Oh I knew there was a thread about quotes somewhere in these forums
Great, I was looking for it.
My undergoing reading is very interesting. Balzac’s pen is great for basically three reasons: a) his tales are interesting; b) his personages are very well detailed in its physical look and demeanor, what brings to the reader a higher level of reality or “inside-tale sensation” (
I’ve just crazily invented this expression. Is it understandable? lol); and c) he described his society - the XIX Paris society – also very well and detailed. And it’s not me who says, but Friedrich Engels (really, I read about it in a Balzac biography, as I previously said in another post).
And there is a scene in this “The harlot high and low” in which a personage named Peyrade, an old guy who worked as a spy in many historically important events of the French history, says to his daughter that they will have to find a husband for her and then he asks the girl if she ever had seen someone she would like to marry. She says she was interested in a guy named Lucien de Rumbempré. For those who don’t know the tale, I’d better give an idea of who is this Lucien guy: he’s a good looking personage of some other Balzac’s “Human Comedy” series that lives a fortunate life without actually working. He basically uses his uncommon high level of physical beauty to seduce the rich women and marry them. That’s it, I’ll not give any more explanations about him since it’s not the place neither the time to do so. The thing is that the girl’s father Peyrade answers her the following - and this very speech of him is the quotation I think it's opportune in this thread’s discussion:
“
The fact that a man is handsome is not always a sign of goodness. Young men gifted with an attractive appearance meet with no obstacles at the beginning of life, so they make no use of any talent; they are corrupted by the advances made to them by society, and they have to pay interest later for their attractiveness!”
I saw an interesting point in this balzacian quotation due to the time it was written. In the XIX century men were supposed to work and women were supposed to do only these three things: to be petty, to marry someone male and rich or from a good/respected family and to do housework. Well, concerning this last duty, I think some women – the really rich ones – were not expected to do. I think. I’m not sure. Anyway, this social conception seem to become to change only in the XX century, thanks to the feminist movements around the world. There is a famous book published in the US in the middle of the XX century entitled “The Feminine Mystique” (I don’t know if anyone ever read it, but I think it’s possible that some of you mates did) that explains very well this women’s movements. And it says that before the feminism - and it includes the Balzac’s lifetime period - women were supposed to do those functions I’ve exposed above, because there was a social though according to which women were not capable to make their own money and that the only way for a woman to be realized in her life would be trough marriage, otherwise she would be fated to misery or prostitution. Bizarre though, but it was accepted for almost everyone in that époque. Of course it has changed after the feminism, due to the wars and the need for workers in the factories, since men went to war and many of them died, etc, and etc...
I’ve never seen or heard of other literary work from the XIX century in which a male personage was doing what women were supposed to do, according to the époque’s common manners. I was surprised Balzac exposed this truth, breaking that stereotype. It’s like he was careless enough about the critiques to say there are men that make money without working, that it was a fact and that men were hypocrite to say the contrary. The more I read balzacian stuff I realize better why some say he did a great social favor to women.
That doesn’t means this author was a women protector. He just exposed the reality in his fictitious tales. (Hum… that sounds interesting, huh? A very original way to expose sociological aspects of a society…) Because there are male personages of the “Human Comedy” that are very… how can I say… distinguished or exemplary, whatever. But the rule is that balzacian personages are very human, I mean, they’re very real. I'm saying that there are no heroes (males or neither females) between these personages. Each one has their own bad characteristics.