Cousin Bette

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.

For its first two-thirds this book was shaping up to be an entertaining revenge story with an interesting setting and cast of characters, but the last third dropped many of the most interesting elements built up over the first 300 pages and delivers an ending that isn't particularly entertaining and pushes a confused and ultimately foolish moral stance.

The book starts off strong, beginning in the midst of the action instead of tracing the creation of the Hulot family. When we are introduced to the characters the family has already begun its decline thanks to the machinations of the patriarch Baron Hector Hulot and his insatiable womanizing. Cousin Bette earns her place as the titular character by being particularly noteworthy, a country peasant introduced into the world of nobility and riches thanks to her cousin's beauty, but ultimately kept an outsider. She's more clever than anyone else in the family by half, but her tendency to self-sabotage and her obsession with bringing others down a peg makes it a mystery whether she'll succeed or fail in her ambitions. Bette singlehandedly gives the narrative more drive and unpredictability than Balzac's other work Père Goriot.

Cousin Bette isn't a beauty and knows it, but she loves her artist neighbor and is loved in turn by him as a mother figure. This artist, Wenceslas Steinbock, is able (through Bette's patronage) to develop his talents, and under her strict supervision his future looks bright, but just as he's starting to find success the Baron's daughter Hortense swoops in and marries him. She does this in large part because she thinks he will be a famous and rich artist, justifying the deception of her aunt Bette by the fact that her aunt is old and ugly and has turned down other suitors in the past. Hortense, in short, acts rather despicably, and between this latest outrage and the simmering loathing that Bette has toward the rest of the family the table seems set for a satisfying plot where Bette gets her vengeance on the family through internal sabotage and then perhaps gets a deserved punishment as well. Essentially I expected- and the plot initially leads you to believe- that Cousin Bette will be a female French Iago (considering Balzac's love of Shakespeare it seemed a safe bet). Such a story might not have been the most original in the world, but it could have been a lot of fun to read.

Instead, despite the first 300 pages having Cousin Bette serve as a double agent and drag the Hulot family into deeper and deeper financial and personal distress, the book unexpectedly pulls out of this downward spiral. Once one of her plans fails Cousin Bette largely seems to abandon her schemes, instead the text unexpectedly states "Adeline occupied a beautiful suite of rooms. She was spared all the material cares of life, for Lisbeth took on the task of repeating the economic miracles she had performed at Madame Marneffe's; she saw in this a way of wreaking her vengeance on these three noble lives" (p. 365). How exactly is doing someone's housekeeping and saving them a lot of money revenge? It's obviously not, and with this paragraph Bette's plots are almost entirely at an end, despite doing a few small-scale things to mess with the family later on. With the revenge plot thread abandoned the story has nothing as compelling to fall back on. While the ending highlights the fact that some vices aren't overcome, for the most part it's a buffet of reconciliations, money being returned to those who it was wheedled out of, etc.

The problem is, though, that none of these characters are likable enough for a happy ending to be satisfying. All of the Hulot family members are unsympathetic, Hortense's actions being already described. Hector is a serial philanderer whose taste begins to favor the poor and underage. His wife Adeline forgives him everything, apparently believing that a wife's duty is to blindly acquiesce to anything the husband wants, even when those desires lead to the ruin of the family, the death of family members, and a husband essentially keeping a 13 year old sex slave. Her stupidity seems to have been inherited by her son, who continually refuses to believe that he's hired someone to murder his father-in-law even when the signs are obvious. Not a sympathetic one in the bunch. While these characters were all ripe for a revenge plot where they receive their just deserts, an 11th hour windfall resolution falls flat.

The ending likewise presents a confused moral message, mostly thanks to the character of Baroness Adeline. A recurring theme in this book seems to be the harm of obsession, with the Baron's obsession with young women and Cousin Bette's obsession with revenge, but Adeline is equally obsessed with her husband and she is continuously portrayed in a positive light despite the horrible consequences arising from her enabling her husband's vices. The book presents Adeline as so pure and angelic thanks to her devotion to her husband that other morally reprehensible characters beg her forgiveness and pledge to help her at the very sight of her. This happens more than once, despite the fact that her actions hasten her family's ruin. Adeline is slavish devotion personified, and despite Balzac's attempt to paint her as a sympathetic martyr throughout the text she's ultimately both an unlikable character and a poor role model: a self-made martyr is no martyr at all. Because of her continuous positive portrayal the book's message of the dangers of obsession is undermined, the message instead becoming "obsession is dangerous and bad unless it's aimed at something worth obsessing over, like being a good wife." Since the book highlights a dozen different ways that a devoted wife allows a husband to do terrible things, such a message can't help but fall flat.

Instead of a fun tale of revenge Cousin Bette abandons its titular character and most promising plot line for the sake of a mostly happy ending for a group of unsympathetic and unlikable characters. The resulting message is nonsense, as is the repeated portrayal of Adeline as an angel instead of a smitten fool. Between Adeline and Goriot it's clear that Balzac is fond of characters that give and give without stopping to consider what they're thereby enabling. Despite having its own problems Père Goriot treats such a character in a way that felt less flat and artificial. Cousin Bette starts strong and falls apart, leaving me to shrug my shoulders at this book. Go read The Count of Monte Cristo instead, assuming you have the time.

Bruce Pirie did a fine narration of this French classic. Baron Hulot is a great example of a person incapable of changing his character!

In English 19th century novels, a poor relation who exhibits humility, prudence, and a certain amount of native wit can hope to get the modest reward of being allowed to look after the male lead in his infirmity, or perhaps of marrying a younger son. Not in Balzac. If you're a poor relation in one of his novels, you want to go out with a real bang. Nothing less than the ruin and humiliation of the whole rich clan that looks down on you will do.Actually, what I found really interesting about this book wasn't the revenge plot, but the detailed account of the damage done by the "wives and mistresses" system that had institutionalised itself in Parisian bourgeois society. Neglected wives, naïve young girls tricked into sexual slavery, ambitious women obliged to sell themselves to a "protector" to get a foothold in business or on the stage, mistresses exchanged between wealthy men like pieces of real estate, everyone borrowing money like crazy to keep the system going. When it's presented like this, you don't have to be Marx or Engels to spot that there's something very rotten in all this capitalist perversion of sexual relations, and Balzac makes sure we get the point by giving us a close look at practically every aspect of it somewhere in the book.

Balzac is a hoot! He clearly paints a picture of Paris in the 1800s among the wealthy and the poor. Vengeful relatives, cheating husbands, martyred wives and cunning courtesans---they're all here. A delightful read!

There are so many, many things I want to talk about when I bring up this book. I picked it up as a lark, and read it because I'd heard good things about Balzac, and was so glad I did. I understand that most people read Balzac in college, for a class, or because they want to learn more about post-Napoleonic France. At a certain point, some books seem to go out of public favor and become a bit more daunting to the average reader, or to a reader who doesn't see themselves as "serious." If you fall into that category, I'd like to encourage you to think again. What no one ever tells you about Balzac is that he's funny. Yes, the book deals with one main family, their trials and misfortunes, the changes French society goes through after Napoleon falls, as well as a variety of other social and moral issues, but it will also make you chuckle. It's a very real, honest, warts-and-all look at families and how money affects them. There's a very good reason this book is being read 150 years after being first published. I found that everything I knew about the French Revolution and Napoleon was hazy, at best, but I only needed to look up a few things to get my bearings. If that sort of thing worries you about reading this, then I will say you can probably just skim that stuff and still do okay. The pertinent parts will come through. This book is also a bit longer than novels written recently; the beginning of the book lays a lot of groundwork that becomes more important in later acts. I found once all the puzzle pieces started coming together, I could hardly put the book down. What seemed like a very detailed, meandering history of one family suddenly became a whirlwind of activity. The characters are well fleshed out, and what I loved most about Balzac's rendering of them is that even the most evil were painted in such a way that you could sympathize with them. Cousin Bette is indeed out for revenge, and she does some awful things, but you know why, and at times you root for her. She's a complicated woman, as are the other women in the story. Hard to simply deride or pass judgment on, they change as their situations do, and your ideas about them change the more you learn. The men were just as beautifully drawn, but perhaps because I am a woman, I was more drawn to their stories. This book might be a bit more work to read, due to its size, the grand scope of its story, and the historical details, but there are so many wonderful things going on in this book. Balzac writes about his France with a loving, but truthful, eye to detail. There isn't anything going on in the Hulot house that modern readers can't relate to, and there's a sense of relief in knowing that familial strife hasn't changed much. This truly is a great book, I can't recommend it enough.

"Books and flowers are as necessary as bread to a very great many people."Set in 1840s Paris, the novel revolves around the family, friends and acquaintances of Baron and Baroness Hulot. The Baron is a kind-hearted womaniser who squanders all his money on the mistress of the moment, leaving his long-suffering and martyrish wife almost destitute. "The look with which the Baron rewarded his wife's fanatical devotion confirmed her in her belief that gentleness and submissiveness were a woman's most powerful weapons. She was mistaken in this. Noble sentiments pushed to extremes produce results very like those of the worst vices".In this novel Balzac is particularly interested in the nature of the new France, the age of the middle class. As Monsieur Rivet puts it, "Our times have seen the triumph of trade, hard work, and middle-class good sense". The Baron represents the generation who look back fondly to the Imperial past. "Madame Hulot dated her Hector's first infidelities from the final dissolution of the Empire".The Baroness was born Adeline Fischer, and as the novel opens she is rejecting the advances of Crevel (her son's father-in-law), who threatens the Baroness that he will prevent her making a good match for her dowry-less daughter Hortense unless she submits to his amorous advances (partly in revenge for the Baron having stolen Crevel's mistress).Hortense falls in love with a young sculptor whom Adeline's cousin Bette has taken under her wing. Bette loves the young man but he falls in love with and marries Hortense. Meanwhile the Baron takes a new mistress, the married Valerie Marneffe. Dangerous Bette is everyone's confidante and resentful of the fact that throughout their lives Adeline has been the lucky, petted one and she, Bette, always the poor relation. She wants her revenge, and she is terribly, frighteningly patient about getting it. "Madame Marneffe had recoiled in dismay when she found both an Iago and a Richard III in [Bette], who to all appearances was so harmless, so humble, and so little to be feared".Bette and Valerie are, in their different ways, completely manipulative, ruthless and effective (until the final scenes of the book). They create havoc within Baron Hulot's family in particular. The Baron, charming but foolish about women, is finally undone by money, ruined by Valerie. (However, even in disgrace, in poverty, he takes a series of young mistresses.) Valerie achieves her aim of marrying Crevel (for his money, of course), but shortly afterwards the couple are poisoned by Valerie's jealous Brazilian lover. (I couldn't help thinking of Zola's Nana, who came to a similar pustulant end).If this seems like vice getting its just desserts, the same does not apply to the Baron. He is invited home to his now-wealthy family, and the Baroness has every hope that her husband has seen the error of his ways or, at least, is now too old for chasing girls. She is wrong. The Baron is beyond saving: he is discovered by his wife in a compromising scene with the new kitchen maid. For the saintly Baroness, this is the final nail in the coffin of her marriage. Following her death, the Baron marries the kitchen maid. As his son so rightly says, "Parents can oppose their children's marriages, but children have no way of preventing the follies of parents in their second childhood". [Oct 2004]

In his series "The Human Comedy", which consists of more than 100 books, Balzac portrayed every aspect of society. The events set forth in Cousin Bette take place 30 or 40 years prior to the events depicted in Zola's novel Nana. Unlike Nana, which focuses on one courtesan who ruins many men, Cousin Bette focuses on the ruin of one man, Baron Hulot (and his family). The Baron is an aristocrat who, when the novel opens, is on the brink of bankruptcy brought about by his romantic adventures with a series of courtesans. The Baron is "one of those splendid human ruins in which virility asserts itself in tufts of hair in the ears and nose and on the hands, like the moss that grows on the all but eternal monuments of the Roman Empire." When he becomes obsessed with a new mistress, he sinks to even greater depths, leaving his family to go hungry and illegally diverting funds from the state to support his mistress.The vortex around which the Baron's story swirls is Cousin Bette, who is the cousin of Adeline, the Baron's pious wife. Bette is a plain middle-aged spinster who has always envied Adeline, who is beautiful and who married well. When Adeline's daughter marries a Polish artist Bette had nurtured and had perhaps considered a potential husband, Bette's jealousy and hatred of Adeline erupt and compell her to take revenge.Bette takes action by covertly facilitating the Baron's pursuit of Madame Marneffe, the woman with whom the Baron is currently obsessed. As Balzac describes it, "Madame Marneffe was the ax,{Bette} the hand that was demolishing by blow after blow, the family which was daily becoming more hateful to her...."Balzac does not paint his characters black or white. We can fully understand Bette's motivations, and to a certain extent sympathize with her, while also disliking her and condemning her actions. We can admire Adeline while despairing of her inability to assert her will against the Baron. And as to the Baron, one of his former mistresses states to him:"Well, I would rather have an out-and-out spendthrift like you, crazy about women, than these calculating bankers without any soul, who ruin thousands of families with their railways, that are gold for them, but iron for their victims. You have only ruined your family; you have sold no one but yourself."Like Zola, Balzac does not particularly moralize, although his authorial voice is more present in this book than in Nana.SPOILER--SPOILER--SPOILER---SPOILERInterestly, the courtesans in both books come to similar ghastly ends: Madame Marneffe's teeth and hair drop out, she looks like a leper, her hands are swollen and covered with greenish pustules, all of her extremities are running ulcerations; Nana has a face like a charnal house, as mass of matter and blood, a shovelful of putrid flesh etc, etc.END SPOILERLike Nana, Cousin Bette is a masterpiece that should be read by everyone. I've only read a few of Balzac's novels, of which Cousin Bette is considered one of the greatest, but perhaps after I finish the Rougon Macquart I'll move on to "The Human Comedy."

Cousin Bette is my first taste of Balzac, and although I found him very clever and his characters amusing and sharply drawn, getting through this novel was hard work. The story, such as it is, sinks beneath the weight of the author's social commentary on mid-nineteenth century Parisian society, and the ending is horrendously moralistic, clunky and very disappointing. Valerie Marneffe, the irresistible courtesan, was my favourite character - all the men in the book are pathetic and the 'virtuous' women are spineless creatures - but I should have known that a male novelist would have to 'punish' such a dangerous temptress for 'abusing' male weakness!The plot is all about revenge and greed. Cousin Bette, a bitter old spinster replete with monobrow, desires revenge on her wealthy, aristocratic relatives, Hector and Adeline Hulot. The Baron is a dirty old man who grooms young girls to be his mistresses, and his long suffering wife is the type of 'noble' Victorian lady who turns a blind eye to her husband's affairs. Cousin Bette teams up with a notorious courtesan, or kept woman, called Valerie Marneffe to socially disgrace and bankrupt the Baron, and destroy his wife's flimsy happiness. Valerie, whose husband is dying from some kind of wasting disease, also gets her hooks into the Baron's friend and love rival, the bourgeois Crevel, and a hotheaded Brazilian count, to see who she can wring the most money and status out of. At this point, the tangled web of the Hulots, Valerie and Cousin Bette gives way to Balzac's pointed observations about men and women ('Women always persuade men that they are lions, with a will of iron, when they are making sheep of them'), love and money, taste and greed, morals and religion, class, politics and post-Napoleonic France ('From now on, there will be great names but no more great houses'). Nothing escapes his stinging notice, and he can be funny, but I was more involved with the characters, and not Balzac's ranting.

I thought I would like this book more than I did; kind of tedious and boring, unlike his other works