OLD GARIOT
By Honoré de Balzac
PF Collier & Son Company, 1917, 268 pages
Review by Michael Beach
This is a French romance novel. It was written in the mid-nineteenth century and set in the early part of that same century. Translations alternately title it Old Gariot or Father Gariot. I’ve noted in past reviews how this is not my preferred genre of work, yet I have been reviewing them as part of working my way through a 20-volume set of the Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction series. Many of the authors in this series are names I have vague recollection of, but really don’t know any works by many, and only some works by a few of the featured authors. Balzac is one of the former.
The main character grows old after a successful life. He becomes a widower. His two daughters marry. He invests all his money into these daughters and their respective husbands. Little by little his own circumstances deteriorate. His daughters and sons-in-law also distance themselves from him over time. Things begin to turn as the marriages both become loveless. The young women begin to have affairs, as do their respective husbands. Gariot lodges in boarding house as does a young man who courts one of his daughters. The two of them work together to become more connected to her. Gariot helps the illicit lovers become a couple as he helps his daughter extract herself from her marriage. Her sister becomes jealous of this successful life change and begins to reconnect with her father as well. In the end he dies happy having gotten to be more connected with both his girls.
Like other French novels of the period I’ve read, these sort of stories bother me. They are not explicit in terms of character physical sexual interaction, but they do seem to spurn happy marriage and put extra-marital attraction as a preferred, and even normal, route. Marriages in this case were more like business arrangements and impropriety a norm. I’m sure there were, and still are, sectors in society where this is the case, yet there has been, and is, an element of societal shame associated with the behavior. Balzac displays none of that. Not only does the story seem to support these attitudes, but pretty much all the characters act and speak in a way that would put doubt in the idea of love, marriage and fidelity.
By Honoré de Balzac
PF Collier & Son Company, 1917, 268 pages
Review by Michael Beach
This is a French romance novel. It was written in the mid-nineteenth century and set in the early part of that same century. Translations alternately title it Old Gariot or Father Gariot. I’ve noted in past reviews how this is not my preferred genre of work, yet I have been reviewing them as part of working my way through a 20-volume set of the Harvard Classics Shelf of Fiction series. Many of the authors in this series are names I have vague recollection of, but really don’t know any works by many, and only some works by a few of the featured authors. Balzac is one of the former.
The main character grows old after a successful life. He becomes a widower. His two daughters marry. He invests all his money into these daughters and their respective husbands. Little by little his own circumstances deteriorate. His daughters and sons-in-law also distance themselves from him over time. Things begin to turn as the marriages both become loveless. The young women begin to have affairs, as do their respective husbands. Gariot lodges in boarding house as does a young man who courts one of his daughters. The two of them work together to become more connected to her. Gariot helps the illicit lovers become a couple as he helps his daughter extract herself from her marriage. Her sister becomes jealous of this successful life change and begins to reconnect with her father as well. In the end he dies happy having gotten to be more connected with both his girls.
Like other French novels of the period I’ve read, these sort of stories bother me. They are not explicit in terms of character physical sexual interaction, but they do seem to spurn happy marriage and put extra-marital attraction as a preferred, and even normal, route. Marriages in this case were more like business arrangements and impropriety a norm. I’m sure there were, and still are, sectors in society where this is the case, yet there has been, and is, an element of societal shame associated with the behavior. Balzac displays none of that. Not only does the story seem to support these attitudes, but pretty much all the characters act and speak in a way that would put doubt in the idea of love, marriage and fidelity.
RSS Feed