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Available
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Publication
PARKSTONE PRESS (1994), 405 pages
Description
The crown jewel in a remarkable literary career, Cousin Bette is regarded by many critics to be Balzac's last great work before his death in 1850. A fine example of European realist fiction, the story recounts the attempt of a disgruntled housewife to bring about the misery and destruction of her entire extended family. Fans of Tolstoy's War and Peace will enjoy Cousin Bette.
Media reviews
De wereld van deze roman is bevolkt met slechte karakters die elkaar poeslief en elegant ten val willen brengen. Hun gedragingen zijn bedriegelijk en leugenachtig, ze zijn altijd op eigen voordeel uit, alles wat ze zeggen maakt deel uit van hun machtsspel. De woorden van nicht Bette geven precies
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weer hoe de mensen met elkaar omgaan: ,,Je moet de mensen in de maatschappij zien als gereedschap dat je opneemt, gebruikt en weer weglegt al naar het je van dienst kan zijn.'
Balzac heeft niet alleen zijn personages breeduit getekend, ook in de talloze voortreffelijke dialogen, hij heeft daarnaast veel aandacht besteed aan de decors, waarin zij hun menselijke komedie opvoeren. Straten en wijken van Parijs beschrijft hij, interieurs van verschillende stand, veel couleur locale waar de feuilletonlezers van destijds al evenzeer van gesmuld zullen hebben als wij nu doen, die er de historische situatie beter door leren kennen. Show Less
a Cousine Bette is een adembenemend melodrama, waarin een keurige familie te gronde wordt gericht door de ongeneeslijke wellust van de heer des huizes en de heimelijke wraakzucht van een ongetrouwde en verbitterde nicht. Het aardige is dat nicht Bette, bijgenaamd `de Geit', door de familieleden
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juist als een loyale vertrouwelinge en beschermengel wordt gezien, met als gevolg dat zij tegen het eind snikkend rond haar sterfbed staan.
Van Bette schrijft Balzac dat zij `heerste, net als de jezuïeten, in het verborgene'. Pas de niets verhullende blik van de schrijver legt de waarheid bloot. `Hortenses ogen vulden zich met tranen, en van die aanblik genoot Bette met volle teugen, zoals een kat slobbert van de melk'. Voordien is Bette dan al afgeschilderd als een primitieve `natuurmens', gedreven door slechts één passie: afgunst jegens haar even mooie als deugdzame nicht Adeline, die getrouwd is met de wellustige baron Hulot. Ooit een hoge ambtenaar van Napoleon, ruïneert deze Hulot zichzelf en zijn familie door fortuinen uit te geven aan zijn maîtresses, die hem op hun beurt gewetenloos bedriegen. Het kost nicht Bette niet veel moeite om hem stiekem tot instrument van haar wraak te maken, nadat hij verliefd is geworden op haar doortrapte, maar beeldschone buurvrouw. De plot van de roman, vol list, bedrog en zelfs een dubbele gifmoord, herinnert aan die van een boulevardstuk, zoals wel vaker bij Balzac, maar dat vergeet en vergeef je moeiteloos dankzij de energie en de vaart, waarmee het verhaal op zijn fatale ontknoping afstevent.
Keukenmeid
In het voorwoord bij de Comédie humaine betoogt Balzac dat de schrijver niet alleen de `secretaris' van de geschiedenis, maar ook de `leermeester van de mens' moet zijn. Katholicisme en monarchie worden door hem aangeprezen als de twee onmisbare pijlers van de samenleving. Hij verdedigt zich daarom tegen het verwijt van `immoraliteit', dat elke `dappere' schrijver naar het hoofd krijgt geslingerd, en hij wijst erop dat bij hem de misdaad nooit ongestraft blijft. Inderdaad, in La Cousine Bette krijgen de schurken tenslotte niet de kans de vruchten te plukken van hun boosaardige intriges. Show Less
User reviews
LibraryThing member pinprick
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
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.
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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.
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LibraryThing member arubabookwoman
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
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---SPOILER
Interestly, 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 SPOILER
Like 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."
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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---SPOILER
Interestly, 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 SPOILER
Like 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."
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LibraryThing member jwhenderson
Cousin Bette by French author Honoré de Balzac is set in mid-19th century Paris, telling the story of an unmarried middle-aged woman who plots the destruction of her extended family. Bette works with Valérie Marneffe, an unhappily married young lady, to seduce and torment a series of men. One of
Cousin Bette and many of the primary protagonists in the novel are afflicted with the vices of greed, envy, and lust. Bette's greed seeks to overthrow Adeline Hulot. Madame Marneffe's greed and lust are only satisfied by acquiring wealth and material possessions. Baron Hulot's lust carries him from one affair to the next and his greed deepens his financial trouble each time. Crevel's greed motivates him to "steal" a mistress from Hector Hulot only to have it cost him his life. The morals and standards of nineteenth century French society come under the author's scrutiny in Cousin Bette. The novel is also a critique of the concept of a French ruling class after the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte. Balzac's novel is also a morality play in that the characters are imaginative figures as well as character types. And while the story in and of itself is tidily resolved, the narrative nonetheless exposes an underside of human behavior that is puzzling at best and deadly at worst.
The book is part of the Scènes de la vie Parisienne section of Balzac's novel sequence La Comédie humaine ("The Human Comedy"). Writing quickly and with intense focus, Balzac produced La Cousine Bette, one of his longest novels, in two months. It was published at the end of 1846, then collected with a companion work, Le Cousin Pons, the following year. The novel's characters represent polarities of contrasting morality. The vengeful Bette and disingenuous Valérie stand on one side, with the merciful Adeline and her patient daughter Hortense on the other. The patriarch of the Hulot family, meanwhile, is consumed by his own sexual desire. Hortense's husband, the Polish exile Wenceslas Steinbock, represents artistic genius, though he succumbs to uncertainty and lack of motivation.
La Cousine Bette is considered Balzac's last great work. His trademark use of realist detail combines with a panorama of characters returning from earlier novels. While I do not admire it as much as some critics, it has been compared to works by Shakespeare and Tolstoy. It is considered both a turning point in the author's career and a prototypical naturalist text. The novel explores themes of vice and virtue, as well as the influence of money on French society. Bette's relationship with Valérie is also seen as an important exploration of homoerotic themes. I would compare it with Dickens although it lacks his humor and overall seems more bitter. The best of Dickens, by contrast, usually focuses more on a positive character.
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these is Baron Hector Hulot, husband to Bette's cousin Adeline. He sacrifices his family's fortune and good name to please Valérie, who leaves him for a tradesman named Crevel. Bette has harbored a resentment against her cousin Adeline Hulot since childhood. Bette's father and Adeline's father were two of the Fischer brothers. Their uncle, Johann Fischer, brought the girls up and still contributes to their financial well-being as adults. Adeline and her cousin Bette are exact opposites. Adeline is fair-haired and of light complexion while Bette is dark and rather ugly. Bette sees Adeline as the enemy because of her beauty and good fortune in life. Adeline is married to Baron Hulot, a successful government employee and one-time benefactor to the Fischer brothers. After Bette moves to Paris at Adeline's insistence, she hatches a plot to destroy the beautiful Adeline, her husband and their children.Cousin Bette and many of the primary protagonists in the novel are afflicted with the vices of greed, envy, and lust. Bette's greed seeks to overthrow Adeline Hulot. Madame Marneffe's greed and lust are only satisfied by acquiring wealth and material possessions. Baron Hulot's lust carries him from one affair to the next and his greed deepens his financial trouble each time. Crevel's greed motivates him to "steal" a mistress from Hector Hulot only to have it cost him his life. The morals and standards of nineteenth century French society come under the author's scrutiny in Cousin Bette. The novel is also a critique of the concept of a French ruling class after the reign of Napoleon Bonaparte. Balzac's novel is also a morality play in that the characters are imaginative figures as well as character types. And while the story in and of itself is tidily resolved, the narrative nonetheless exposes an underside of human behavior that is puzzling at best and deadly at worst.
The book is part of the Scènes de la vie Parisienne section of Balzac's novel sequence La Comédie humaine ("The Human Comedy"). Writing quickly and with intense focus, Balzac produced La Cousine Bette, one of his longest novels, in two months. It was published at the end of 1846, then collected with a companion work, Le Cousin Pons, the following year. The novel's characters represent polarities of contrasting morality. The vengeful Bette and disingenuous Valérie stand on one side, with the merciful Adeline and her patient daughter Hortense on the other. The patriarch of the Hulot family, meanwhile, is consumed by his own sexual desire. Hortense's husband, the Polish exile Wenceslas Steinbock, represents artistic genius, though he succumbs to uncertainty and lack of motivation.
La Cousine Bette is considered Balzac's last great work. His trademark use of realist detail combines with a panorama of characters returning from earlier novels. While I do not admire it as much as some critics, it has been compared to works by Shakespeare and Tolstoy. It is considered both a turning point in the author's career and a prototypical naturalist text. The novel explores themes of vice and virtue, as well as the influence of money on French society. Bette's relationship with Valérie is also seen as an important exploration of homoerotic themes. I would compare it with Dickens although it lacks his humor and overall seems more bitter. The best of Dickens, by contrast, usually focuses more on a positive character.
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LibraryThing member lindawwilson
I thought I would like this book more than I did; kind of tedious and boring, unlike his other works
LibraryThing member skeets
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!
LibraryThing member thorold
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
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.
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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.
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LibraryThing member AdonisGuilfoyle
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 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.
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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.
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LibraryThing member TrysB
This novel is another in the series, "Scenes from Parisian Life" in the 19th century. I don't think Balzac was capable of writing a happy story. Lisbeth Fischer, called Cousin Bette by everyone, is skilled in the art of making gold and silver lacework, but remains poor and unmarried. She is
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possessed by jealousy of her cousin Adeline who married into wealth, although her husband Baron Hulot is a besotted womanizer. The development of the characters and their tragic relationships form the basis of this great work. Show Less
LibraryThing member BayardUS
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
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.
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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.
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.
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LibraryThing member Gail.C.Bull
Balzac usually does an excellent job of depicting women characters but he misses the mark in choosing to write a story about a woman embittered by being "passed over" by both her lovers and family and left a spinster. While I'm sure there were women in his time who would've wanted to take revenge
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for being never married off, Bette's indifference to marriage as a young woman doesn't fit with the kind of woman who would be bitter at not being married. It would have made more sense for Bette to be motivated by financial independence or just plain joy in others suffering. Quite frankly, in trying to give her a sympathetic motive, he watered down a character who should've been quite mercenary. Show Less
LibraryThing member leslie.98
Bruce Pirie did a fine narration of this French classic. Baron Hulot is a great example of a person incapable of changing his character!
LibraryThing member jonfaith
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
There is much to say about a family in
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decline, if not peril. I rank Cousin Bette with Buddenbrooks and The Sound and the Fury. Show Less
LibraryThing member bookworm12
This French classic is an exploration of moral decay filled with greed, lust, and selfish choices. There was no one to root for as the even the virtuous Adeline was insufferable. Her husband Baron Hulot flits from one affair to the next and she just pretends that nothing is wrong. She's held up as
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a paragon of saintly womanhood, a standard that even her daughter can't emulate when faced with the same dilemma. I wish Bette had been less petty and more devious. Her plot was interesting until she was shuffled off to the sidelines as we watched the "redemption" of the awful Baron. Show Less
LibraryThing member ritaer
only read about 1/4, couldn't get into it
LibraryThing member charlie68
The writing is excellent but as a audiobook I found it hard to keep track of all the names and their relationship to each other. Probably an accurate portrayal of life in those times.
LibraryThing member burritapal
If you're a feminist, the character of Adeline may infuriate you. To wit, she tells her daughter Hortense, who has dumped her husband Wenceslas for cheating on her: "Do as I have done, my child," continued her mother. "Be gentle and kind and you'll have an easy conscience. If, on his deathbed, a
Wow, what a family! Balzac had a few moral lessons to teach us readers in his book Cousin Bette. Bette spent her whole life trying to reap vengeance on her beautiful cousin Adeline, hating her for her beauty and her"luck" in marrying the Baron Hulot. But what kind of luck is it to be married to an eternal mujeriego, I'd like to know. Don't be vengeful, don't be a mujeriego, don't be a courtesan... Balzac's moral for this story.
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man says, 'my wife has never caused me the least sorrow,' God, who hears these last whispered words, counts them in our favor. If I had given way to rages, like you, what would have happened? Your father would have become embittered. Perhaps he would have left me, and he wouldn't have been held back by the fear of distressing me."Wow, what a family! Balzac had a few moral lessons to teach us readers in his book Cousin Bette. Bette spent her whole life trying to reap vengeance on her beautiful cousin Adeline, hating her for her beauty and her"luck" in marrying the Baron Hulot. But what kind of luck is it to be married to an eternal mujeriego, I'd like to know. Don't be vengeful, don't be a mujeriego, don't be a courtesan... Balzac's moral for this story.
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Subjects
Original language
English
Original publication date
1846
Physical description
405 p.
ISBN
1859950108 / 9781859950104