Cousin Bette (Everyman's Library classics)

by HonoredeBalzac (Author), J.Waring (Translator)

• New

  Hardcover
  1991

  $15.08

  A hypnotic story of hatred, revenge and catastrophe in which Cousin Bette exacts a terrible price from the rich relations who use and humiliate her. This book portrays the world of post-Napoleonic France, where commercial greed and sexual debauchery are rampant among a demoralized ruling class.

• Used

  Paperback
  1998

  $13.68

  Cousin Bette (1847) vividly brings to life the rift between the old world and the new and is, among other things, a serious study of the Paris demimonde. Compelled to live in the condescending patronage of her socially superior relatives, the Hulot family, Cousin Bette's energies are directed wholly towards their destruction. The bitter conflict which ensues embodies the struggle for survival of the old values against the rising tide of the new. In its brutal confrontation with human nature and in its technical virtuosity, Cousin Bette is a book in which Balzac is most characteristically and triumphantly himself.