has, bankrupting the family, while Adeline coos, coddles, and suffers in silence.
Valérie is so good at her job that she is also simultaneously carrying on affairs with several other men - including Adeline's daughter's husband and her son's father-in-law!
These men are all ridiculous and stupid. There's just no other way to describe them.



Throughout the story, Hulot just could not stop himself from chasing ever-younger ass. By the end of it he was just a sad old fart with half a chubby running after girls, and yet (like most narcissists) he never really got what was coming to him.
Because right up till the end, Adeline worshiped and enabled him.
No one really got what they wanted, Bette included. But she came close a time or two.
Fun story!
Recommended.

[Petra X · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a soap opera masquerading as a classic. It has all the right ingredients.

* A husband, a baron, who has spent all the family money on other women.

* A wife who justifies acting like a doormat by saying it is religious feminine submission.

* An in-law who threatens to put the kybosh on any potential "good match" marriage for their dowry-less but pretty (and rather boring) daughter Hortense if religious doormat doesn't sleep with him.

* Cousin Bette, the protagonist of the story, who is the plain, poor relation given shelter by the Baron, but must earn her own living and who is a jealous, vengeful and cunning woman.

* A talented sculptor who leads on and exploits Cousin Bette for what she can do for him, but falls in love with Hortense (and marries her after he has become rich through using her connections).

* A beautiful mistress/whore, Valerie. Lots of French classics have a woman who exploits her looks but is eventually brought low. Camille in La Dame aux Camélias, Nana, Madame Bovary to name a few I've read.

* The poor but handsome lover of the mistress who is used for sex and spurned because he hasn't got enough money. He's going to have his revenge too.

* More than a hint of lesbianism between the vengeful Bette and the greedy Valerie.

Everyone gets their just desserts in the end, except, mystifingly, the Baron who on his saintly wife's demise marries a servant girl and is happy as a hare in clover satisfied with his comfortable life and lots of sex.

Balzac did write this as a series and it is both light fiction and great literature. It explores the themes of wealth, beauty, cruelty, passion and religion in an elegant fashion. This is what makes it such a good read, a good plot, great characters and plenty of depth to flesh out the story into a real experience. But 4 stars rather than 5 because it does take a bit of wading through.

[J.L. Sutton · Rating 4 out of 5]

Compelling (and unsavory) characters drew me into Honore de Balzac's Cousin Bette (1846). The main plot centers on Cousin Bette's revenge on her family; however, all the stories which make up the novel are imbued by obsessions which drive the narrative to its dark end. Much of how I described Balzac's earlier novel, Pere Goriot, holds true for Cousin Bette; Balzac's impressively/exhaustively detailed style is at work here. The layers of detail allow readers to immerse themselves in early 19th century French society in general and more specifically in the depiction of the drawn out spiteful vengeance Bette exacts on her family. Once immersed, it can be overwhelming to stand in Balzac's world, but it's probably as close as any of us will get to hanging out with scheming relatives (in 19th century France).

[Daisy · Rating 5 out of 5]

After a run of reading more modern books that have left me underwhelmed I thought it was time to remind myself of how great a novel can be. I had had this sitting on my shelf for a while but was feeling too tired to commit to 450 pages and the exertions of flipping back and forth to the notes explaining the history of some law that is referenced in passing. Fool!
This Penguin edition is fantastic; a very brief introduction (I only read the introduction after
I’ve finished the book when you can understand what they are talking about and there is no risk of spoilers) and absolutely no notes bar a few footnotes. This meant the narrative spoke for itself and could be read without interruption and what a wonderful read it was.
In terms of characterisation Balzac is akin to Dickens, Cousin Bette is populated by caricatures. There is the malicious, scheming eponymous spinster who is skinny, dark and sports a monobrow, her saintly cousin Adeline who is beauty personified and endlessly patient and forgiving, the greedy, cruel bewitching courtesan and the sexually incontinent baron among others. Yet Balzac has none of the moralising or sentimentality of Dickens. Characters suffer, characters cheat and fail morally and yet the author remains objective and does not offer any opprobrium on them. Instead it is left to the reader to pass judgment on their actions.
This book is described as a book about vengeance but I would argue it is more about the self-destructive nature of selfishness and greed. Despite being the eponymous character Cousin Bette does remarkably little to bring her cousin, and by association the Hulot family, down. She, in many ways, is a Iago. She has to do remarkably little to exploit the weaknesses in each character and once that faultline has been found she can observe them destroy themselves.
It is with discomfort that we read of husbands and fathers abandoning and impoverishing their families in the pursuit of sex. Baron Hulot, a handsome, charming man of renown brazenly parades his courtesans around town, paying for them to live in splendour while his family home is in genteel decay. Balzac’s description of the Baron’s home is wonderful.

Cousin Bette, who was not impressed, as the newly rich ex-perfumer had been, by the signs of distress written on the worn chairs, the discoloured hangings, and the split silk. The furniture with which we live is in the same case as ourselves . Seeing ourselves every day, we come, like the Baron, to think ourselves little changed, still young, while other people see on our heads hair turning to chinchilla, V-shaped furrows on our foreheads, and great pumpkins in our bellies. These rooms were still lit for Cousin Bette by the Bengal lights of Imperial victories and shone with perennial splendour.

Like an addict he cannot give up these women and having spent his children’s inheritance, borrowed from everyone possible and even committed fraud against the state will watch his wife move into a garret and work for a living rather than give up his women. The bleakest moment is at the end, in his twilight years (he is over 80) penniless, shabby and looking his age, he still cannot resist the lure of female flesh and again abandons his family for a young kitchen maid – his prizes are no longer the beauties and courtesans but dumpy, plain uneducated serving girls as befits the reduction in his circumstances.
The courtesans are no less lacking in empathy. They happily drain the coffers of their marks using enough of the flirt an withdrawal, kindness and coldness that today we would call it coercive control.
Madame Marneffe has an addiction of her own; money. To me she also seemed to have a rage at the world, a need to take everything until she has destroyed it fully. She does this with the men who pay court to her. She will not stop tightening the screws until she has every last sou out of them and has nothing but contempt for the families she is fully aware she is destroying. What makes her so monstrous is her desire to inflict pain on people she has never met and have done her no ill, her greed is incidental (or at best secondary) to her malice and it often seems that money is the method with which she achieves her aims rather than the purpose.
While reading it I kept thinking how inconceivable it was that people would behave like this and then I thought about online scams where people are fleeced of huge amounts of money by the promise of an attractive object of their affection. I personally know of someone who gave her young children’s savings to a man she had never met in person but had believed she would set up home with him. At least the Baron knew what he was willing to sacrifice everything for. Similarly Madame Marneffe seemed just too cruel and manipulative to be credible, and then I watched The Puppet Master on Netflix and realised that there are people who can strip people of family, finances, autonomy and care not a jot.
A painful but wonderful read.

[Perry · Rating 3 out of 5]

SWEET LAND OF LIBERTINES


If you fancy yourself a moralist, you may wanna skip this one. As the undoubted precursor to/playbook for modern-day soap operas, Cousin Bette involves:

marital cruelty, sexual blackmail, spite-filled revenge, prostitution, unconscionable adultery, women with irresistible sexual allure to men, men and women having a number of different sexual partners (in a day), theft, poisons, passion-filled murder, and just about every other sin and demoralizing character defect one can imagine.

It seemed realistic and true to the human condition... an exploration of a society uninhibited. Balzac wrote Cousin Bette in 1847 in France at the height of the "libertine" philosophy holding that one need not be restrained by the morals of society, including monogamy and marriage, but should instead seek out and enjoy all of life's pleasures (particularly a variety of sexual partners) with no regard to harm done to others (Note: my uneducated synopsis of Libertinism, which also fits my idea of biblical Sodom and Gomorrah).

Here, money and sex are bartering and blackmail chips; virtues like honor and loyalty take second seat to instant gratification and debauchery. Guilt and regret are non-existent.

The name is somewhat misleading. Cousin Bette is the old maid jilted by her infatuation for Wenceslas in favor of her angelic cousin Hortense Hurlot. As a result, she schemes to ruin the Hurlot family through a temptress named Madame Marneffe, who is as easy as an old shoe. Daddy Hurlot and the Mayor are also sleeping with the Mdme. I cannot start describing the rest of the story without going down a path littered with raunch and degradation.

I wanted to read at least one Balzac novel so I picked this one and read it a few summers back [review updated from then]. I give it 4 stars because there is something to be said for keeping all this straight and being the primary trailblazer of realism in fiction. Plus this is just a part of a larger, loosely-tied sequence of novels and short stories, La Comedie humaine, in which Balzac presented his panoramic view of life in France after Napoleon's downfall in 1815. So many great authors followed his lead in the 20th century in Europe and America and set the world afire down so many different paths toward truth and humanity that are each so unique.

[Ellie Hamilton · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this, it felt loosely Ferrante style in the city element and the family intrigue x Dark, political and rich writing heavy xx

[Paul Bryant · Rating 1 out of 5]

The blurb says that the nasty old spinster Cousin Bette goes on a mission to destroy her supercilious condescending family, so I though well, that sounds fun!

It also says “Cousin Bette is a book in which Balzac is most characteristically and triumphantly himself”. That turned out to be not so much fun because Balzac is an insufferable know it all who obsesses about a) people’s income; b) married men spending fortunes on their various mistresses, some of whom are more than somewhat young looking; and c) the quality of interior furnishing.
Well you might say this applies to most authors – they are knowitalls about the world they’re writing about, and they do love to describe rooms and furniture, especially in the olden days because due to a lack of tv nobody knew what anything looked like.

When I checked my review of the only other Balzac I read – Old Goriot – I see it began very badly and tediously and then warmed up and I liked it in the end. But after dozens and dozens of pages of Cousin Bette he was still describing jewelery and mistresses and how if you could flash enough cash you could get yourself any pretty woman you cared to in France in the 1830s. Yourself being a man, of course.

So this is going to be all about hypocrisy and double standards and the awfulness of the rich and the even more awfulness of the many people trying to become rich or trying to pretend they’re still rich. I kind of ran out of patience before the plot got going. This book got to feel like medicine for an ailment I didn't have.

I hope Cousin Bette and her monobrow utterly wrecked this ghastly family and she shouldn’t have stopped there either. She should have formed a group of ninja guerrilla spinsters who could bring down all these lofty misstresstaking grandees with well-aimed poison darts. But I will never know.

As Elvis said

A little less conversation, a little more action, please
All this aggravation ain't satisfactioning me

[Chrissie · Rating 3 out of 5]

I am no literary critic. I will merely try and express what I experienced while reading this book.

I am glad I read it, but I admire the author's opus more than I enjoyed it. Honestly, it was often a struggle.

It has a very slow start. The book's narrator, after a third of the way through, states that only now will the story begin. All that before had just been an introduction to the characters! That "introduction" doesn't read as a normal introduction; you are thrown into events that you scarcely comprehend. Often I was confused, and so also upset, but always I did eventually come to understand what was happening. There are lots of characters. Actually, the number is not the main problem. The confusion is caused by the immense amount of details thrown at you. When I begin a book, I have no idea where the book is leading so I try and remember e-v-e-r-y-t-h-i-n-g. I was swamped. From all these details the author does periodically summarize and clarify so you do understand. These details do serve a purpose; they very accurately depict life in Paris in the early 1840s.

The book was first published in serial format in Le Constitutionanel. Balzac wrote it to compete against another popular feuilleton author, Eugène Sue, of a socialist bent. Balzac supported the House of Bourbon and venerated Napoléon Bonaparte as a champion of absolutist power. Balzac’s aim was to realistically describe life after Napoléon’s fall. Given that it was published as a feuilleton, he was writing for people of his day. References are made to individuals and events that were the talk of the town. So they understood what he was referring to much better than we do! Much is left unexplained. In addition, the popularity and success of the writing depended upon keeping readers engaged. Melodrama, excitement, titillating scenes and moralistic elements pepper the writing. This very much affects the writing style. I think he magnificently depicts the different social classes vying against each other in Paris, but as with other books written in serial format something quick and exciting must happen in each episode. Do you see why I admire the writing, but don't really love it?

Then there are the characters. Some critics say his figures are complex. I didn’t see them that way. The reader easily spots different character types:
Bette - think of one seeking revenge. She is the cousin of Adeline.
Valérie Marneffe - the beautiful, seductive, greedy mistress of four. And she is married!
Baron Hector Hulot - consumed by sex. Let’s just call him the dirty old man.
Baroness Adeline Hulot - Hector’s saintly wife.
Célestin Crevel - the wealthy, retired tradesman and rival of Hulot. Here and elsewhere Balzac shows the importance of wealth.
Wenceslas Steinbock - the artist. Here Balzac has a chance to spell out what it takes to succeed in art – hard work! You can reflect on Balzac’s own efforts. He wrote this novel in two months! His health suffered.

There are several more figures in the families:
Hortense Hulot - daughter of the Hulots married to Wenceslas
Victorin Hulot - the Hulots' son married to Celestine.
Celestine - Crevel's daughter married to Victorin
Maréchal Hulot - Hector Hulot's honorable brother
Johann Fischer – an uncle of the Hulot family, someone handy to send to Algiers to embezzle funds

And mistresses and lovers:
Josépha Mirah - singer, Jewish, abandoned child
Baron Henri Montès de Montéjanos - another Baron, another lover, but Brazilian this time
Agathe - kitchenmaid, mistress and........

I am listing the characters for two reasons. To help those planning on reading the book and to illustrate the caricature each represents. I prefer more complicated, complex characters. I don’t see them that way. There is a strong moral message conveyed.

Yet, Balzac did have a great idea in writing his Comédie humaine, a multi-volume collection of interlinked novels sharing many of the same characters. He completed over 90 novels and had begun over 40 more. You hit upon characters that have turned up in other novels. You remember other things they have done and said. This added depth for me. In Père Goriot I met the criminal in-hiding, Vautrin. Here he is in the police force, and we meet more of his family! Doctor Bianchon was one of the diners at the lodging house Mason Vauque. We meet him here too. I liked this very much. You don’t have to read the books in a particular order, but the more you read and the more you know, the fuller the story becomes. As in real life, as with real people, the more you learn about each, the more interesting they become. You become curious for more.

The audiobook I listened to was narrated by Johanna Ward / Kate Reading. She knows how to pronounce French correctly. That is important. For me she spoke too quickly. She dramatizes, but she does this well. Me, I would give the narration four stars.

So the book IS worth reading, but it is difficult. You have to pay close attention. It is by no means an easy read. For me it was a bit too didactic, a bit to melodramatic, its characters a bit too simplified. The next I will read from the Comédie humaine will be Eugénie Grandet. My curiosity has been piqued and I do want more, but I need a breather first.

[Jonfaith · Rating 5 out of 5]

Despite some narrative leaps and a reversal of fortune for several of the characters, I truly loved this novel. It was a perfect, snowy weekend for such. The pacing, except for the end, was sublime and supported with equal measures of vitriol and detail.

There is much to say about a family in decline, if not peril. I rank Cousin Bette with Buddenbrooks and The Sound and the Fury.

[AiK · Rating 4 out of 5]

Признаюсь, поначалу меня бесили Аделина и Гортензия, праздные женщины, которых Бальзак изображал идеалами, неизменно награждая эпитетами «эта святая женщина» про мать и «прекрасная» про дочь. Бетта оказалась умной женщиной, не ставшей вступать в неравную открытую борьбу, она сделала себя сама, работала мастерицей-золотошвейкой и зарабатывала себе этим ремеслом на хлеб. У нее был сильный характер, поскольку она не захотела выйти замуж за четырех мужчин, которых ей сватали, а выбрала сама своего возлюбленного. Ее силы духа хватило за них обоих, она морально помогала ему так, что он начал делать успехи и был замечен. Мне не понравилось, что Бальзак осуждает ее и считает, что у Гортензии есть моральное право, отбив возлюбленного у Бетты, женить его на себе, а у Бетты нет морального права мстить за это, как и у Валери нет морального права отбить у Гортензии Венцеслава. Это действительно, роман о нравах, когда отцы семейств проматывали состояния на содержанок, и у одной содержанки было по нескольку соперничающих между собой любовников, часто знавших о существовании друг друга. В конце, когда Аделина начала заниматься благотворительностью и получать за это зарплату, она стала заслуживать большего уважения, но эпитеты «святая женщина» все равно казались неуместными. И все же, это роман не о Бетте, а о семейной драме Аделины.

[Helga چـو ایـران نباشد تن من مـباد · Rating 2 out of 5]

This book is about extreme vice versus extreme virtue. There is no middle! The characters are either very bad or very good. How can a serial adulterer who was the cause of at least 3 people's death due to his actions be called a victim? How can all the fault be with the woman who "seduced" the man??
This book is mainly about cousin Bette's jealousy of her relatives and her hatred and decision to ruin them; but the problem is that the relatives ruin themselves by their own idiotic or selfish actions. Throughout the story the only role of cousin Bette was spying and putting oil on fire!!!
And in the end what happens? Vice wins!
And why should we call a wife who doesn't mind her husband having several mistresses (including 15 year old girls), even to the extent of ruining her and her daughter's life, "virtuous", only the writer knows!

Update: Recently I got my answers to the above questions: Balzac was a chauvinist.

[Théo d'Or]

Despite the title, cousin Bette does not, at least apparently, play the lead role. Balzac's attention is not so much draw to the biography of a character, as to the biography of that epoch.
Intriguing, voluntary, sadistic, tenacious, hypocritical, the modest cousin embodies in a synthetic portrait the features of the class of the time she is going through. It can be said that, as the presence of a virus unleashes the plague, the ambitious woman radiates evil, giving the whole picture a gloomy meaning. Under her seemingly innocence, Bette disguises a ferocious soul.
Ancient rages did not cover their faces, but this modern Fury wears an angelic mask.
The realist Balzac folows the alternations between the apparent and the hidden content, the interest going beyond the plastic of the picture, to the depth, in fact, in such pictures the history of the French bourgeoisie appears critically reconstructed, its morals being seen from within by a bourgeois for whom there is no secret, the pen of the realist reaching deep wounds , the word becoming an act of accusation against the bourgeois order and false values.
The anatomist concerned with the dissection sees the details, the physiologist Balzac sees the relation between phenomena, he studies morals, seeking like a scientist, performance and laws.
It would be difficult to judge a man only on his own, for the honest Mrs.Hulot, Bette is a kind of idol, but Bette is an idol who - unable to reach - will rejoice in the ruin of the rich. Baron Hulot ruins his family, and Bette offers him all the support in that direction, but playing the role of a guardian-angel. She leads a surprisingly natural double life.
Here, is a fundamental feature of the balzacian technique : one single side of the heroes, defining for a character, appears exaggerated to the point of monstrosity. You could have the impression of a journey through the lands of Dante, among dehumanized apparitions.
Here I see the Human Comedy just like it is, of a crisp realism. Glacially in appearance, Balzac penetrates the intimacy of things, beyond what a photographic plate offers. As a writer, he addresses intelligence, the whole epic seeking to highlight meanings, inapparent connections . How does " the one who studies society" explain Bette's wickedness ? In an old-girl, only one side of character develops, to the detriment of the others, virginity favoring the imbalance :))
With such beings, idealized in the opposite direction, we are co-opted into a world that, if it weren't outrageously real, it would seem like a tragic fairy tale.
In fairy tales, takes place the battle between good and evil, but here, on a large stretch, the darkness persists.
Like other balzacian novels, " Cousin Bette " - has a moving, dramatic structure. In the Dante's comedy shadows and ghosts dialogued, here - we meet people, people of rare vitality.
What I noticed about the creator of Human Comedy - is that the future does not exists, everything represents the present.

[Bradley · Rating 4 out of 5]

My first Balzac.

I had the impression, somewhere, that I would have to sit through some dreary pompous horrorshow, perhaps pulpy purple prose with a plethora of prodigious penuries.

But to be sure, I did get a horrorshow, but not the kind I expected. Indeed, I had a great time once I fell into a certain kind of groove. You know what I mean. The kind that you get into when reading a good Stephen King novel, revving up with a huge cast of dispicable human beings whom you have a great time rooting for their ultimate demises. Hopefully with some supernatural beastie tormenting them to their dooms. Or devils dragging them to suddenly opening graves. Something like that.

To think that this was considered one of the great REALIST novels! By a realist novelist! In all honesty, it reads like the plot of some 1980's daytime soap opera but placed in post-Napoleonic France.

Enter the mass-philandering Baron and his wife who doesn't care! Enter the disgruntled spinster who, just after finding a taste of love, has her younger cousin come in like a bitch to scoop him up, sending the spinster into a whirlwind of Italian rage and vengeance that will last the rest of their lives.

Is this total preoccupation with Sex and Death funny? Yep. As I said, I'm a fan of Stephen King. I rooted for EVERYONE'S ultimate tragedy. :)

If this is realism, then what does that say about me? Hmmmm... oh my.

[Axl Oswaldo · Rating 5 out of 5]

2024/20

I am starting to believe that Balzac is already my favorite French author. So is Zola, don’t get me wrong, but the more I read Balzac’s books, the more I realize it’s nearly impossible not to have an extraordinary experience. It doesn’t matter if it’s a short story, a novella, or a novel, Balzac always does a good job at depicting the society of his time, and showing the conflicts some people (characters) had to face back then. Thus, Cousin Bette is undoubtedly one of his greatest works.

Not only does Cousin Bette have a very intriguing, compelling plot, that shows how despicable and evil some individuals may be, but it is also beautifully written and meticulously crafted from cover to cover. It is right to say this is Balzac at his finest. Content-wise, it reminds me of Cousin Pons—another book of Balzac’s I would highly recommend—because of the depiction of society and its customs, the characters and their cruel behavior towards others (though I must confess Cousin Bette has the most loathsome beings I have found, not only in a Balzac’s book, but in a novel overall, as far as I can remember), and their protagonists, notwithstanding their different personalities and beliefs.

Talking to a French friend of mine, I asked him if he had read some French classics in high school, if it is compulsory to read certain authors in France, such as Zola, Proust, Camus, etc., and he said that indeed you have to read lots of books during that period; he said that Balzac was one of his favorites and that Cousin Bette taught him that you shouldn’t trust someone who has once betrayed you that easily, that someone who is supposed to be in love with you shouldn’t hurt you to begin with, and that you should always be a good person, not because you are waiting for something in return, just for the sake of it. “Don’t be Bette,” he laughed when saying it; “why?” I asked. I had just started the novel when we had this conversation. “You’ll find it out; in fact, don’t be like any of the characters in that book. Perhaps you will regret it.” Now I know why he said what he said.

All in all, you should read Cousin Bette if:
– you are up for a lot of drama,
– you don’t mind reading a story with lots of despicable characters, especially when you can’t make up your mind as to who the worst is,
– patience is a trait of yours, meaning that you’ll have to wait a little so that the plot thickens,
– you are a sucker for 19th-century French literature. In a nutshell, this is French literature through and through.

My rating on a scale of 1 to 5:

Quality of writing [4.5/5]
Pace [5/5]
Plot development [5/5]
Characters [4/5]
Enjoyability [4.5/5]
Insightfulness [4.5/5]
Easy of reading [5/5]
Photos/Illustrations [N/A]

Total [32.5/7] = 4.64

[ατζινάβωτο φέγι. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Ο Μπαλζακ γλαφυρα και κυνικα ξεμπροστιαζει την γαλλικη κοινωνια δινοντας στο εργο του διαχρονικη ποιοτητα. Με καθε πιθανη μορφη και τροπο, η Αρετη και η Κακια αντιμαχονται η μια την αλλη μεχρι θανατου αποτελωντας τις δυο κυριαρχες δυναμεις που κανουν αυτον τον κοσμο να γυριζει. Χαρακτηρες πωρωμενοι, φιληδονοι, αγαθοι, εκδικητικοι, μιζεροι, μικροπρεπεις, γοητευτικοι, περηφανοι, ανιεροι, ποταποι και ταπεινοι κατακλυζουν τις σελιδες αυτου του οικογενειακου δραματος που παιρνει διαστασεις τραγωδιας οταν η εξαδελφη Μπεττυ παιρνει την αποφαση να εκδικηθει για ολα εκεινα που της στερησαν. Σαν φιδι δινει θανασιμες δαγκωματιες και απειλει να γκρεμισει τα θεμελια της οικογενειας Υλο που ζει με αυταπατες μιας χαμενης αιγλης και τρεφει στον κορφο της την προσωποποιηση του αχαλινωτου παθους (ο ασωτος πατηρ). Ο Μπαλζακ πλαθει με τετοιο ολοκληρωτικο(κοινωνικα, διοικητικα,οικονομικα) και απολαυστικο τροπο το πορτραιτο της γαλλικης κοινωνιας του 19ου αιωνα που σε συναρπαζει και σε ταρασσει με την αληθεια του και τον ρεαλισμο του. Πολιτικες μηχανορραφιες και μια γιαγια πληρωμενη δολοφονος αποτελουν το κερασακι στην τουρτα. Μυθιστοριογραφια στα καλυτερα της, γεματη ολοζωντανους διαλογους.

Απόσπασμα απο την δημοσίευση στη Λέσχη του Βιβλίου

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is the third time I have read this late masterpiece of Balzac's -- and it got better with each reading. There have been other novels (mostly European) about men who have ruined themselves for illicit love of other women, but Balzac's Baron Hector Hulot goes further than any of them. At the beginning of Cousin Bette, he is at his apogee: married to a loving woman, with two loving adult children -- and an incredible itch for what willing young women have to offer. I will not say what happens to him in the end, but his fall is precipitous and involves the ruin of his brother, his uncle (who commits suicide), and numerous others who are tangentially affected by his ways.

Rather than summarize the story, which the author handles masterfully, I thought I would discuss what makes for a great Balzac novel:

1. The best Balzac stories show temptations or character weaknesses to which the hero or heroine yields, and for which he or she suffers grievously. This ranges from the lecherousness of Hulot to the improvidence of César Birotteau the perfumer to the excessive indulgence of Old Goriot to his daughters to the blind ambition of Balthazar Claes in The Quest for the Absolute to find the alchemist's stone. Perhaps the classical plot in this respect is The Wild Ass's Skin.

2. Behind the best Balzac plots are demoniacal moneylenders who are never, ever bested in their transactions with mere mortals. In Cousin Bette, there is Vauvinet, but the best moneylender in his work is the eponymous hero of Gobseck.

3. Balzac's Paris is full of young dandies on the make who act as a kind of Greek chorus to the story. Perhaps the best depiction of them is in Lost Illusions.

4. Envy plays an outsize role in the world of Balzac. Whenever someone looks to be doing well, often one finds a sort of cabal forming to do him or her in. And this cabal is every bit as relentless as the moneylenders, with whom they are frequently in cahoots. Again, Lost Illusions is a prime example. This is related to the extreme vengeance that plays such a large part in Cousin Bette and Cousin Pons.

5. Not only evil, but good, sometimes acts under the cover of a seemingly all-powerful secret society. The classical case are the three stories collected under the title The Thirteen. For good, there is Mme de la Chanterie, who appears in the current novel and also, at greater length, in The Wrong Side of Paris. In Cousin Bette, we see the archvillain Vautrin, now become chief of police, working with dubious villains like Mme Nourrisson, to help Victorine Hulot wreak revenge on Mme de Marneffe.

6. There is something Mephistophelian in Balzac's best villains, especially Vautrin in the three or four novels in which he figures as a major character. I would have to include Mme de Marneffe, whose avarice is matched only by the unbridled lust of her lovers.

7. Although Balzac keeps returning to the balm of the Catholic Church, he likes to let his victims twist in the wind before they get any of the Church's benefits.

8. There are frequently large sums of money involved in highly complex financial transactions that defy anyone whose knowledge of French economics of the July monarchy is less than professorial. In this edition, in fact, there is an appendix entitled "Money Plot of Cousin Bette." Having read it, I'm still in the dark.

9. Balzac virtually invented the idea of the same characters appearing in two or more or even a dozen stories. Doctor Bianchon is, I believe, in over thirty of them. The more Balzac you read -- including the minor works and the shorter stories -- the more you will appreciate novels like this one, in which dozens of characters reappear elsewhere.

In short, looking back at the many Balzac novels I have read -- and I have read most of them -- I find myself looking at what its author called "The Human Comedy" -- men and women who fall far short of the ideal and are grievously punished for it.

The five novels I will list here are among the greatest works from the mind of man and well-deserving of close study by anyone who is interested in how human beings fall short of their hopes and aspirations: (a) Père Goriot; (b) Lost Illusions; (c) A Harlot High and Low; (d) Cousin Bette; and (e) Cousin Pons. I could easily have expanded the number to ten, or fifteen, or even more.

[Anascape Taylor · Rating 3 out of 5]

*Spoilers Inside* Sigh. It is a shame to give only 3 stars to a book so eloquently written, but what will linger in my mind about Cousin Bette 30 years from now will most likely be the rotten taste it has left in my mouth, not the honey-dipped words.

The first star was lost because I had to suffer through long sections of Balzac's rambling, misguided moralizing. His sermons seem to cover all topics, from the high-handed judgment of a variety of races to the merits of "good breeding." I like an author to fascinate me such that I feel like I would not be worthy to hold a conversation with them, if we were to meet. Unfortunately, I got the feeling that Balzac would be a remarkably loud and boring dinner guest who liked to listen to himself better than anyone else.

The second star was lost because I was left completely unsatisfied. Now don't tell me that if I want a happy ending I should go find a children's book. Here's the deal: the character who is "punished by the vengeance of God," as it was painted, Madame Marneffe of course, is not really the one I cared to see brought to justice. Yes, she was terrible and cruel. But who is to blame: the woman who mercilessly steals a family's honor and fortune, or the stupid and selfish man who hands it over to her willingly? No, I didn't really care about the Madame's fate. And Bette couldn't have been punished any more judiciously than she was in the end. But the Baron? What justice did he receive? None, of course. And while Adeline's character was honorable, on some level I see her impassioned hunt for him through the slums of Paris to be one of complete selfishness. He didn't want to come home, as he said and demonstrated to the very end. He even wished her dead, even more so when he came home, so she couldn't very well have saved him from God's wrath. I realize that she was supposed to have not seen this, but it certainly doesn't leave one impressed with Balzac's idea of perfect virtue. It seems that his definition of virtue boils down to martyrdom. And what a convenient bar to set for a woman of 19th century Paris. Furthermore, in the end Balzac glorifies Crevel, putting his vanity up on a pedestal as some mark of greatness. Well then, take me to the nearest Porsche dealer and find me a real genius! Really, the only two characters I respected in the whole thing were Hortense and Victorin. Hortense, for the most part, nips her husband's insults in the bud. She has the wherewithal to throw him to his transparent Madame and not suffer a lifetime of pointless martyrdom that makes no one the better. And Victorin pulls his family together in their time of "disgrace," proving to be the only thing standing between Lisbeth and her vengeance. So I feel that mine and Balzac's definitions of vice and virtue differ markedly, and not in ways that can be accounted for simply by the passage of 150 years.

[Michael · Rating 3 out of 5]

This tale involves a byzantine plan of revenge by old maid Bette over the theft of a young sculptor she had designs for. It was a great device for all the greedy aristocratic people to achieve their just deserts. There is also a satisfying comic touch in the way her courtesan confidante is able to juggle four lovers and play them off against each other. But the narrative bogs down for me a lot over the repetitive competition for each others' mistresses and arcane schemes for money. Still, as an audiobook experience with a free Librivox recording on my commutes to work, it was a diverting sociological experience with Paris society circa 1830 and a nice window on the French tradition of blending realism with romanticism.

[Sandra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Lussuria, invidia, avidità, sete di potere, corruzione, odio e VENDETTA: le passioni che imbrigliano l'umanità.
Il tutto amalgamato sullo sfondo di una Parigi post napoleonica, descritto minuziosamente ed in modo vivido, tanto da non essere solo Parigi ma il mondo intero.
Insomma, il peggio del meglio (o il meglio del peggio, come ci pare).
Uno dei capolavori di Balzac.

[Roman Clodia · Rating 3 out of 5]

"I!" said Lisbeth. "I see vengeance wherever I turn in nature; insects even die to satisfy the craving for revenge when they are attacked."

For some reason, Balzac is the French novelist I've always struggled with and his vast La Comedie Humaine series just doesn't compete, for me, with Zola's Rougon-Macquart. La Cousine Bette, often noted as one of the best in the sequence, feels to me like a quirky mix of soap opera, dark comedy, farce and polemic. Don't expect subtlety here: from the angelic Adeline to the ugly, Machiavellian Bette consumed with a voracious appetite for revenge, characters are defined by one or two key characteristics.

Money permeates the text as Balzac quantifies emotions and human relationships in terms of financial transactions - everything, he seems to be saying, has a price. His cynical vision of French bourgeois capitalist society where everyone is consumed with self interest (except Adeline? but then look what happens to her...), where public figures are corrupt and self-serving, where love is sexual obsession, punctuated by money and, largely, exploitative is not that far from that of Zola - yet how differently I respond to their books. This one had me laughing somewhat derisively and while I don't want to include spoilers let me just say that any book that seriously includes an incurable native poison from Brazil has a hard job compensating for that low point!

The two most interesting characters are Bette herself and Valerie, a toned down version, in some ways, of Zola's Nana - a kind of unofficial courtesan with whom every man is obsessed. Their relationship, rather crudely, is articulated as a quasi-marriage as they scheme, plot and share confidences. All the same, they don't have quite the same pull as other manipulative women: Becky Sharp, say, or Madame de Merteuil.

I might give Balzac a further try (I've previously only read his Père Goriot but the fact that this took about 3 weeks for me to get through it is saying something.

[Semjon · Rating 2 out of 5]

Ich würde gerne Balzac mögen, denn ich kann durchaus seine Bedeutung für die Literaturgeschichte erkennen. Sein unbändiger Drang, dem Mensch und der Gesellschaft den Spiegel vorzuhalten, ist beachtlich. In den beiden bislang von mir gelesenen Werken Eugenie Grandet und Tante Lisbeth ist die Darstellung der Realität im Frankreich der ersten Hälfte des 19. Jahrhunderts wahrscheinlich so treffend und schonungslos überspitzt, dass es fast schon unwirklich wirkt. Der Vater Grandet ist nicht nur geizig, er ist krankhaft aufs Geld fixiert. Die Männerfiguren in Tante Lisbeth sind nicht verlogen, sie sind pathologisch selbstverliebt und schwanzgesteuert.

Und damit ist mein Problem schon angesprochen. Mir ist die Handlung einfach zu überdreht bei Tante Lisbeth, so dass es wirkt wie eine Mischung aus Big Brother und billiger Soap Opera. Ich hätte gerne, dass Balzac für mich wie arte schauen wäre und nicht wie RTL 2. Vielleicht gehe ich mit falschen Erwartungen an seine Romane, aber ich finde, dass die Geschichten sich als Bühnenstücke besser eigenen würden. Sie enthalten alles, was ein Drama benötigt.

Womöglich ist die Handlung in Paris zwischen Dirnen, Kurtisanen, Aristokraten und hinterhältigen, alten Jungfern auch nicht das, was mich fesselt. Das war bereits bei Zolas Nana so. Aber die Tatsache, dass hässliche, alte Männer, teilweise auf die 80 zugehend, ihre sexuelle Anziehungsfähigkeit so hoch einschätzen, dass es sie nach jeder Ertappung sofort wieder so einem unbescholtenen Fräulein hinzieht und die Ehefrau dies so gar noch zum x-ten mal entschuldigt, lässt mich kopfschüttelnd zurück. Aus heutiger Sicht wirkt das alles klischeehaft und überzeichnet.

Balzac bleibt trotzdem in meinem Fokus, denn womöglich bin ich einfach noch nicht reif genug, seine Genialität zu erkennen, die alle schriftstellerischen Größen der letzten 150 Jahre so stark hervorheben.

[Sara · Rating 3 out of 5]

Lisbeth Fischer is consumed with hatred for her cousin, Adeline Hulot. Cousin Adeline has married a Baron and come up in the world, and Bette is the poor spinster relation, who has to work for part of her living and depends on the charity of the family for the remainder. Cousin Adeline’s husband, the Baron Hulot, is a despicable womanizer who ruins himself for “love”, uh make that lust. Nothing to envy in Adeline’s life at all...I’d have rather had the independence of Lisbeth, but then Lisbeth never bothers to enjoy her independence except in the ways that it gives her opportunity to take revenge and help to destroy her family.

Balzac does some great character development, especially with his female characters. Valerie Marneffe is the epitome of the beautiful woman who manipulates men for money, her husband the consummate cur, Bette the picture of a soul driven by jealousy and pettiness, and Steinbock is all the artist who squanders his talent and good fortunes might ever be. His good characters are weaker, in my mind. Adeline becomes almost a caricature, and does all the fainting, enduring and praying to excess, Victorin is almost too willing to sacrifice for his father’s sake, and Clementine too forgiving of hers.

I did enjoy parts of this novel immensely, at other times I wished to speed up the narrative and push Balzac toward some conclusion. I was troubled by the ages of the girls that Hulot pursues, fourteen and sixteen year olds who are often already overly acquainted with the world. But, I kept reminding myself that this is Paris of the early 1800s and seventy year old men bedding fourteen year old girls might not have shocked a soul, particularly if the old men were Barons.

I debated long about whether my 3.5 star rating should be rounded up or down, finally settling for down. While there was much I did like about the novel, it falls short of being a truly captivating read. I am glad to have read it, however, since it is only the second Balzac I have tackled.

[Shawn Mooney (Shawn Breathes Books)]

I read a couple hundred pages of this and realized I didn’t care very much about these awful people and the intricacies of how money bound them all up to one another in such a cynical way. I didn’t hate it, but I certainly didn’t like it well enough to finish.

[Manny · Rating 3 out of 5]

Plain, spinsterish Lisbeth has become insanely jealous of her beautiful cousin Adeline, and decides that she will finally get even with her. She knows that Adeline's husband is unable to resist feminine charm, so she forms an alliance with the gorgeous and completely amoral Madame Marneffe. I love the following quote; a slightly adapted form even found its way into the dreadful movie version.

« Madame Marneffe était la hache, et Lisbeth était la main qui la manie, et la main démolissait à coup pressés cette famille qui, de jour en jour, lui devenait de plus en plus odieuse »

Madame Marneffe was the axe, and Lisbeth was the hand that wielded it, and, with rapid strokes, the hand demolished the family which, every day, she came to hate more and more.

[Baba · Rating 1 out of 5]

So, I have attempted my first Honoré de Balzac read, and it didn't go well for me at all! Balzac's 'gripping tale of violent jealousy, sexual passion and treachery, and a brilliant portrayal of the grasping, bourgeois society of 1840's Paris (The culmination of the Comedie humaine).' just didn't grab me at all. I n hindsight I should have tried some of his earlier work first maybe? 2 out of 12.

[Lawrence · Rating 4 out of 5]

I loved this book. And I’m taken with the mystery of Balzac. What was he doing? What was his aim? What motivated him?

I think that the answer is that Balzac loved to tell stories and he loved to spin them out like a silk scarf being drawn out, and drawn out some more, from a magician’s top hat. And he must have loved to talk because his written conversations are so good and because his wit is so delicious. (For example, “Vice, Hulot found, could forgive him; vice smiled on him from the midst of unbridled luxury. Here, as before a jury, the magnitude of a crime was an extenuating circumstance.”) He was in love with words, I think, with the tumble of language. But he never creates mountains of language and of pages as in Les Miserables by Victor Hugo; Hugo is in love with subject matter and can sometimes bore.

Balzac is neither a total realist or a satirist. He writes about real human events in a real 1840’s context, but I think he can be sometimes over-the-top because he’s entertaining himself. So, it’s not realism though it looks that way. It’s not satire either. I’m not sure that Balzac is so cruel or so devoted to social criticism and social change. He is like a Dickens without the need to show us grief, poverty, goodness, etc. linked to the idea of inspiring better conduct or a better world or a frisson of compassion. Balzac is just not that warm-hearted either.

I wish I knew more about later French writers because I sense that Balzac must have been a great influence. Zola had to have read and absorbed Cousin Betty because his Nana has similarities to Balzac’s Valerie Marneffe, including her end. But I don’t think Zola has the same lightness of touch, the same attitude of observation, the same urge to storytelling for its own sake.

If you want to read what Cousin Betty is about, there are plenty of summaries. I’m more interested, as I said, in what Balzac was about. But I want you to know that I think Cousin Betty is a good read!

Oh . . . I read the copy out of the online Gutenberg Project which I put on my Kindle. (Check out that website!) The translation is from the nineteenth century and is really straightforward and good (which tells me also that Balzac really could drive a story well). The translator is given as James Waring. But that is a pseudonym for Ellen Marriage who translated almost all of Balzac’s 90 novels for the English publisher. She often used her own name on the title page. But she used the pseudonym when the subject matter was a little more “bold” as in Cousin Betty which is full of courtesans and wannabe courtesans and courtesans-in-training.

As I’m writing, I realize how much I liked this book! Bravo, M. Balzac!

[Erika Hope Spencer · Rating 4 out of 5]

You have to be in the right mood for this book. If you're interested in French society during this historical period (Romantic era-ish, post-Napoleon) and you're prepared to (more or less) dislike the characters, then few books will more effortlessly reveal the petty and vindictive nature of Paris social life. I recently found a fascinating (I don't use the term lightly) book about Old Regime France by Clare Haru Crowston, Credit, Fashion, Sex: Economies of Regard in Old Regime France. I haven't been able to finish it quite yet, but what I did read went a long way toward convincing me that the sordid and debauched lifestyles that Balzac portrays were actually fairly realistic. I guess I grew up reading Duma's Count of Monte Cristo where the evil are punished and the good are rewarded-pretty much with systematic regularity. So reading Balzac, where every character was self-serving (save the impossible to like/too weak/enabler Madame Hulot) seemed almost shocking. But it was also refreshing in a way. Balzac didn't really seem to be judging any of these characters. And for all their vindictive plotting and vengeful schemes, (that unlike Duma's Count were motivated by their ego and sexual appetite, rather than say, being wrongfully imprisoned for the entirety of one's youth) some of them show a complexity that does remind us that while humans are often horrible- sometimes we can understand why. Balzac doesn't mince words about Cousin Bette...she is basically an unattractive and lonely woman whose jealousy toward her (beautiful and sweet) cousin directs the course of events in her life. Who can blame her?! Not Balzac. Nor does he seem to censure any of the weak-willed or calculating schemers in this novel. In fact, this work leads one to speculate a bit about Balzac's life. Like many authors who wrote these long plot-driven serials/novels you wonder how many of these characters were based on people known to said author. Especially since Balzac himself was almost obscenely prolific. Recommend if you want to be totally enveloped into mid 19th century Paris, and with a less-than-scrupulous crowd.

[Haaze · Rating 4 out of 5]

Vice Conquers All


Mme Marneffe

While reading this novel I felt as if I was experiencing a social economic history of Paris in the disguise of a romantic drama. Balzac never neglects to inform the reader about interest rates, loans, deals etc and, frankly, at times it becomes a bit much. If I was a historian studying the economic infrastructure of social life of Paris in the mid-19th century this would be an excellent starting point. ; -) In contrast, I find his characterizations and conversations very enjoyable. The novel is a bit dark with a juggernaut of vice permeating every nook and cranny of the storyline. I really wanted to like this novel, but it became more of a quest in terms of completing it. I did enjoy parts of it, but at times felt as if I was experiencing a mid 19th century soap opera. I definitely would not begin with this novel if I was approaching Balzac for the first time. Regardless, I am still pursuing Balzac's works as I find them intriguing.

I read Balzac's Lost Illusions last year, which I found much more agreeable. However, Balzac is definitely on a mission to convey the French lives of the 19th century in his works; Carefully embedded facts wrap around the characters and their actions. Recommended to Balzac fans!

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

Another excellent Balzac novel. A battle between virtue and vice set in 1840s Paris. Bette or Lisbeth is bent on revenge against her cousin Baroness Hulot. That revenge is based on her being jealous of her. Her husband the Baron Hulot is a profligate without conscience. He is fooled by his mistresses especially Madame Marneffe who has four lovers all thinking they are the one. To cover expenses he goes to great lengths even fraud resulting in the death of his virtuous brother.

Balzac draws you into the Paris of the wealthy and the poverty stricken. The descriptions of the houses, furnishings and the characters is sublime. The rich idiot Creval, the brooding Brazilian and Wenceslas the gifted but lazy artist. All of them are easily led down the proverbial garden path by Madame Marneffe and taken to the cleaners. Her partnership with Bette is one built on fleecing men without morals or ethics.

The ending proves there is no fool like an old fool!