Title: Balzac's Most Helpless Heroine: The Art Collection in Le Cousin Pons
Abstract:M ELODRAMA, BOTH AS A THEATRICAL GENRE and as a mode of narrative expression, became a dominant mode in the years following the Revolution. It was a genre that sought to replace the Sacred order of th...M ELODRAMA, BOTH AS A THEATRICAL GENRE and as a mode of narrative expression, became a dominant mode in the years following the Revolution. It was a genre that sought to replace the Sacred order of the Ancien Regime-monarchy and religion-with a new order, one based around the values of work, the family, and the homeland.' As such, melodrama exerted a considerable influence on writers of theater, novels, and political treatises.2 Balzac too, even as a novelist who aspired to be plus historien que romancier (Lettres II: 595) reveals a profound sensibility to melodrama (Prendergast; Brooks The Melodramatic the Imagination). He also shows a great interest in objects as a means of painting a picture of French society: Rien ne peint mieux un pays que l'Ftat de son materiel social (La Comedie humaine VIII: 946). This reflection, from the novel Les Chouans (1845), precedes the description of a vehicle called a turgotine. It underlines Balzac's preoccupation with the representation of objects with the aim of creating a fuller picture of society. To continue with the pictorial metaphor, the aim of this paper is to examine the depiction of one of these objects, the art collection in Le Cousin Pons (1847), and then to discuss what this representation entails for Balzac's use of melodrama. I shall first focus on the representation of the art collection as a woman, the tissue of references to theater, and then see how the text both conforms to and, significantly, undermines the mode of conventional melodrama, with its ideological implications and repercussions. Pons's collection plays a key role in the events of the novel; one could even claim that it holds the plot together. As an object, it is what all the major characters, with the exception of Schmucke, wish to possess, albeit for different reasons.3 The collection contains some 1,700 art objects and includes several masterpieces, including paintings by Diirer, Breughel, Greuze, Lorrain, Sebastian del Piombo, Fra Bathololmeo della Porta, Van Dyck, and Metzu, as well as porcelains and trinkets, and even a fan painted by Watteau. In Balzac's representation of the art collection, two aspects becomeRead More
Publication Year: 1995
Publication Date: 1995-01-01
Language: en
Type: article
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Cited By Count: 14
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