0.0(0)

Cousin Betty

Cousin Betty (La Cousine Bette), published in serial format in 1846, was one of the last and greatest of Balzac's works. It was part of his long novel collection titled La Comédie Humaine.

Set in mid-19th century Paris, it tells the story of an unmarried middle-aged woman who plots the destruction of her extended family. Betty works with Valérie Marneffe, an unhappily married young lady, to seduce and torment a series of men.

As we follow her schemes to bring ruin upon the more privileged members of her family, we see a society in transition. The stability and idealism of the old order give way to a new bourgeois world in which virtue is strangled in the struggle for power and money.

In this novel, Balzac searchingly probes the psychology and motivations of his characters: his work influenced the development of literary realism, as practised by writers such as Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Flaubert, Proust, and Henry James.

Cousin Betty is considered Balzac's last great work. His trademark use of realist detail combines with a panorama of characters returning from earlier novels.

A number of film versions of the story have been produced.

Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) was a French novelist and playwright. His magnum opus was a sequence of short stories, La Comédie humaine. Many of Balzac's works have been made into or have inspired films, and they are a continuing source of inspiration for writers, filmmakers and critics.

Before and during his career as a writer, he attempted to be a publisher, printer, businessman, critic, and politician; he failed in all of these efforts. La Comédie humaine reflects his real-life difficulties, and includes scenes from his own experience.


Författare:

Uppläsare:

Längd:

  • 430 sidor

Språk:

Engelska


  1. Father Goriot

    Honoré de Balzac

    audiobookbook
  2. 7 short stories that ISFP will love

    O.Henry, Anton Chekhov, Washington Irving, Honoré de Balzac, Ryunosuke Akutagawa, Franz Kafka, Stephen Crane, August Nemo

    book
  3. Best Short Stories Omnibus - Volume 2

    August Nemo, Mary Shelley, D. H. Lawrence, Ellis Parker Butler, Anthony Trollope, Zona Gale, Emma Orczy, Don Marquis, Charles W. Chesnutt, Kathleen Norris, Stanley G. Weinbaum, Honoré de Balzac, M. R. James, Banjo Paterson, Bret Harte, Henry Lawson, W. W. Jacobs, Charlotte M. Yonge, Mary E. Freeman, L. Frank Baum, O.Henry, William Dean Howells, T. S. Arthur, Sherwood Anderson, Robert Barr, Lafcadio Hearn, Giovanni Verga, Hamlin Garland, Émile Zola, Stewart Edward White, Sarah Orne Jewett, Willa Cather, George Ade, Robert W. Chambers, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, Ruth McEnery Stuart, lord Dunsany, George Gissing, Théophile Gautier, Paul Heyse, Selma Lagerlöf, Thomas Burke, Edith Nesbit, Arthur Morrison, Saki (H.H. Munro), Stacy Aumonier, John Galsworthy, Ernest Bramah

    book
  4. Les Illusions perdues – L'intégrale

    Honoré de Balzac

    audiobook
  5. 50 Capolavori Da Leggere Prima Di Morire: Vol. 1 (Golden Deer Classics)

    Carlo Collodi, Golden Deer Classics, Dante Alighieri, Niccolò Machiavelli, Daniel Defoe, Charlotte Brontë, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Jules Verne, Plato, Edmondo de Amicis, Rudyard Kipling, Voltaire, Homer, Sofocle, Lao Tzu, Jonathan Swift, Friedrich Schiller, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Honoré de Balzac, Aleksandr Puškin, Charles Dickens, Edgar Allan Poe, Fëdor Dostoevskij, Fyodor Dostoevsky, Herman Melville, Henry David Thoreau, Harriet Beecher Stowe, Lewis Carroll, Iginio Ugo Tarchetti, Arthur Schopenhauer, Friedrich Nietzsche, Emilio De Marchi, Gabriele D’Annunzio, Giovanni Verga, Jerome Klapka Jerome, Anatole France, Émile Zola, Oscar Wilde, J.M. Barrie, Matilde Serao, Grazia Deledda, Gilbert K. Chesterton, Italo Svevo, Luigi Pirandello, Augusto de Angelis, Stendhal, Alessandro Manzoni

    book
  6. La Comédie humaine. Volume VII : Scènes de la vie de Province. Tome III

    Honoré de Balzac

    book
  7. La Comédie humaine. Volume I : Scènes de la vie privée. Tome I

    Honoré de Balzac

    book
  8. La Comédie humaine. Volume II : Scènes de la vie privée. Tome II

    Honoré de Balzac

    book
  9. Cousin Pons

    Honoré de Balzac

    audiobookbook
  10. Father Goriot

    Honoré de Balzac

    audiobookbook
  11. The Elixir of Life

    Honoré de Balzac

    audiobookbook
  12. La comédie humaine volume I — Scènes de la vie privée tome I

    Honoré de Balzac

    book