Wendy Thrash

“Cousin Bette is an inimitable character, a villainess of the worst kind: mean-spirited, vengeful, small-minded. And yet what a joy she is. Bette’s desire for revenge stems from her obsession with her cousin. Adeline is more beautiful and charismatic than Bette. And she has “stolen” the man Bette should have married. Bette seems to conveniently ignore the fact that the man Adeline has married—Baron Hulot—is not someone anyone would want to be married to. The seed of resentment is sown early on, then, and Bette schemes to bring down Baron Hulot, his wife, and their entire family. Because if she can’t be happy, then no one can. She enlists Valérie Marneffe, her neighbor, to seduce Baron Hulot and wheedle as much money as possible out of him, all the while knowing that he is all but ruined by his previous mistress, Josépha. Meanwhile Bette develops a maternal/romantic attachment to her upstairs neighbor, Wenceslas Steinbock, a Polish artist, whom she prevented from committing suicide”
― Viv Groskop, Au Revoir, Tristesse: Lessons in Happiness from French Literature