The Memoirs Of Two Young Wives

Description

Two very intelligent, very idealistic young women leave the convent school wherethey became the fastest of friends to return to their families and embark on theirnew lives. For Renee de Maucombe, this means an arranged marriage with a countrygentleman of Provence, a fine if slightly dull man for whom she feels admirationbut nothing more. Meanwhile, Louise de Chaulieu makes for her family's house inParis, intent on enjoying her freedom to the fullest- glittering balls, the opera, andabove all, she devoutly hopes, the torments and ecstasies of true love and passion.What will come of these two very different lives? Despite Balzac's title, these aren't memoirs; rather, this is an epistolary novel. Forsome ten years, these two will-enthusiastically if not always faithfully-keep uptheir correspondence, obeying their vow to tell each other every tiny detail of theirstrange new lives, comparing their destinies, defending and sometimes bemoaningtheir choices, detailing the many changes, personal and social, that they undergo. AsBalzac writes, "Renee is reason. . . Louise is wildness. . . and both will lose." Balzacbeing 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," heonce wrote, "rather be killed by Louise than live a long life with Renee."

Honore de Balzac (1799-1850), one of the greatest and most influential of novelists,wrote some eighty-five novels in the course of his last twenty years, includingsuch masterpieces as P re Goriot, Eugenie Grandet, Lost Illusions, and Cousin Bette.NYRB Classics publishes The Unknown Masterpiece and The Human Comedy-Selected Stories. Jordan Stump is a writer, translator, and professor of French at the University ofNebraska-Lincoln.

"The 19th century, as we know it, is largely an invention of Balzac." -Oscar Wilde "Balzac stands signally alone, he is the first and foremost member of his craft.... An imagination of the highest power, an unequalled intensity of vision.... What he did above all was to read the universe, as hard and as loud as he could, into the France of his time." -Henry James "I have learned more [from Balzac] than from all the professional historians, economists, and statisticians put together." -Friedrich Engels "In Balzac, every living soul is a weapon loaded to the very muzzle with will." -Charles Baudelaire "Balzac was both a greedy child and an indefatigable observer of a greedy age, at once a fantastic and a genius, yet possessing a simple core of common sense." -V. S. Pritchett "Balzac was by turns a saint, a criminal, an honest judge, a corrupt judge, a minister, a fob, a harlot, a duchess, and always a genius." -Andre Maurois