Balzac the master of detail

Balzac is a master observer of the externalities. Here are a few examples from Eugénie Grandet, though we could go on forever.

• The opening words of the book paint a description in the bleakest shades. “Il se trouve dans certaines provinces des maisons dont la vue inspire une mélancolie égale à celle que provoquent les cloîtres les plus sombres, les landes les plus ternes ou les ruines les plus tristes. “ (There exist houses in certain provinces, the sight of which inspires a melancholy equal to those of the most somber cloisters, the most drab moors, the saddest ruins.


• Every description of the Grandet household is somber, from the forbidding street, the lack of sunlight, the sparingly doled-out candles, to the drab undecorated walls of the house. Into this somber world walks Charles Grandet, a vision in vivid color. 

Balzac expertly captures in that sparkle by describing Charles's foppish collection of vests/waistcoats: “Il emporta sa collection de gilets les plus ingénieux : il y en avait de gris, de blancs, de noirs, de couleur scarabée, à reflets d’or, de pailletés, de chinés, de doubles, à châle ou droits de col, à col renversé, de boutonnés jusqu’en haut, à boutons d’or."
  
  

(He brought his collection of most ingenious vests; there were gray ones, white ones, black ones, some were scarab-colored, some with golden highlights, some with sequins, mottled ones, double-breasted ones crossed like a shawl, others had straight collars; some had turned-over collars, some buttoned up to the top with gilt buttons.”


  
  The brilliance, the variety, the copious plenty of fashion and the inventiveness of the clothing trades of the big city stand in utter contrast to the provincial, drab surroundings, the patches and repatched clothing. For Eugénie, Charles shines like a creature from another planet.


• Des Grassins, the président of the local court in Saumur, who pursues and finally marries Eugénie, is also betrayed by his clothing. At age forty, Balzac writes, when he comes courting at her evenings at home. “il se mettait en jeune homme” (he presented himself as a young man), “en chemise dont le jabot à gros plis lui donnait un air de famille avec les individus du genre dindon.” In a shirt whose large, pleated ruffle made him look like a member of the turkey family.)

  
  
• Another devastatingly cruel description is the sketch of Charles eventual wife, whom he marries for a title and social position: “Mademoiselle d’Aubrion était une demoiselle longue comme l’insecte, son homonyme ; maigre, fluette, à bouche dédaigneuse, sur laquelle descendait un nez trop long, gros du bout, flavescent à l’état normal, mais complètement rouge après les repas, espèce de phénomène végétal plus désagréable au milieu d’un visage pâle et ennuyé que dans tout autre.”
  
  

(Mademoiselle d’Aubrion was a young lady who was long like the insect, her homonym*; thin, spindly, with a disdainful mouth onto which descended a too-long nose, thick at the end, normally sallow, but completely red after a meal, a kind of vegetative phenomenon, all the more unpleasant in the middle of a pale and bored face.)
  

Ouch!


* That bug, which I can’t find described elsewhere is maybe? be the ténébrion – the beetle that has the mealworm as its larva, though it’s hard to call that insect long.

PS: Undertstood, thanks to a French acquaintance. It's not the "d'Aubtion" that is the homonymn. but the "Mademoiselle" or rather demosielle, the damselfly, an stick-like insect that fits the description,

La Maison du chat-qui-pelote

This early Balzac novella (1829) is already unmistakeably Balzac. The meticulous, depiction of Parisian life is there, from the industrious drapery shop to the cruelties of the decadent nobility. The painterly eye for detail, more than ever appropriate in this work where the hero is a painter whose sensational new artwork puts on canvas the same humble middle-class scene and characters that Balzac puts on paper.

Underneath all this realistic detail is a typical New Comedy plot – the beautiful daughter is watched, explicitly Argus-like by father, mother, elder sister, and amatory rival (apprentice). The young hero, Théodore de Sommervieux (a painter, but an aristocrat of sorts), falls in love from a distance, passing outside the home/shop she rarely leaves. In fact, the term cloister is used for the girl's situation and the mother is compared to a "tourière", the nun in a convent who is the other nuns' only link to the outside world. The girls unaffected, pious beauty attracts both the painter and the man.

In the course of the novella, he managed to evade the guardians, declares his love, overcomes the parents' fears objections, and marries the girl. But that is bit half the story.

But in spite of the realist texture, this is a Cinderella story (In fact, the family early in the novella celebrate a financially successful year bu the rare treat of a play, which turns out to be a performance of Cendrillion.) But most Cinderella stories end with the wedding. Here, we see the aftermath.

After a year or two of infatuation, the young heroine finds that her pious and naive upbringing make it impossible for her to mix with either the artistic or the high-society circles that her husband is a part of. Her innocence, so charming at first, makes her the laughingstock of his bohemian colleagues, eventually making her appear the more insipid in her husband's eye. "Madame de Sommervieux tenta de changer son caractère, ses mœurs et ses habitudes," (Madame de Sommervieux tried to change her character, her manners, and her habits.) But all in vain.

When she seeks consolation from her now-retired parents and her sister; they can't conceive of her life and offer her little sympathy. She is half- transformed, belonging to no class, at home nowhere. "Elle pleura des larmes de sang, et reconnut trop tard qu’il est des mésalliances d’esprits aussi bien que des mésalliances de mœurs et de rang." (She wept tears of blood, and realized too late that there are misalliances of minds/spirits as well as misalliances of manners and rank.) Isolated and unloved, she slips into death a few years later.

The leading theme of nineteenth century literature is anxiety about class. In a century where revolution –poltical, social. and financial– is constant, the issue of where any person stands is a matter.of consent obsession. La Maison du chat-qui-pelote is a Cinderella story based in realistic deal and a keen view of class differences.