Excellent review! I’ve read a few members of The Human Comedy (The Black Sheep is probably my favorite); but now I’m certainly going to need to acquire and read Cousin Bette. I like the Penguin editions, such a handy size, and since I don’t have French, I can’t be annoyed by the translation… Trollope is still an untouched field for me. My mom adored his novels, and had reread all of them many times. Maybe it’s time for me to start.
If you're looking for recommendations on where to begin, let me suggest the spectacular "The Way We Live Now". And thanks for the kind words about the review. It's the sort of thing that makes my day!
Ooooh if it’s Trollope-esque I’ll probably like it! I’m always overwhelmed when it comes to the Comedie Humaine. So many books!!! I’ve only read Cousin Pons, which was really just too cynical for me: I got the feeling the narrator/author/Balzac looked down on his characters and that left me strangely unsatisfied. Trollope is also very judgy, but his authorial “intrusions” as I recall are more benevolent, at least in the Barsetshire novels. Well if I do read this, I’ll be prepared for its “bite”. Nice review!
To be honest, it can also be Trollop-esque in the sense that it introduces a lot of characters (maybe too many?) I had to keep an index card on the inside cover to remember who was sleeping with whom. And you're right: Balzac can be so snide toward his characters. He also can have the bad habit of letting characters who were morally reprehensible off without too much punishment. There's none of that "good things turn out well for the good, and evil befalls the evil" kind of simplicity you see in Dickens, for example. But it's true that sometimes the good die young, and the evil seem to linger on forever.
How odd! Those are some of the most famous novels written in the twentieth century. Weird to think there aren't several dozen book reviews of them on BookTube. I have the two-volume Everyman edition sitting right here next to me, but I have no idea when I'll ever get to them.
I think that in that era an author couldn’t get a book published about such subject unless they made sure to make it clear to their readers that they definitely did not approve of these things. I really enjoyed your review. Although I don’t agree that Cousin Bette and Valerie are “evil,” I think they are driven to behave evil by the way that they’re treated, and while I don’t excuse these acts I do, on some level, understand how people are driven to this level of depravity. It’s a revenge novel, and a delicious one at that. Thanks for reviewing! I’m in the middle of reading this so I’m looking forward to seeing how Cousin Bette gets her comeuppance, which, since the Catholic Church was prevalent at the time of publishing in France, I’m sure she will. You can’t just go around getting revenge on people instead of letting God decide these things, right?
I'm not sure I see a substantive difference between "behaving in an evil way" (if you subscribe to such theologically loaded language, which I explicitly don't) and "being driven to [this level of] depravity." No one forced Bette to take revenge. She harbored a deep resentment of her family, especially of Mme. Hulot, especially since she married money. Balzac is never one to paint in moral absolutes, but he makes it pretty clear that Bette's motives are not to be thought good or pure.
@@NicholasOfAutrecourt You can see it as semantics, or you can see it as taking the blame off of the person and putting it into their actions instead. Which isn’t a religious question, it’s more a difference in how one judges people in general. I don’t see a problem in judging people by their actions. But I think Balzac has definitely laid the groundwork in what drove Cousin Bette to take those actions against her relatives within the limited choices for a woman of her station in 1840s France.
@@goodgrief888 I don't see a person's moral culpability as separate from their actions. Seems like two ways of expressing the same thing. The religious aspect I was pointing out was the use of the word "sin." It's not a word I use, since I don't subscribe to the concept.
