Memoires de deux jeunes mariees by Honore De Balzac

Memoires de deux jeunes mariees by Honore De Balzac

Two very intelligent, very idealistic young women leave the convent school where they became the fastest of friends to return to their families and embark on their new lives. For Ren e de Maucombe, this means an arranged marriage with a country gentleman of Provence, a fine if slightly dull man for whom she feels admiration but nothing more. Meanwhile, Louise de Chaulieu makes for her family's house in Paris, intent on enjoying her freedom to the fullest: glittering balls, the opera, and above all, she devoutly hopes, the torments and ecstasies of true love and passion. What will come of these very different lives?

Despite Honor de Balzac's title, these aren't memoirs; rather, this is an epistolary novel. For some ten years, these two will--enthusiastically if not always faithfully--keep up their correspondence, obeying their vow to tell each other every tiny detail of their strange new lives, comparing their destinies, defending and sometimes bemoaning their choices, detailing the many changes, personal and social, that they undergo. As Balzac writes, Ren e is reason.Louise is wildness.and both will lose. Balzac being Balzac, he seems to argue for the virtues of one of these lives over the other; but Balzac being Balzac, that argument remains profoundly ambiguous. I would, he once wrote, rather be killed by Louise than live a long life with Ren e.

SKU	Unavailable
ISBN 13	9782070372683
ISBN 10	2070372685
Title	Memoires de deux jeunes mariees
Author	Honore De Balzac
Condition	Unavailable
Binding Type	Paperback
Publisher	Gallimard-Jeunesse
Year published	1981-03-05
Number of pages	380
Cover note	Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.