La Cousine Bette (, Cousin Bette) is an 1847 novel by French author Honoré de Balzac. Set in mid-19th-century Paris, it tells 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 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 well-off merchant named Crevel. The book is part of the Scènes de la vie parisienne section of Balzac's novel sequence La Comédie humaine ("The Human Comedy").
In the 1840s, a serial format known as the roman-feuilleton was highly popular in France, and the most acclaimed expression of it was the socialist writing of Eugène Sue. Balzac wanted to challenge Sue's supremacy, and prove himself the most capable feuilleton author in France. Writing quickly and with intense focus, Balzac produced La Cousine Bette, one of his longest novels, in two months. It was published in Le Constitutionnel 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. Balzac based the character of Bette in part on his mother and the poet Marceline Desbordes-Valmore. At least one scene involving Baron Hulot was likely based on an event in the life of Balzac's friend, the novelist Victor Hugo.
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. Several critics have hailed it as a turning point in the author's career, and others have called it a prototypical naturalist text. It has been compared to William Shakespeare's Othello as well as Leo Tolstoy's War and Peace. 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. A number of film versions of the story have been produced, including a 1971 BBC mini-series starring Margaret Tyzack and Helen Mirren, and a 1998 feature film with Jessica Lange in the title role.
Background
By 1846 Honoré de Balzac had achieved tremendous fame as a writer, but his finances and health were deteriorating rapidly. After writing a series of potboiler novels in the 1820s, he published his first book under his own name, Les Chouans ("The Chouans"), in 1829. He followed this with dozens of well-received novels and stories, including La Peau de chagrin ("The Magic Skin"), in 1831, Le Père Goriot ("Father Goriot") in 1835, and the two-volume Illusions perdues ("Lost Illusions"), in 1837 and 1839. Because of his lavish lifestyle and penchant for financial speculation, he spent most of his life trying to repay a variety of debts. He wrote tirelessly, driven as much by economic necessity as by the muse and black coffee. This regimen of constant work exhausted his body and brought reprimands from his doctor.Pritchett, pp. 111 and 199; Gerson, p. 250; Hunt, p. 375; Maurois, pp. 485–486; Floyd, p. 246.
As his work gained recognition, Balzac began corresponding with a Polish baroness named Ewelina Hańska, who first contacted him through an anonymous 1832 letter signed "L'Étrangère" ("The Stranger"). They developed an affectionate friendship in letters, and when she became a widow in 1841, Balzac sought her hand in marriage. He visited her often in Poland and Germany, but various complications prohibited their union. One of these was an affair Balzac had with his housekeeper, Louise Breugniot. As she became aware of his affection for Mme. Hanska, Breugniot stole a collection of their letters and used them to extort money from Balzac. Even after this episode, he grew closer to Mme. Hanska with each visit and by 1846 he had begun preparing a home to share with her. He grew hopeful that they could marry when she became pregnant, but she fell ill in December and suffered a miscarriage.Robb, pp. 223–227, 337–338, and 403; Pritchett, pp. 261–262; Gerson, pp. 152–162 and 323–354. Gerson and Maurois indicate that the baby was "born prematurely" and died soon afterward; Robb and Pritchett describe it as a miscarriage.
The mid-19th century was a time of profound transformation in French government and society. The reign of King Charles X ended in 1830 when a wave of agitation and dissent forced him to abdicate. He was replaced by Louis-Philippe, who named himself "King of the French", rather than the standard "King of France" – an indication that he answered more to the nascent bourgeoisie than the aristocratic Ancien Régime. The change in government took place while the economy in France was moving from mercantilism to industrial development. This opened new opportunities for individuals hoping to acquire wealth and led to significant changes in social norms. Members of the aristocracy, for example, were forced to relate socially to the nouveau riche, usually with tense results. The democratic spirit of the French Revolution also affected social interactions, with a shift in popular allegiance away from the church and the monarchy.Robb, pp. 172 and 315–316; Mishra, p. 185.
In the mid-19th century, a new style of the novel became popular in France. The serial format known as the roman-feuilleton presented stories in short regular installments, often accompanied by melodramatic plots and stock characters. Although Balzac's La Vieille Fille (The Old Maid), 1836, was the first such work published in France,Bellos, Bette, p. 75. He notes that this was roughly the same moment when Dickens was introducing the English serial with Pickwick Papers. See also Stowe, pp. 101–102. the roman-feuilleton gained prominence thanks mostly to his friends Eugène Sue and Alexandre Dumas, père.Bellos, Criticism, p. 19; Stowe, p. 102. Balzac disliked their serial writing, especially Sue's socialist depiction of lower-class suffering.Bellos, Bette, pp. 76–77. Balzac wanted to dethrone what he called "les faux dieux de cette littérature bâtarde" ("the false gods of this bastard literature").Quoted in Hunt, p. 375. He also wanted to show the world that, despite his poor health and tumultuous career, he was "plus jeune, plus frais, et plus grand que jamais" ("younger, fresher, and greater than ever"). His first efforts to render a quality feuilleton were unsuccessful. Even though Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes ("A Harlot High and Low"), published in segments from 1838 to 1847, was celebrated by critics, Balzac complained to Mme. Hanska that he was "doing pure Sue".Quoted in Stowe, p. 102. He tried again in 1844 with Modeste Mignon, but public reactions were mixed.Hunt, pp. 325–326; Stowe, p. 102. Two years later Balzac began a new project, determined to create something from his "own old pen again".
Writing and publication
After resting for a week in June 1846 at the Château de Saché in Tours, Balzac returned to Paris and began working on a short story called "Le Parasite", which he eventually developed into the novel Le Cousin Pons. He intended from the start to pair it with another novel, collecting them under the title Les Parents pauvres ("The Poor Relations"). He based the second book on a story his sister Laure Surville had written called "La Cousine Rosalie" and published in 1844 in Le Journal des enfants.Maurois, p. 498; Robb, p. 105. Writing intensively, he produced the entire novel, named La Cousine Bette after the main character, in two months. This was a significant accomplishment owing to his bad health, but its length made Balzac's writing speed especially remarkable.Maurois, p. 499; Hunt, p. 375; Pugh, p. 423. One critic calls the writing of Les Parents pauvres Balzac's "last explosion of creative energy".Oliver, pp. 157–158. Another suggests that this effort was "almost the last straw which broke down Balzac's gigantic strength".Saintsbury, p. ix.
Balzac's usual mode of revision involved vast, complicated edits made to galley proofs he received from the printer. When creating La Cousine Bette, however, he submitted the work to his editor piece by piece, without viewing a single proof. The book was serialized in Le Constitutionnel from 8 October to 3 December, and Balzac rushed to keep up with the newspaper's rapid printing schedule. He produced an average of eight pages each day, but was struck by the unexpected enormity of the story as it evolved.Bellos, Bette, pp. 80–81. Balzac was paid 12,836 francs for the series, which was later published with Le Cousin Pons as a twelve-volume book by Chiendowski and Pétion.Saintsbury, p. xiii; Pugh, p. 423. Gerson gives La Presse as the newspaper in which La Cousine Bette appeared. The first collected edition of La Cousine Bette was organized into 132 chapters, but these divisions were removed when Balzac added it to his massive collection La Comédie humaine in 1848.Saintsbury, p. xiii.
Plot summary
Adeline Hulot – wife of the successful Baron Hector Hulot – is being pressured into an affair by Célestin Crevel, a wealthy perfumer. His desire stems in part from an earlier contest in which the adulterous Baron Hulot had won the attentions of singer Josépha Mirah, also favored by Crevel. Mme. Hulot rejects Crevel's advances. The Baron has so completely lavished money on Josépha that he has borrowed heavily from his Uncle Johann – and, unable to repay the money, the Baron instead arranges a War Department post in Algeria for Johann, with instructions that Johann will be in a situation in that job to embezzle the borrowed money. The Hulots' daughter, Hortense, has begun searching for a husband; their son Victorin is married to Crevel's daughter Celestine.
Mme. Hulot's cousin, Bette (also called Lisbeth), harbors a hidden resentment of her relatives' success, especially of Hortense 'stealing' Bette's intended sweetheart. A peasant woman with none of the physical beauty of her cousin, Bette has rejected various marriage proposals from middle-class suitors who were clearly motivated by her connection to the Hulots, and remains unmarried at the age of 42. One day, she comes upon a young unsuccessful Polish sculptor named Wenceslas Steinbock, attempting suicide in the tiny apartment upstairs from her own. As she nourishes him back to health, she develops a fondness for him. Bette is living in a modest apartment in a lodging house shared by the Marneffe couple. Bette befriends Valérie (née Fortin), the young wife of a War Department clerk, Jean-Paul-Stanislas Marneffe; the two women form a bond to attain their separate goals – for Valérie the acquisition of money and valuables, for Bette the ruination of the Hulot household by means of Valérie's luring both the Baron and Steinbock into infidelity and financial ruin.