Cousin Betty

Honoré de Balzac (1799 - 1850)
Translated by Ellen Marriage (1865 - 1946)

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 France, it tells the story of a woman who resents her position as a "poor relation." 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. - Summary by Bruce Pirie

Genre(s): Literary Fiction

Language: English

Group: Balzac's Human Comedy

Section Chapter Reader Time
Play 01 Chapter 1 Bruce Pirie
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Play 02 Chapter 2 Bruce Pirie
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Play 03 Chapter 3 Bruce Pirie
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Play 37 Chapter 37 Bruce Pirie
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Play 38 Chapter 38 Bruce Pirie
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