SOURCE: Dickinson, Linzy Erika. “Theatre as Metaphor in La Comédie humaine.” In Theatre in Balzac's La Comédie humaine, pp. 169-229. Amsterdam, Netherlands: Rodopi B. V., 2000.

[In the following excerpt, Dickinson analyzes terminology and imagery in La Comédie humaine to illustrate how the theatre metaphor is used in various ways.]

The theatre features strongly throughout La Comédie humaine as a major social institution and as an industry, often providing the novels with characters, locations and intrigues firmly anchored in an accurate historical context. It is also a rich source of imagery which is fundamental to Balzac's mode of expression and closely linked to the theatrical character of Balzac's narrative technique. In discussing Balzac's use of melodrama in his novels, critics refer not only to the dramatic features of Balzac's writing but also to the tissue of images borrowed from the theatre, and through which the melodrama of the Balzacian plot with its relentless development of catastrophe, intrigue and peripeteia is often expressed.¹ Peter Brooks states in his discussion of melodrama in Illusions perdues:

The model of representation in life and personal style refers us inevitably to the theatre, a principal milieu, and perhaps the dominant metaphor, of the novel. The theatre, object of Balzac's repeated ambitions and possibly the key metaphor of the nineteenth century experience of illusion and disillusionment, is also the metaphor of Balzac's methods of melodramatic presentation.²

Brooks goes on to explain that this second sense of metaphor consists in the persistent tension in Illusions perdues between the light and fascination of the theatre stage, and the obscurity and disenchantment of the backstage. This tension in turn functions as an expression of the superstructure and substructure which Balzac perceived in society at large, and which is at work not only in Illusions perdues, but, as will be seen later in this chapter, throughout La Comédie humaine. Donald Adamson also defines the theatre as a dominant metaphor in Illusions perdues in his discussion of chance and necessity in this novel, in which he states:

The theatrical world in which Lucien and Coralie meet is perhaps the greatest metaphor of chance and necessity. Again, apart from a brief reference to the provincial theatre on the last page of the novel, this is a world which does not exist in or near Angoulême. It is the microcosm of Paris as the great theatre of chance, a world in which Lucien, with his fine costumes and journalistic assumption of masks, becomes one of the most colourful actors.³

The preceding chapters of the present work have already sought to show how the theatre facilitates the chance encounters and generates the economic necessities which Adamson speaks of here, and the issues suggested by his comment on Lucien as an actor will be treated in the course of this chapter. Indeed this chapter aims to amplify the ideas put forward by both Brooks and Adamson by showing, through a systematic analysis of imagery and terminology, how Balzac's use of theatrical metaphor applies not just to the Parisian milieu but to the whole society represented in La Comédie humaine, how it serves Balzac's wider narrative purposes in a variety of ways, and how ultimately, and most interestingly, it expresses Balzac's own dramaturgy.

In 1864 Victor Hugo noted the relationship between realism and metaphor when discussing dramatic style, and although his comments refer indirectly to his own work, his praise of abundant metaphor in literature indicates that in using all types of metaphor Balzac is to some extent subscribing to contemporary literary vogue.⁴ Balzac's use of theatrical metaphor in particular, however, seems to have as much to do with his own distinct vision of life, and of theatre, as with the literary trend of his period. Indeed, the overall title of La Comédie humaine already indicates that Balzac sees the whole of human existence as a stage play, and the content and structure of the novels would seem to indicate that Balzac is perhaps less indebted to Dante for his title than he is to the notion of role-playing. Moreover, it is through the notion of life as theatre, rather than in the separate structure of the texts, that the individual novels participate in the unity of the total work.

There is some debate surrounding the exact date of Balzac's conception of his collective title.⁵ However, after 1842, when this title was used for the first time in print, a surge in Balzac's use of explicit theatrical metaphor can be discerned, particularly in the third part of Béatrix (1844-45), where there are thirteen examples, and in Modeste Mignon (1844), where there are fifteen examples. … Although there are sixteen examples of explicit theatrical metaphors in Les Chouans (1828-29), this early plethora of imagery borrowed from the theatre diminishes in works written during the 1830s, even in novels such as Le Père Goriot (1834-35, seven examples) and La Fille aux yeux d'or (1834-35, one example), which rely heavily on dramatic technique, and in Une fille d'Eve (1838-1839, four examples), which is set largely in the theatre world. It seems therefore, that in applying the broad metaphor of comédie to all the human life represented in La Comédie humaine, at a stage when some of his major works remained to be written or completed, Balzac renewed his awareness of the expressive possibilities of theatrical imagery.

Balzac's persistent borrowing of images from the theatre reveals more, however, than a generalised notion of all of human life as a great comédie. Indeed, Balzac appears to strive towards a systematic employment of theatrical metaphors which divide into five key areas and make up a strict scheme of images with distinct purposes. The five categories into which Balzac's theatrical metaphors may be divided are: the character as an actor or director; social role-play as comédie; the theatre as a microcosm of visible society; the hidden area of the backstage as a microcosm of the social substructure; and finally, the private drama, which functions as an expression of the dramaturgy which Balzac would attempt to bring to the stage towards the end of his career in La Marâtre. Each of these categories of metaphor will be treated in turn in the course of this chapter and is supported by an index of examples drawn from La Comédie humaine which appears at the end of the present study. Some 600 explicit references to actual playwrights, characters and actors are listed in this index and are treated in the next section of this chapter, while a further 240 theatrical metaphors not containing comparison to any named person or character are treated in the subsequent sections.

THEATRICAL METAPHOR IN THE CREATION OF A TYPOLOGY

Balzac's vision of the drama of life, or of the human comedy, is largely intelligible to his reader because it is conveyed through characters who are recognisable types and who are capable of engaging the reader's sympathies. As is well known, Balzac, in his Avant-Propos to La Comédie humaine, had specifically declared his intention to create an extensive typology.⁶ Although the nature and function of Balzac's typology have been the source of much criticism,⁷ it has not been noted in more than a superficial way, that the creation of this typology is partly dependent on a system of theatrical imagery, according to which Balzac's characters are defined by reference to a catalogue of characters from the theatre.

The source and extent of Balzac's familiarity with his theatrical antecedents has been noted in the introduction to this study, where it is shown that his correspondence is replete in particular with expressions of admiration for Racine, Corneille, and Molière. Balzac's citations of the French classical tragedians in La Comédie humaine, however, tend more to the admiration of their style than to the borrowing of their characters in the creation of his own typology. This is particularly so with Racine, who is for Balzac ‘le désespoir des poètes’,⁸ since he cannot be matched, and, as seen in the introduction to the present study, is admired for his language and poetry rather than for his characterisation.⁹ There are, of course, also many references in La Comédie humaine to contemporary plays and to the actors and actresses who played in them. These references tend not to be used in a metaphorical sense, however, but rather as part of what Barthes defines as ‘l'effet de réel’. Balzac's fictional characters attend plays such as L'Auberge des adrets, and the Danaïdes¹⁰ and his actresses are often listed alongside actual actors and actresses of the day such as Talma, Mlle Mars, Mlle Georges, and Frédérick Lemaître. … All these references to the current celebrities are fleeting and superficial and are used to recreate the authentic atmosphere of the period around Balzac's fictional characters. A brief glance at the number of citations of contemporary playwrights in La Comédie humaine compared with those of playwrights from previous centuries illustrates their relative importance in Balzac's fiction. …

	Earlier tradition
	Author	Works	Total
Molière	67	151	218
Shakespeare	26	93	119
Beaumarchais	23	56	79
Racine	20	32	52
Corneille	18	26	44
		Total	412

	Contemporary	theatre
	Author	Works	Total
Hugo	20	5	25
Nodier	20	1	21
Scribe	10	10	20
Pixerécourt	2	3	5
Picard	3	0	3
		Total	74

The table above shows the five most frequently cited dramatists in each category. Further examination of the index to this study reveals that references to contemporary works are fleeting and that few works are referred to on more than one occasion. In almost all cases the references to contemporary works are to the name of the play and not to its characters. Conversely, the references to dramatic works from previous centuries are not only more abundant but repeatedly refer to the same work, and, with the exception of Racinian tragedy, these references apply more often to the characters within the plays than to the plays themselves. Clearly, the dramatists of previous centuries emerge as the more important points of reference for Balzac, and of these Molière and Shakespeare are the most important for the creation of Balzac's typology. Since metaphor depends for its effect on the reader's ability to interpret the transaction between contexts, to see the signified behind the signifier, any catalogue of characters used metaphorically in the creation of Balzac's typology must be recognisable to his reader and form part of what Barthes defines in S/Z as the code culturel. Perhaps it is for this reason that Balzac relied primarily on the plays of Shakespeare and Molière, which would be known to his readers both through performance and reading, rather than on ephemeral contemporary productions. … It is noteworthy that although Balzac's plots and mode of expression tend towards the melodrama, he does not borrow characters from the stage melodrama any more than from other kinds of contemporary play, to characterise his own creations.

A full index of Balzac's citations of dramatic works in La Comédie humaine can be found at the end of the the present work, and the points made here will be illustrated by reference to the most frequently cited dramatists only: Shakespeare and Molière.¹¹ The success of Shakespeare with Parisian audiences in the late 1820s¹² seems to have greatly influenced Balzac in his practice of giving brief character sketches by cross-reference to the theatre. There are 93 references to Shakespeare's plays and characters in La Comédie humaine, far outnumbering the references to any contemporary productions, and creating the impression that Balzac was very familiar with the English playwright. Most references are taken from a small selection of major works, however, and focus on Shakespeare's most memorable characters who in Balzac's interpretation have been reduced to a single dominant character trait. These references cover the whole chronological period of La Comédie humaine and very few contain any judgment of the dramatist. The abundance of these allusions and the remarkable absence of comment from Balzac, seems to suggest that the references reflect literary vogue rather than Balzac's personal literary preference. The 93 citations observed in this analysis divide as follows:

Othello	30
Macbeth	11
Richard III	6
The Merchant of Venice	4
Henry V	1
The Merry Wives of Windsor	1
Hamlet	13
Romeo and Juliette	15
The Tempest	9
Henry IV	1
Much ado about nothing	2

It is clear that Balzac's exploitation of Shakespeare's work rests in particular on the characters of Othello, Hamlet and Macbeth.

Balzac seems to be aware of the complexity of Shakespeare's characters who, for him, are imposing, contradictory and disconcerting, but this manifests itself only in general statements about the author. This awareness is evident in Une fille d'Eve in the description of Nathan, ‘qui connaissait son Shakespeare, déroula ses misères, raconta sa lutte avec les hommes et les choses, fit entrevoir ses grandeurs sans base, son génie politique inconnu, sa vie sans affection noble’,¹³ and also in writings outside La Comédie humaine.¹⁴ When Balzac defines his own characters by comparison with individual characters of Shakespeare, however, he rarely takes into account the psychological complexity of what Genette defines in Figures III as the comparant. Rather, the references which Balzac makes to individual Shakespearian characters seem to confirm that he is aware of their principal character traits and of the main intrigue in the plays in which they appear, but that a knowledge which may appear extensive is actually based on the same few characters who are reduced to a recognisable pattern of characteristics. Balzac seizes upon one characteristic and insists upon this alone so that it becomes the dominant trait which can be recognised in all examples. This practice is consistent with Balzac's declared intention to portray humanity through the study of types and to enlarge particular aspects of character. Indeed only if he does this are these referential characters borrowed from Shakespeare useful in the creation of Balzac's typology, for only through this simplified treatment can they function as a clear signifier to the reader. Such references to Shakespeare's characters define recognisable types, link Balzac's own work to the fashionable literary trend, and often predict the character's actions and the novel's outcomes.

Othello is by far the most frequently quoted character in Balzac's figurative exploitation of Shakespeare and is used exclusively to represent dark and savage jealousy. The wildness and irrationality of Othello are not appropriate to the major characters of Balzac's fiction, however, for such a character could not survive for long in the Parisian social spheres of La Comédie humaine. The image of Othello can be effectively exploited only to describe single jealous actions in characters who are otherwise rational, or to describe minor characters who appear only briefly in La Comédie humaine. Balzac uses the image of Othello to describe the actions of Charles Mignon, the prince de Cadignan, Montriveau and de Marsay, and in each case it is the common characteristic of jealousy which prompts the comparison, although there is not the same internal conflict in Balzac's characters as there is in the Othello of Shakespeare. In each case the metaphor serves exclusively to highlight the motive of a jealous action which is highly melodramatic. For example, Montriveau's violent kidnapping of the duchesse de Langeais and his sinister threats are prompted by an unfounded jealousy in comparison to which ‘Othello n'est qu'un enfant’.¹⁵ In this way the Shakespearian metaphor becomes assimilated into Balzac's melodramatic mode of expression.

Christémio in La Fille aux yeux d'or is an Othello both in appearance and in temperament, but he is a minor character who appears only in this novel and is not the perpetrator of the final jealous murder:

Jamais figure africaine n'exprima mieux la grandeur dans la vengeance, la rapidité du soupçon, la promptitude dans l'exécution d'une pensée; la force du Maure et son irréflexion d'enfant.¹⁶

Perhaps the most striking example of a character defined by Balzac as an Othello, in both appearance and temperament, is Montès de Montéjanos in La Cousine Bette. Montès is ‘doué par le climat équatorial du physique et de la couleur que nous prêtons tous à l'Othello du théâtre’,¹⁷ but, unlike his model, is an ‘Othello qui ne se trompe pas’.¹⁸ When his suspicions are aroused, Montès demands visible proof of his mistress's fidelity as does Shakespeare's Othello.¹⁹ Just as Iago in the play suggests to Othello that he should kill Desdemona, so Carabine in the novel gives Montès the same idea.²⁰ The final outcome of the novel, the murderous poisoning of Valérie Marneffe motivated by savage jealousy, is thus predicted in the narrative from the point where Montès is introduced as a metaphorical Othello. The reader who is familiar with Shakespeare is able to recognise the type of jealousy incarnated by Montès and to expect this outcome.

Other Shakespearian characters are used by Balzac in a similar way, as brief reference points for his own, and each is reduced to a dominant feature. Comparisons with characters from Macbeth, for example are linked with the supernatural, with hallucinations, and with violence. Thus in the publication of Le cousin Pons in Le Constitutionnel from 18 March to 10 May 1847, Balzac added to his original manuscript the description of Mme Cibot as ‘cette affreuse lady Macbeth de la rue’,²¹ in order to render the character more sinister and threatening. In a similar simplification, Romeo and Juliette represent ideal love. In Modeste Mignon Canalis, when pretending to be a sincere lover, compares himself to Romeo,²² and Modeste to Juliette. In such comparisons the tragic aspect of Romeo and Juliette is usually neglected by Balzac in favour of his simple reduction of the play's principal characters. In the same way, Hamlet is the incarnation of the nordic type with which Balzac compares Wilfrid in Séraphîta, saying that he ‘était beau comme Hamlet résistant à l'ombre de son père, et avec laquelle il converse en la voyant se dresser pour lui seul au milieu des vivants.’²³ Shylock is the incarnation of the Jewish moneylender. Gigonnet, identified twice with Shylock, is just as pitiless as his model in César Birotteau. Balzac does not take account of Shylock's love for his daughter, Jessica, for his own Jewish moneylenders are too hardened to be fathers and are only capable of the love of gold. Iago and Richard III are both seen as the incarnation of unscrupulous ambition. Cousine Bette is compared to both of them at the same time and it is difficult to see what difference Balzac perceives between them.²⁴ Reduced in this way the characters of Shakespeare form part of the overall system of metaphor borrowed from the theatre through which Balzac conveys his own vision of the world.

Unlike these references to Shakespeare which reflect literary vogue rather than Balzac's personal preference, the abundant references to Molière in La Comédie humaine are a reflection of Balzac's profound admiration for his theatrical ancestor. The 151 references to Molière's works clearly indicate the dominant influence of Le Misanthrope and Tartuffe in the creation of Balzac's own typology. The range of allusions is as follows:

Le Misanthrope	46
L'Ecole des femmes	19
L'Avare	9
Don Juan	8
L'Amour médecin	4
Le Malade imaginaire	1
Tartuffe	44
Les Fourberies de Scapin	12
Les Femmes Savantes	9
Le Médecin malgré lui	6
Le Bourgeois gentilhomme	3

Most of Balzac's references to Le Misanthrope occur in novels written between 1835 and 1847, the period of Balzac's most mature work and the period in which, as has been noted above, he seems to have most consciously and systematically exploited the theatrical metaphor suggested by the overall title of his work.

Balzac uses the character of Célimène from Le Misanthrope as an image of ‘la femme du monde de toutes les époques’.²⁵ She is the coquette who is fleetingly alluded to as a type to characterise the vain and worldly Emilie de Fontaine,²⁶ Mme d'Espard,²⁷ Mme Firmiani²⁸ and Mme Evangelista.²⁹ Only in Le Cabinet des antiques (1836-38) is there a full description of how Balzac perceives Célimène:

Parmi les organisations diverses que les physiologistes ont remarquées chez les femmes, il en est une qui a je ne sais quoi de terrible, qui comporte une vigueur d'âme, une lucidité d'aperçus, une promptitude de décision, une insouciance, ou plutôt un parti pris sur certaines choses dont s'effraierait un homme. Ces facultés sont cachées sous les dehors de la faiblesse la plus gracieuse. […] L'une des gloires de Molière est d'avoir admirablement peint, d'un seul côté seulement, ces natures de femmes dans la plus grande figure qu'il ait taillée en plein marbre: Célimène! Célimène, qui représente la femme aristocratique.³⁰

Here the description of Célimène is used to illustrate the character of the duchesse de Maufrigneuse, and shows that Balzac not only sees Célimène as a coquette but also as a woman who does not allow herself to be ruled by emotions, who is capable of facing adversity, and who is even cruel and egotistical. This is the only example in which the figure of Célimène is used as more than a very rapid image of comparison. In the other twelve instances in which Balzac alludes to her she is referred to only by her one dominant characteristic.…

The other characters from Le Misanthrope quoted frequently by Balzac are Alceste and Philinte. In the previous century Alceste's uncompromising virtue had been seen as a mocking satire by comparison to the perceived reason and flexibility of Philinte. In the nineteenth century, however, Alceste, the victim of a fatal passion, came to be seen as a romantic hero and Philinte as a cynical hypocrite,³¹ and it is in this context that they are used by Balzac as metaphors for the moral stances and motives of his own characters. The first mention of Alceste occurs in Le Père Goriot (1834-35), where he is defined alongside Walter Scott's Jenny Deans and her father as ‘magnifiques images de la probité’.³² The comic element of Molière's character has been suppressed and from now on in La Comédie humaine Alceste is used to define the type who is honest, loyal and upstanding. The contrast between Molière's Alceste and Philinte is maintained by Balzac in his characterisation and the two are often used in juxtaposition, with Philinte as the incarnation of lâcheté and inconsistency. In Une fille d'Eve (1838-39), Nathan the dramatist, who is also metaphorically compared to a Shakespearian drama, is further defined through this image of contrast taken from the dramatic tradition:

Nul ne sait mieux jouer les sentiments, se targuer de grandeurs fausses, se parer de beautés morales, se respecter en paroles, et se poser comme un Alceste en agissant comme Philinte.³³

In repeatedly referring to Nathan as an actor, and in describing his character by reference to Shakespeare's dramas and to Molière's characters, Balzac seems to be consciously reinforcing Nathan's position in La Comédie humaine as an homme de théâtre. Nathan fails as statesman and businessman because he steps outside his correct milieu and the sense of this is translated to the reader through the images which constantly link him to the theatre.

The contrast between Alceste and Philinte is also used in La Muse du département (1843), to describe the way in which Mme de la Baudraye desires to be loved:

[L]e digne magistrat aimait à la manière d'Alceste, quand Mme de La Baudraye voulait être aimée à la manière de Philinte. Les lâchetés de l'amour s'accommodent fort peu de la loyauté du Misanthrope.³⁴

It can be seen from these examples that Balzac has lost all sense of the comic in Molière's Misanthrope and has ignored Molière's subtle satire to reduce his characters to one characteristic. Reduced in this way, the characters of Le Misanthrope are also made to serve Balzac's wider purpose of exposing the process of social disillusionment. In Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes³⁵ the process of disillusionment which takes place when the individual uncovers the backstage causes lying behind the false appearance of society is described in this way: ‘[L]es Alcestes deviennent des Philintes, les caractères se détrempent, les talents s'abâtardissent, la foi dans les belles œuvres s'envole’.³⁶

The same reduction of Molière's characters can be seen in all the examples in which Balzac takes them to define his own ‘actor’. In an article in Le Constitutionnel in 1846, Balzac writes:

Quand Molière introduisit un Monsieur Loyal dans Tartuffe il faisait l'Huissier et non tel huissier. C'était le fait et non un homme.³⁷

Molière's types are so well-known that Balzac can use them as terms of comparison for his own characters, confident in the knowledge that his reader will understand the image. The allusions are often fleeting and accompanied by little explanation. In Le Cousin Pons (1846-1847), Madame Cibot's machinations to infiltrate Pons's household are likened to ‘les séductions à la Dorine’,³⁸ the doctor Poulain thanks Mme Cibot with ‘une moue digne de Tartuffe’,³⁹ and has ‘les yeux ardents de Tartuffe’.⁴⁰ In La Cousine Bette (1846), Crevel looks at Mme Hulot with ‘un regard comme Tartuffe en jette à Elmire’⁴¹ and in the final part of Illusions perdues (1843), Petit-Claud practises ‘une de ces audaces que Tartuffe seul se serait permise’.⁴²

Through these brief references Balzac consistently links his work with the established theatre, and sums up characters and actions in an instant, dispensing with the need for lengthy descriptions. The references compare both the physical and the moral aspect of the characters so that the new character presented by Balzac is described by reference to a known character who has already been morally classified. Balzac's characters are not just stereotypes, however; many are exceptional, and the theatrical references add small details to their full portrayal.⁴³ Through theatrical metaphor Balzac not only reinforces the sense of his characters as actors, but achieves a theatrical economy of form in their characterisation and links them to a known literary tradition.

THE ‘COMEDY’ OF SOCIAL ROLE-PLAY

The metaphors of comédie, scène and vaudeville may broadly be treated together, since they are all used figuratively to denote the play of masks and roles within society and the deliberate development of intrigue by certain characters. Together these three terms number 35 examples in the appendix, among which the metaphor of the comédie is the most frequent. The metaphor of the comédie is usually satirical, and is used as a vehicle to denote situations of intrigue, social interaction, posturing and falsehoods deliberately perpetrated by certain characters. Through these metaphors the reader is constantly invited to penetrate beneath the mask of the comedy and discover the underlying truth. The most frequent examples are to be found in Illusions perdues (1836-1843),⁴⁴ not surprisingly, since this novel depends for much of its action on the social charades played out in the theatres and salons of Paris; and in Modeste Mignon (1844,)⁴⁵ and Ursule Mirouèt (1840-41),⁴⁶ in which the provincial settings are perhaps less likely scenes for the satirical exposure of social posturing and role-play.

In all of the situations which Balzac metaphorically describes as comédies in his novels, there is at the basis either a love interest or the play of money and ambition, which are associated with the classical tradition of comedy in the theatre, and in particular with the plays of Molière and Beaumarchais. Balzac seems to have deemed it less necessary to intervene in the narrative in order to explain and justify his metaphorical use of the comédie than will be seen to be the case in his use of the drame, and it seems likely that this is because the comédie was part of a more established theatrical tradition.

Balzac's metaphor of comédie in all cases denotes situations in which certain characters are duped by others as in Classical stage comedy. This receives its most ironic treatment in Une fille d'Eve (1838-39), in which the dramatist Nathan becomes the dupe of a series of charades and social trickeries engineered by his rivals and his social superiors:

Nathan se mit à rire de lui-même, de lui, faiseur de scènes, qui s'était laissé prendre à un jeu de scène.

—La comédie n'est plus là, dit-il en montrant la rampe, elle est chez vous.⁴⁷

When engaged in the role-plays of faubourg St. Germain society, Nathan, who is successful in creating convincing intrigues for the stages of the boulevard theatres, is out of his depth, for the social charade is constructed more finely and played more adeptly than any of his vaudevilles or melodramas. Nathan comes to realise this in a scene which Balzac, in a skilful mirroring of stage and public, locates in Mme d'Espard's box at the theatre. The metaphor is amplified and given wider significance by the mirroring of the intrigue played out on the theatre stage, in the intrigue played out in the boxes of the auditorium. The fact that Nathan, who deals every day in jeux de scène and comédies, cannot recognise the intrigue of which he is the victim, shows that the social comédie, which Balzac would have his reader believe is real, is both more contrived and, paradoxically, more convincing than any fictitious comédie of the stage.

The same inability of the central character to detect the social comedy played around him despite familiarity with the scenarios of the stage can be seen in Le Cousin Pons (1846-1847). Given his essentially naive character, this is perhaps less surprising in Pons than in Nathan, but Balzac suggests that the daily spectacle of stage intrigues had made Pons ‘blasé’ and perhaps this over-familiarity could also explain Nathan's apparent naivety:

Ce bonhomme qui, depuis douze ans, voyait jouer le vaudeville, le drame et la comédie sous ses yeux, ne reconnut pas les grimaces de la comédie sociale sur lesquelles sans doute il était blasé.⁴⁸

Similar instances of the social comedy being juxtaposed to one on stage take place in Illusions perdues (1836-1843), where Lucien in the first instance witnesses the comédies played out in the various boxes by du Châtelet, Rastignac, de Marsay, Félix de Vandenesse and other great actors of the social stage,⁴⁹ and in the second instance becomes himself the unwitting subject of the comédie played out in Mme d'Espard's box.⁵⁰ In both instances there is no explicit use of the term comédie or scène in the metaphor but Balzac's satirical intentions nevertheless are clear, and as in Une fille d'Eve, the intrigue enacted in the boxes is more subtle, more refined and therefore more dangerous to its victims than the stage intrigue which it mirrors. Explicit use of the terms comédie and scène is only made in the third part of the novel, which is located in the provincial town of Angoulême. A possible explanation for this is that it was only after giving the title of Comédie and subtitles of scènes to the total work in 1841, by which time the first two parts of the novel had been completed,⁵¹ that Balzac began systematically to exploit the metaphorical use of these terms. This assumption is further supported by the fact that the other two novels in which there is equally abundant metaphorical use of scène and comédie, Modeste Mignon (1844),⁵² and Ursule Mirouèt (1840-41),⁵³ were also written after the publication of the collective title.

Another, and perhaps more convincing, reason for Balzac's explicit insistence on the metaphor of the comédie or scène only in the last part of Illusions perdues, might be that in the preceding Parisian episodes, appropriately located in the boxes and salons of a high society which places great emphasis on appearance, nuances of gesture and subtleties of manners, the abstract metaphor and its underlying satire can easily be understood by the reader, whereas in the provinces, where the social stage is not so easily seen to mirror the theatre world, explicit metaphor is necessary to enable the reader to discern the transaction between contexts. Lucien's repentance on his return to Angoulême is a ‘scène parfaitement jouée’,⁵⁴ which has no more solid a foundation than his social posturings in Paris; the demise of David Séchard is a ‘scène’ which ‘se joue assez souvent au fond du cabinet des avoués’,⁵⁵ and of which he is the victim just as Lucien had been the victim of similar intrigues in Paris; Lucien's fake triumph in Angoulême is ‘mis en scène […] par un machiniste passionné’,⁵⁶ in the same way that his demise is engineered by his enemies in Paris; and on the novel's final page Cérizet is said to have sought a new outlet for his capacity for intrigue and role-play ‘sur la scène de province’,⁵⁷ which Balzac has shown to be no less fraught with dissimulations than the more visible metaphorical stage of Paris.

The message conveyed by the explicit metaphor of the scène in the provincial setting of Illusions perdues is exactly the same as that conveyed by the implicit metaphor in the Parisian settings. Behind the deceptive façade of these sleepy provincial towns, certain characters are just as inclined to role-playing, dissimulation and intrigue as their Parisian counterparts, for human nature, as the reader is told by Vautrin in Le Père Goriot, is the same ‘en haut, en bas, au milieu’.⁵⁸ The metaphor of the scène thus becomes not only the site of a satirical comment which punctuates the narrative, but part of the underlying and unifying philosophy of the narrative, which indicates the universal human propensity to corruption and the ultimate unknowability of truth.

The same can be said of Ursule Mirouèt (1840-41), in which the metaphorical uses of the terms scène and comédie convey the same observations of human nature. Again, the location of the action is in a provincial town and again the metaphor is made explicit to show that the propensity to role-play and intrigue is endemic throughout society and not just in Paris. In Ursule Mirouèt, perhaps more clearly than elsewhere, the play of money and ambition is at the root of the intrigue enacted by the extended Minoret family. Ursule is warned by Dr. Minoret of the ‘comédies que les Minoret, les Crémière et les Massin vont venir jouer’.⁵⁹ Familiar with the nature of his heirs, Dr. Minoret is well aware that after his death ‘la comédie des héritiers commencera’.⁶⁰ In preparing Ursule for the deceptions and intrigue she will have to face, Balzac, through Minoret, also prepares the reader and makes him ready to accept the contortions and complexities of the intrigue which follows.

In the process of exposing through metaphor the endemic nature of social falsehood, Balzac also shows that the metaphorical comédie has its perpetrators and its victims. Whereas the metaphor of the drame in La Comédie humaine will be seen to indicate a tragic and often unavoidable set of circumstances in which characters become caught up, or which invade their lives without invitation, or which are dictated by their own essential nature, the metaphor of the comédie or scène, shows certain characters as perpetrators of scenarios which are enacted in full consciousness of their self-appointed roles, and other characters as unwitting or powerless victims of these intrigues and machinations. While the drame usually has its roots in a complex web of abstractions, the comédie can usually be traced to a particular individual or set of individuals with specific objectives in mind. This is certainly the case with the examples cited so far in which the comédie of the Minoret heirs in Ursule Mirouèt, of Cérizet and Lucien's enemies in Illusions perdues, and of Nathan's enemies in Une fille d'Eve, is motivated by the connected issues of money and ambition.

Similarly, it is financial interest and not love which Balzac describes as a comedy in Le Contrat de mariage:

Les événements et les idées qui amenèrent le mariage de Paul avec Mlle Evangélista sont une introduction à l'œuvre, uniquement destinée à retracer la grande comédie qui précède toute vie conjugale. Jusqu'ici cette scène a été négligée par les auteurs dramatiques quoiqu'elle offre des ressources neuves à leur verve. […] Ces comédies jouées par-devant notaire ressemblent toutes plus ou moins à celle-ci.⁶¹

Even here, as early as 1835, Balzac is conscious of the potential of the comédie as a metaphorical way of referring to episodes of intrigue and scheming, and does not miss the opportunity to point out how his novel not only matches the stage comedy but surpasses it in its novelty.

In Modeste Mignon (1844), the motive of love rather than financial interest prompts the abundant use of theatrical metaphor, and here Balzac develops the imagery to the point of excess. There are no fewer than sixteen examples of explicit theatrical metaphor in the 255 pages of this novel, four of which relate to the comédie of which Modeste is the deliberate instigator, and there are a further 17 examples which compare certain characters to well-known characters from the established theatrical tradition. Modeste's situation is described from the outset as the ‘comédie de La Fille mal gardée’,⁶² and the ‘répétition de la première scène jouée au lever du rideau de la Création’;⁶³ the intrigue mounted by Charles and Dumay is referred to by Balzac as ‘la comédie qui devait se jouer au Chalet’;⁶⁴ and as the intrigue develops beyond her control Modeste decides to ‘assister, en personne désintéressée, à ce qu'elle nommait le vaudeville des prétendus’.⁶⁵

Theatrical metaphor in this novel pervades the entire narrative so that it becomes an expression of the central issues of the plot. From the outset Modeste has the impression of being able to control and direct the comédie which she has set in motion, and to some extent her misconception is justified. However, Modeste becomes the dupe of a further comédie, and throughout the first half of the novel she is a deceiver who is also deceived. The whole intrigue is expressed through theatrical metaphors which lead the reader deeper into a complex web of different levels of deception which hinge on the contrast between reality and appearance. While the intrigue deepens, Modeste and La Brière write to each other under assumed names which could be interpreted as metaphorical masks, suggestive of the masks of the commœdia dell'arte. In this way, not only through its explicit uses of terminology, but also through the role-play upon which the entire narrative depends, the comédie becomes a wider metaphor for all the false appearances portrayed by the characters, and is underpinned at every turn by literary references and comparisons to theatrical characters. In turn these references are justified by the fact that Modeste consumes huge numbers of literary works. Modeste's life comes to imitate and ultimately to surpass the theatre in the complexity and extent of its intrigues and the theatrical metaphor is fundamental to the expression of this process:

A la période affamée de ses lectures succéda, chez Modeste, le jeu de cette étrange faculté donnée aux imaginations vives de se faire acteur dans une vie arrangée comme dans un rêve, […] de jouer enfin en soi-même la comédie de la vie, et, au besoin celle de la mort. Modeste jouait, elle, la comédie de l'amour. Elle se supposait adorée à ses souhaits.⁶⁶

By her own invention and by others' intervention Modeste's entire life becomes a metaphor for the ‘comédie de l'amour’.

Although the metaphor of the comédie, here and in the examples cited previously, often announces situations which have the potential to become disastrous for the individuals concerned, the final dénouement of the intrigue usually sees some sort of order restored. Modeste marries La Brière, Ursule marries Savinien, and in Illusions perdues Lucien is saved from suicide and David Séchard pursues his inventions in tranquillity. It is true that there are single examples of the explicit metaphorical use of the terms comédie, scène or vaudeville in such novels as Le Cousin Pons, Eugénie Grandet, La Fille aux veux d'or, Le Père Goriot and La Cousine Bette, which culminate in tragic endings. However, on the whole, the sustained use of one category of metaphor seems virtually to preclude the use of the other and announces the nature of the final outcome of the plot from its very beginning. Consistent with this theory, in the novels in which there is an abundant use of the term comédie there are very few examples of the term drame—none in Le Contrat de mariage, one in Illusions perdues,⁶⁷ one in Modeste Mignon,⁶⁸ and none in Ursule Mirouèt. Equally, there are few or no examples of the term comédie in most of the novels in which the metaphor of the drame dominates—none in Les Chouans, one in Le Père Goriot,⁶⁹ none in Une ténébreuse affaire, and none in Pierrette. In each novel the mode of the metaphor tends to one form or the other, to tragedy or to comedy.

In the case of the comédie, it has been shown that the metaphor is primarily used to effect the satirical exposure of the hypocrisies of a society in which social interaction at all levels and in all spheres is subject to dissemblance, false appearance, role-play and the propensity for intrigue. The image extends beyond a simple description of social role-play to work at a more abstract level in order to become part of Balzac's uncovering of all the falsehoods of his society and is a fundamental mode of expression for his ‘histoire des mœurs’. The metaphor of the comédie is also, of course, a subtle satire on Balzac's own contemporary reader, for only a provisional and arbitrary privilege distinguishes the reader from the characters, since they are all part of the same human and social condition.

THE WORLD AS A STAGE

Whether the events of the novel are metaphorically denoted as a comédie or as a drame, a stage is required for their enactment and it is in this context that the terms of théâtre and spectacle are used by Balzac. These two groups of metaphors together number forty-nine examples and constitute approximately 20٪ of the total number of uses of theatrical metaphor in La Comédie humaine cited in the appendix. If life is a drama then the world, as Balzac reminds the reader of Splendeurs et misères, is the theatre stage where that drama is acted out: ‘Le monde, n'est-il pas un théâtre?’⁷⁰ The image of the world as a theatre is a familiar one which suggests both stage and auditorium, action and observer. The streets of Paris are presented in the opening scenes of Ferragus (1833) as a continual parade, and in Une double famille (1830), Caroline's view of the street gives her a hidden vantage point like that of actors behind the closed curtain in the theatre, from which she can witness the spectacle offered by Paris:

Cette échappée de vue, que l'on comparerait volontiers au trou pratiqué pour les acteurs dans un rideau de théâtre, lui permettait de distinguer une multitude de voitures élégantes et une foule de monde emportées avec la rapidité des ombres chinoises.⁷¹

Occasionally the image of the theatre in Balzac's novels is that of a stage on which events are acted out only for the privileged viewing of the reader, and the first example of this can be found in Les Chouans (1828-29), where the vast Breton landscape, already noted as ‘si dramatique’,⁷² is described as a theatre where the actions of war will be played out against a detailed backdrop: ‘Une imagination exercée peut, d'après ces détails, concevoir le théâtre et les instruments de la guerre’.⁷³ In order to assume its full signification the image of the theatre requires the engagement of the reader's imagination.

With the reader's participation the image of the theatre in Les Chouans is used to denote the location and background of a dramatic action. There is only one other instance in La Comédie humaine in which Balzac uses the theatre to suggest a battle-ground or scene of large-scale political events and this occurs in the first part of Béatrix (1838), where the events of the Cent-Jours are described as a ‘magique spectacle’ and as a ‘pièce de théâtre en trois mois’.⁷⁴ Both images suggest a vast perspective, and an action which takes place over a wide geographical area, and which reaches beyond the literal stage. In Les Chouans the geographical area is an empty theatre stage waiting for the actors to appear. A similar image of the background setting as a vast and empty stage can be seen much later in Balzac's work in Une ténébreuse affaire (1838-40), where the Gondreville estate is described as a ‘magnifique théâtre’⁷⁵ where the events of the novel will be played out for the reader.

In Béatrix, the main characters of the novel, in which the plot will largely depend on theatrical role-play, are placed from an early stage against a setting which is described as a theatre, and the sense of this comes to pervade the entire novel and to influence the characters' actions as they become aware of the sense of drama which surrounds them. The sudden revelation of Béatrix's feelings for Calyste is played out against the vista of the des Touches estate:

En ce moment, elle était arrivée au faîte du rocher, d'où se voyait l'immense Océan d'un côté, la Bretagne de l'autre avec ses îles d'or, ses tours féodales et ses bouquets d'ajoncs. Jamais une femme ne fut sur un plus beau théâtre pour faire un si grand aveu.⁷⁶

The metaphor of the theatre then, when used as an image of the outdoor world, denotes the geographical location of an action or intrigue which goes beyond the spatial confines of an actual theatre stage. In these instances the location is a metaphorical stage for the reader only, since the scene is not viewed by characters other than those who are directly involved.

In the social domain of Paris, however, the image of the theatre comes to denote not simply a pictorial background against which events are set for the reader to view from his privileged position, but spheres of activity in which the characters operate and from which they can be seen both by the reader and by the other characters of the novel. In this way the two distinct spheres of Cardot's social and domestic life in La Muse du département (1843), are described as stages on which he is active and on which he is observed by Lousteau:

L'ennui siégeait sur tous les meubles. Les draperies pendaient tristement. La salle à manger ressemblait à celle d'Harpagon. Lousteau n'eût pas connu Malaga d'avance, à la seule inspection de ce ménage il aurait deviné que l'existence du notaire se passait sur un autre théâtre.⁷⁷

The image of the dull, bourgeois dining room of Molière's L'Avare is starkly contrasted with the image of Cardot's alternative life taking place on a different stage, and suggests, by implication of the contrast, that in this second sphere his life is full of event and intrigue. The image is doubly effective in that Cardot's social life is not only acted out in full view of society far from the strict confines of his dull home, but is acted out with a second-rate actress, Malaga, in the actual theatre environment.

In Une fille d'Eve (1838-39), the three spheres of Nathan's public activities are represented by the same image of the theatre stage as an area within which certain characters operate in full view of society. In order to sustain his position is society, Nathan must find the strength to be ‘à la fois sur trois théâtres: le Monde, le Journal et les Coulisses’.⁷⁸ On each metaphorical stage Nathan must act out the role of dandy, journalist and dramatist accordingly, and consistently subject himself to society's critical gaze. In the Parisian setting the spectacle of the characters operating as if on a theatre stage is not offered exclusively to the reader, but is open to the whole of the society represented in La Comédie humaine, and that society is shown to be as harsh and as critical of any new actor as the most discerning theatre audience. Nathan's attempts to mount the political stage are as public as the staging of his vaudevilles and are thwarted because, while he is playing in centre stage and leaving himself open to public judgment, his enemies are engineering his demise from the wings.

In the same novel Marie de Vandenesse is attracted by the lights of the social stage, not just in order to witness its dazzling spectacle, but to become part of that spectacle, dreaming of the pleasure of moving ‘sur un vaste théâtre, […] devant un monde observateur’.⁷⁹ The whole of Parisian society is repeatedly portrayed by Balzac as a vast theatre in which characters move symbiotically from auditorium to stage, to see and be seen. In this respect the general image of the Parisian social realm as a theatre, like that of the external geographical setting, far exceeds the spatial constraints of the actual theatre since it also implicitly encompasses the salons, supper-parties, and excursions which constitute social life. However, the image frequently becomes exemplified and intensified by scenes which take place in the actual theatres which are the hub of social life in the Paris of La Comédie humaine. Here the image works as a two-way mirror in which social life is likened to theatre and the theatre is the place of social interaction. The image of the vast social scene thus becomes contained within a confined area which is not much larger than the actual stage. This continual mirroring of stage action and social action in the Parisian theatres in Un grand homme (1839), and the first two parts of Splendeurs et misères (1839-1844), shows in particular how the metaphor of the ‘théâtre du monde’ consists in the fact of characters being observed by each other.

On the occasion of Esther's first visit to the Opéra in the company of Nucingen in Splendeurs et misères, the action on the stage is of little consequence to the members of the theatre audience, who are far more concerned by the reappearance of Esther, who becomes the sole object of their attention:

Le lendemain, à l'Opéra, l'aventure du retour d'Esther fut la nouvelle des coulisses. Le matin, de deux heures à quatre heures tout le Paris des Champs Elysées avait reconnu la Torpille, et savait enfin quel était l'objet de la passion du baron de Nucingen. […] A Paris, comme en province, tout se sait. La police de la rue de Jérusalem n'est pas si bien faite que celle du monde, où chacun s'espionne sans le savoir.⁸⁰

Fully conscious of the fact that society's eyes are observing at all times, certain characters are unable ever to step out of their role and abandon the sense of being on a public stage. Esther began her career as a petit rat at the Opéra and although she may never have attained the position of premier sujet, she is no less capable of holding the centre stage.

The same message is conveyed in Illusions perdues, where, as has already been noted, the juxtaposition of action on stage and in the boxes perpetuates the sense of the auditorium as the real object of observation for both the reader and the fictional characters. Even from the outset in Angoulême, Lucien has the sense that the highest social sphere is ‘le seul théâtre sur lequel il devait se tenir’,⁸¹ and Louise de Bargeton encourages him to feel that Paris will be ‘le théâtre de vos succès!’⁸² The sense of the image is that the high society of Paris is a showcase, rather than necessarily the scene of a drama, and this is borne out when Lucien makes his appearance as an observer of the ‘spectacle unique’⁸³ offered by the audience at the Opéra, becoming absorbed in turn by the ‘pompeux spectacle du ballet du cinquième acte’ and the ‘aspect de la salle dans laquelle son regard alla de loge en loge’.⁸⁴ Ultimately, however, Lucien's attempts to ‘franchir l'espace’,⁸⁵ which separates him from the stage and keeps him on the outside looking in, are thwarted and the streets of Paris become the ‘théâtre de sa défaite’.⁸⁶ Lucien's failed attempts to achieve social eminence are also expressed in the abstract metaphor of his restriction to the coulisses of the small theatres, for he is never able in Illusions perdues to make the transition from this area of obscurity, in which he associates only with actresses and journalists, to the brightly-lit stage of high society.

While the external, geographical landscape is represented as a theatre stage on which events and actions take place, and the social landscape of Paris is represented as a theatre which is above all a show-case or spectacle, a third aspect of the metaphor emerges in the internal locations of Balzac's provincial settings. Here, the claustrophobic interiors of dark and sleepy provincial houses become the closely confined stages of sinister dramas and intrigues, and the image comes closer to the actual theatre stage in which actions are confined within small spaces enclosed by scenery. Thus the ‘théâtre étroit de la province’, which is a recurring image in La Comédie humaine,⁸⁷ comes to denote the drawing rooms, kitchens and interiors where the characters come into contact. For example, in Pierrette the salon of Denis and Sylvie Rogron ‘allait devenir le centre d'intérêts qui cherchaient un théâtre’;⁸⁸ and in Eugénie Grandet the salle is described as having the combined function of a variety of settings in which characters might typically be brought together on the stage:

La salle est à la fois l'antichambre, le salon, le cabinet, le boudoir, la salle à manger; elle est le théâtre de la vie domestique.⁸⁹

The provincial towns need their stage as much as Paris does, and in this way the salle provides both their stage and their auditorium since it is the site of the provincial dramas and the focal point of the characters' interaction, fulfilling the same function as the planches, foyers and loges of the Parisian theatres. The room which has been established as the theatre of domestic life at the beginning of Eugénie Grandet is the scene of the novel's final tragic dénouement. Here the characters gathered for their usual card games are both actors and spectators, just as in the theatres of Paris. In front of her familiar guests, Eugénie asks M. de Bonfons to remain behind after the others have left, thereby indicating that she has accepted to marry him. This simple event causes as much of a furore in the ‘théâtre étroit de la province’ as does Esther's appearance at the Opéra with Nucingen in Splendeurs et misères:

Au moment où l'assemblée se leva en masse pour quitter le salon, il y eut un coup de théâtre qui retentit dans Saumur, de là dans l'arrondissement et dans les quatre préfectures environnantes.⁹⁰

If the image of the theatre becomes more spatially confined in the provincial setting, its effects are no less far-reaching than those brought about in the Parisian setting.

The image of the theatre as the confined location of an action becomes further intensified in situations where it is used to describe the staging of the legal process. For example, in Le Curé de village, the ‘drame judiciaire’ brings Mme Graslin ‘sur le théâtre où ses vertus brillèrent du plus vif éclat’;⁹¹ and in Modeste Mignon Canalis describes the courtroom as ‘le plus grand théâtre du monde’.⁹² The suggestions of the image require little explanation, being evocative of both the clash of interests and of the enclosed but nevertheless public nature of the setting, in which characters speak in turn according to a prescribed procedure.

More intensely still, the metaphor of the théâtre is also occasionally used to denote the play of conflict or disturbing emotion within the mind of the individual, as in the case of Eugène in Le Père Goriot, who is described by Vautrin as ‘un théâtre où s'émeuvent les plus beaux sentiments’.⁹³ More often, however, the term is used, in the absence of more concrete medical or scientific terminology, to describe psychological malfunction, for example in the case of Louis Lambert who cannot be cured because ‘sa tête est le théâtre de phénomènes sur lesquels la médecine n'a nul pouvoir’,⁹⁴ and the daughter of M. Bernard in L'Envers de l'histoire contemporaine, whose ‘âme a été le théâtre de tous les prodigues du somnambulisme, comme son corps est le théâtre de toutes les maladies’.⁹⁵ Here the theatrical imagery denotes psychological conflict and the interaction of heightened emotions. The description of madness through theatrical imagery also perhaps reflects the contemporary fashion for Shakespeare on the Parisian stage and for Macbeth, which is often quoted by Balzac in La Comédie humaine. …

It is possible to see from the examples cited that Balzac's figurative use of the terms théâtre and spectacle falls into four principal metaphorical senses none of which is confined to a specific period of his work, or to a particular type of novel. Used metaphorically the theatre may denote any place of action, and covers a wide area of reference from the open vistas of the external geographical location to the most confined area of the mind of the individual. Applied to the landscape, the image of the theatre primarily describes a backdrop or location in which events and actions take place; when applied to Paris it denotes the sense of spectacle offered by society and the desire of that society to be observed; in the provincial setting it denotes the home and fulfils the same functions as the actual Parisian theatre, being both the centre of its social activity and the site of its dramas; finally, when used to describe the mind and body of the individual the metaphor describes the play of excessive emotions.

THE SOCIAL ‘BACKSTAGE’ OF THE TROISIèME DESSOUS AND COULISSES

Just as the metaphor of the front of the theatre suggests the light of the stage and an action played out in full view, the metaphor of its wings and backstage suggests obscurity, the manipulation of machinery and the passageways which lead from light to darkness. There are relatively few examples of explicit use of theatrical terminology in these images and it is rather implicitly, depending largely on the reader's interpretation, that this group of metaphors functions in La Comédie humaine. In this respect the examination here, particularly in so far as it applies to the Rubempré cycle, can only expand certain points already made by Peter Brooks who has explored in some depth the broad metaphor of the theatre as a signifier of the false appearance and hidden machinations of society.⁹⁶

Brooks's own comments on Illusions perdues can be used to summarise his analysis of the theatrical metaphor of the whole of the Rubempré cycle. In turn these points may also be applied to the total theatrical metaphor of La Comédie humaine:

The theatre is the fascination, light, erotic lure of the scene; and also the wings, the world of backstage, which is both disenchanting and more profoundly fascinating […]. In its double aspect, the theatre seems to offer the possiblity of both representation and machination, of play on the great stage and manipulation of the roles represented from the wings.⁹⁷

As Brooks notes, the notions of stage and backstage, illusion and disillusionment, appearance and machination apply not only in the literal theatre where much of the action of Illusions perdues takes place, but to the whole of life represented by the novel, for even in the provinces events are manipulated from the backstage by the Cointet brothers. The metaphor can be applied to all the novels of La Comédie humaine in which Balzac's concepts of plot and semi-omniscient narration are based on the notion of a social reality that is only appearance and where more sinister truths lurk behind the scenery. Balzac's ‘dramatisation’ of his text consists in communicating the truths lurking below the surface realities, in the wings and the backstage from where actions are manipulated.

Frequently the stage and backstage are seen to converge so that it becomes impossible for characters to distinguish between the two, to know who is ‘in role’ and who is not. Like the masked ball which opens Splendeurs et misères, Paris is a landscape of swirling travesties and false appearances behind which lie the real causes of events, but which can only be penetrated by rare characters such as Jacques Collin. It is only at the ball, disguised in a mask and cloak, that Collin can appear on the social stage, for his criminal status ordinarily confines him to the backstage whence he directs and manipulates. The masked ball, appropriately situated in the milieu of the Opéra, is theatrical both in the spectacle which it offers and in the function of exposition which it performs in the narrative. It is described as the occasion on which ‘les différents cercles dont se compose la société parisienne se retrouvent, se reconnaissent et s'observent’,⁹⁸ and foreshadows symbolically the interaction of different social groups that will take place in the subsequent narrative. It also suggests from the outset the play of masks and falsehoods, and interpenetration of stage and backstage which will characterise almost every encounter between the novel's characters.

Theatrical metaphor is implicit in this opening scene in which the characters at the ball seek to discover the identities, truths and intrigues which lie behind the various masks. The uncovering of hidden identity becomes the central preoccupation of the plot, as false appearances increasingly become manipulated from the hidden backstage of society by Jacques Collin. Only towards the end of the novel does Balzac concretise this image of hidden machination through an explicit theatrical metaphor which he explains to his reader. The different levels of society are likened to a theatre in which the criminal class is described as:

[C]e monde souterrain qui, depuis l'origine des empires à capitale, s'agite dans les caves, dans les sentines, dans le troisième dessous des sociétés, pour emprunter à l'art dramatique une expression vive et saisissante. […] Le Troisième Dessous est la dernière cave pratiquée sous les planches de l'Opéra, pour en recéler les machines, les machinistes, la rampe, les apparitions, les diables bleus que vomit l'enfer, etc.⁹⁹

The reader is constantly invited in Balzac's theatrical metaphors to look for greater signification beyond and behind the representation. Here this is achieved by Balzac's conscious explanation of his image. The area beneath the theatre stage is not only an image of depth, and darkness denoting the lowest social level, that of the criminal class, but is also an image of the power of that class to manipulate what takes place on the front of the stage, in the visible social realm. The wider implication of the image is that the true causes of events are always to be found in the ‘backstage’ of society. This manipulation from the backstage is only possible because the troisième dessous is not an underworld which is restrained behind the façade of society, but rather is connected to that society by passageways and by the wings, and possesses the machinery to control the visible environment from behind and beneath.

In an extension of the metaphor, which is left to the reader's interpretation, Lucien's apartment and Vautrin's garret are also part of the backstage of the social theatre. Vautrin's garret is the troisième dessous from which he directs events and Lucien's rooms are the wings in which he waits to make his entrances into the gaze of the outside world. Through the theatrical metaphor which pervades the whole of Splendeurs et misères, the model of life becomes double-tiered, so that acts on the surface of society are explainable only in terms of what is going on behind and beneath, in the bagne, in Vautrin's garret and in Lucien's rooms. This point has already been made by Brooks who notes that, ‘what is represented on the public social stage is only a figuration of what lies behind, in the domain of true power and significance’.¹⁰⁰

Brooks has not noted, however, that the explicit image of the troisième dessous occurs in two other novels of La Comédie humaine. In La Cousine Bette (1846) the image is clearly linked to the definition given in the final part of Splendeurs et misères, which was published for the first time in the same year. In what appears to be a conscious exploitation of the same image, Balzac describes how the sister of Jacques Collin is brought up from the underworld by the scheming of the novel's conspirators:

Il [Victorin] reconduisit cette horrible inconnue, évoquée des antres de l'espionnage, comme du troisième dessous de l'Opéra se dresse un monstre au coup de baguette d'une fée dans un ballet-féerie.¹⁰¹

The appearance of Jacqueline Collin may seem merely accidental to those characters of the novel who are taken in by the illusion, but the image of the troisième dessous clearly signifies to the reader that Jacqueline belongs to the criminal underworld and that her sudden appearance has been secretly engineered. The image also occurs in Sarrasine (1830), where the mysterious old man ‘semblait être sorti de dessous terre, poussé par quelque mécanisme de théâtre’.¹⁰² The use of the image here differs somewhat from the later instances in La Cousine Bette and Splendeurs et misères since it contains only a sense of mystery, illusion and the paranormal, rather than the machinations of the social underworld. It seems that the fullest implications of the image only occurred to Balzac towards the end of his career, in those novels where the play of social falsehood and backstage manipulation and corruption is the central concern of the plot.

The troisième dessous and backstage areas of the actual theatre, as Lucien finds on his first visit to the Panorama-Dramatique, are connected to the front of the stage by the passageways and wings and this is the same in Balzac's imagery. The actual theatre represented in La Comédie humaine has its loges, baignoires, parterre, coulisses and troisième dessous, and directly mirrors Balzac's representation of Restoration society at large, which has its hierarchy of high-society,¹⁰³ bourgeoisie, students, artists and underworld. In both hierarchies the apparently distinct parts are connected by a labyrinthine series of dark, hidden passageways. In the opening pages of Ferragus Balzac tells at length of the different types of interconnecting streets which make up Paris,¹⁰⁴ of the ‘rues de mauvaise compagnie où vous ne voudriez pas demeurer, et des rues où vous placeriez volontiers votre séjour’;¹⁰⁵ and the beginning of Splendeurs et misères, tells how the maze of dark streets surrounding Esther's home connects with and winds around the fashionable boulevards:

Ces rues étroites, sombres et boueuses, où s'exercent des industries peu soigneuses de leurs dehors, prennent à la nuit une physionomie mystérieuse et pleine de contrastes. En venant des endroits lumineux de la rue Saint-Honoré, de la rue Neuve-des-Petits-Champs et de la rue de Richelieu, où se presse une foule incessante, où reluisent les chefs-d'œuvre de l'Industrie, de la Mode et des Arts, tout homme à qui le Paris du soir est inconnu serait saisi d'une terreur triste en tombant dans le lacis de petites rues qui cercle cette lueur reflétée jusque sur le ciel. Une ombre épaisse succède à des torrents de gaz. De loin en loin, un pâle réverbère jette sa lueur incertaine et fumeuse qui n'éclaire plus certaines impasses noires.¹⁰⁶

If the brightly lit social world of the fashionable boulevards is society's stage, then the dark, interconnecting passageways hidden behind can be seen as its coulisses. Although Peter Brooks has not noted this relationship between the streets and the coulisses he has said that, ‘the streets and walls of Paris, under pressure of the narrator's insistence, become the elements of a Dantesque vision, leading the reader into infernal circles’.¹⁰⁷ In this sense the physical context of the novel's setting relates to the moral context of its theme, for all levels of society are connected by the obscure backstage of society, which is where the true causes of events are shown to lie. Thus throughout La Comédie humaine, the same motivating forces can be seen at work in the coulisses of society, as operate in the coulisses of the theatre itself: the imperatives of sex, money and personal ambition, and the secret machinations of certain groups. This mirroring function of the theatrical metaphor is all the more effective because it is brought into relief by the exposure of the corrupt and materialistic forces governing the actual theatre world, which, as has been shown in the two previous chapters, has its basis in historical reality. The actual backstage of the theatre reveals not only hidden machinery, but groups such as the claque and the journalists and the protectors who engineer success. Balzac exposes the hidden forces governing the actual theatre world and at the same time uses that exposure as an image with which to describe society at large. In this way the imagery is underpinned by historical reality. As a result the reader is more readily able to accept the existence of similar, hidden groups which Balzac shows to be operative in the world at large.

Any reader of Balzac, as Peter Brooks has noted,¹⁰⁸ is struck by the prevalence of secret societies and occult powers. There are organizations such as the Confrérie de la Consolation, Les Grands Fanandels, the Dévorants, the Chevaliers de la Désœuvrance, and looser organizations of plotters, such as the bankers in César Birotteau, the Cointet brothers in Illusions perdues, the secret police in Splendeurs et misères. The sphere of activity of these groups is behind the visible stage of society, yet their actions which take place in the wings and backstage decisively govern the play of the actors in the world at large. Life is controlled, manipulated, given its true explanation and significance from behind, most often in a secret and conspiratorial realm.

In order to succeed in the society represented in La Comédie humaine, the individual must act on the social stage in full awareness of these powers which lie behind the scenes, and must be able to move with ease between the two spheres. Crevel in La Cousine Bette (1846), when discovered in Valérie's room by Marneffe ‘aurait voulu descendre dans la cave par une trappe, comme cela se fait au théâtre’,¹⁰⁹ but he is already in the coulisses of vice, plotting revenge against Hulot with Valérie, and his daily manoeuvres from his bourgeois home and business to the rue du Dauphin where he has his secret rendezvous with Valérie, are facilitated by just such a metaphorical social trappe. Crevel, like all the bourgeois businessmen of La Comédie humaine who have mistresses, has mastered the manœuvre between realms, between the front and backstage of society.

In La Femme de trente ans (1829-1834), the reader is told that suffering makes the individual aware of this distinction between the front and backstage of society and that once he has experienced this, ‘il rentre dans le monde pour mentir au monde, pour y jouer un rôle; il connaît dès lors la coulisse où l'on se retire pour calculer, pleurer, plaisanter’.¹¹⁰ The social education of the individual lies in the experience of this distinction, and his social success lies in his ability to apply that education and to move freely and at will between the two spheres. While for the reader the experience of the backstage reveals the novel's greater signification, for the characters it constitutes the loss of all their illusions about life, as Balzac explains through the duchesse de Carigliano:

Nous autres femmes, nous devons admirer les hommes de génie, en jouir comme d'un spectacle, mais vivre avec eux! jamais. Fi donc! c'est vouloir prendre plaisir à regarder les machines de l'Opéra au lieu de rester dans une loge, à y savourer ses brillantes illusions.¹¹¹

The experience of the social backstage results in the loss of illusions of both Eugène de Rastignac and Lucien de Rubempré. In Le Père Goriot (1834-35), there is no explicit use of the metaphor of the dessous, trappe or coulisses of the theatre, but Eugène's journeys from the social stage of the faubourg St Germain to the ‘dessous’ of the Pension Vauquer take him through the muddy streets which can be seen as the coulisses and passageways of the Parisian social theatre. The light, open spaces, in which he moves in full view of society, are starkly contrasted with the dark obscurity of the Pension Vauquer and the stairways and entrances where Eugène begins to uncover the mysterious causes of events. Eugène's first social call takes him on to the centre stage of the de Restaud household where he stumbles by accident into a dark passageway. It is here, in the wings, that he sees Goriot leaving the house and makes his first discovery of what lies behind Goriot's drama. This awareness later increases as Eugène spies on Goriot and Vautrin from the dark hallways of the Pension Vauquer. Eugène's indiscretion in the de Restaud household about what he has learned from the backstage causes him to be banished back there and for his metaphorical passageway to be blocked. His success, however, lies in his ability to overcome this setback and learn to move between the two areas of stage and backstage and to assimilate the principles of distinction.

While Eugène is able to grasp the essential nature of what goes on in the backstage of society, Lucien is not. Lucien is not able sufficiently to distinguish between the two areas and allows himself repeatedly to be pushed back behind the curtain into the coulisses. In Illusions perdues this is exemplified by the scene in which he is forced by Bérénice to hide behind the curtain when Camusot arrives suddenly to visit Coralie.¹¹² The metaphorical importance of this scene has not so far been noted by critics, yet it is vital to the reader's understanding of Lucien's social position. Lucien will remain behind the curtain in the metaphorical backstage for as long as he lacks the wealth to compete for centre stage on equal terms, for it is wealth more than talent or beauty which gains the individual his place in the social spotlight. Only by joining himself to Jacques Collin, in the troisième dessous of society, can Lucien gain wealth and attain any significant social status, but again, unlike Rastignac (who moves increasingly infrequently in the social wings and whose journeys between metaphorical stage and backstage become increasingly easy until the point where he is just behind the scenery waiting to emerge at the whim of Mme de Beauséant or Delphine de Nucingen), Lucien in Splendeurs et misères is in the lowest depths of the social theatre, and his movements between the two spheres become so encumbered by the Parisian labyrinth that he can no longer make the journeys to and fro. Exhausted by the contrasts between stage and backstage, between a visible world which is based on appearance and an invisible world which is based on machination, Lucien can see no way out from his prison cell back into the social footlights and must kill himself. The problem for Lucien is that the ‘truth’ which lies behind the stage of society is even more hideous than the false appearance which conceals it.

The metaphor of stage and backstage in Illusions perdues is applied not only to life but to the literature which represents life. Lousteau explains this to Lucien in the course of the latter's initiation into the ways of Paris:

La vie littéraire a ses coulisses. Les succès surpris ou mérités, voilà ce qu'applaudit le parterre; les moyens, toujours hideux, les comparses enluminés, les claqueurs et les garçons de service, voilà ce que recèlent les coulisses. Vous êtes encore au parterre. Il en est temps, abdiquez avant de mettre un pied sur la première marche du trône que se disputent tant d'ambitions, et ne vous déshonorez pas comme je le fais pour vivre.¹¹³

As this image makes clear, the literary coulisses do not simply denote the period of waiting for success, and of preparation; they denote the machinations and manipulations necessary to bring that success about. The machines, fire-men, backstage equipment and old scenery, which Lucien has seen in operation on his first visit to the Panorama-Dramatique,¹¹⁴ in this way become a metaphor for the commercial aspects of the literary process itself and which literally manufacture success. The image is quoted directly by Félix Davin in his preface to the second edition of Les Comédiens sans le savoir in 1847 (published on this occasion as Un provincial à Paris), as an example of how Balzac's narrative is pervaded by his own ‘combats’ and ‘luttes’ with the ‘misérables réalités de la vie’, in order to establish his literary reputation. Davin's image is all the more effective because the literary coulisses are exposed in detail in the subsequent narrative.

The theatrical metaphor of stage and backstage is central to the full understanding of La Comédie humaine and of its complex system of super-structure and sub-structure, signifier and signified, false appearance and hidden cause. Through the theatrical metaphor Balzac not only represents the comédie of the social code, and the interplay of individual destinies on the social stage, but also aims at uncovering the structures of society to reveal what lies behind and beneath. The surface of life represented in La Comédie humaine can only be explained through the examination of what takes place in its backstage area.

THE CHARACTER AS AN ACTOR

While the events of life are described as dramas, the role-plays of society as comedies and the world as a theatre with its stage and backstage, the characters who move within this world are frequently described as actors, players, extras, directors, and authors. … The world represented by La Comédie humaine is one in which characters are both actors and spectators simultaneously, some conscious of their roles and others less so. On the whole, only the narrator, reader and rare, semi-omniscient characters such as Vautrin and Gobseck know who is playing which role at any given moment. The roles are those of extras and puppets who are caught up in the novel's drama, actors, and particularly actresses, who play the social comedy, and more able actors who are simultaneously directors controlling the actions of others.

Along with other uses of theatrical imagery, the explicit metaphor of the character as an actor spans the whole of La Comédie humaine. The most frequent examples are to be found in Les Chouans (1828-29),¹¹⁵Modeste Mignon (1844),¹¹⁶ and Splendeurs et misères (1838-1847).¹¹⁷ In each case the metaphor underpins the central themes of the novel, so that in Les Chouans the characters are actors caught up in a historical drama, in Modeste Mignon they are players who assume their roles in the social comedy, and in Splendeurs et misères they are the masked villains of a sinister melodrama. Balzac's use of the metaphor in Les Chouans relates to his conception of this novel as a series of dramatic events in which his characters are carried along. The references are casual and often descriptive of large groups playing out certain actions or anticipating the actions to come. The metaphor above all clarifies where the characters stand in relation to one another. From the outset the minor characters are ‘les muets acteurs de cette scène, semblable à mille autres qui rendirent cette guerre la plus dramatique de toutes’,¹¹⁸ and the action is centred around Montauran who is the ‘acteur principal […] vu par tous, quoique absent’,¹¹⁹ who has willingly accepted ‘un rôle dans cette tragédie’.¹²⁰ Later, the assembled opposing sides are again referred to as ‘les acteurs de cette scène’,¹²¹ and in the course of the novel's tragic dénouement Marie is ‘comme un acteur sublime’,¹²² and Montauran acts ‘à la manière de grands acteurs’.¹²³ These images of his fictional characters as actors are consistent with Balzac's insistence that the events of Les Chouans constitute a drama in both the popular and more strictly theatrical sense of the term.¹²⁴

Occasional metaphorical references to characters as actors caught up in the large-scale dramas of historical events can be seen throughout La Comédie humaine, up to the final part of Splendeurs et misères (1847), where Corentin is referred to as ‘ce grand acteur du drame historique de notre temps’.¹²⁵ In other works, which again span much of Balzac's career, the image of the character as an actor is used to denote specific gestures which are described by comparison to the movements and habits of actors. For example,¹²⁶ in Une fille d'Eve (1838-39), Nathan begins to ‘écouter comme ces acteurs qui regardent la salle au lieu d'être en scène’;¹²⁷ in La Cousine Bette (1846), Crevel ‘attendait pendant un moment, comme un acteur qui marque un temps’;¹²⁸ and in Ursule Mirouèt (1840-41), the curé ‘se caressait le menton par ce geste commun aux valets de théâtre’.¹²⁹ The movements of the stage actor provide Balzac with a gestural code through which he can more graphically describe the actions of his own characters.

Throughout La Comédie humaine, however, it is possible to see that Balzac's use of theatrical imagery in describing his characters is more than an expression of their relative positions in the action, as ‘acteurs muets’,¹³⁰ and ‘acteur principal’,¹³¹ for example, and of the gestures which accompany their actions, but is an integral element of the expression of his world view. In Les Chouans there is only one such instance, which occurs towards the end of the novel, and foretells the way in which the metaphor of the actor will be developed from now on in La Comédie humaine. The image here is of the abbé Gudin, who, in his address to his congregation, has ‘à la manière des grands acteurs, manié tout son public comme un seul homme, en parlant aux intérêts et aux passions’.¹³² In the drama of history, an individual such as Gudin has little power to control the enormity of the events which are overtaking the Breton peasants, but his particular role is subject to his own power of interpretation and enables him to influence the reactions of the peasants. This distinction between characters who are able to exercise some control over others, and characters who are merely puppets and dupes, becomes central to the interaction of Balzac's characters in later novels and is frequently expressed through images of their relative acting and directing capacities.

The social comedy in La Comédie humaine, as has been noted, is primarily one in which characters knowingly and deliberately adopt roles and play out intrigues in which other characters are merely puppets or dupes. Vautrin points this out in Le Père Goriot to Eugène:

Mon petit, quand on ne veut pas être dupe des marionnettes, il faut entrer tout à fait dans la baraque, et ne pas se contenter de regarder par les trous de la tapisserie.¹³³

The metaphorical terms used to describe the characters engaged in this comédie include acteur, comédien, charlatan, valet de comédie, and frequent reference is made to the metaphorical masks which they wear. It is remarkable how often these terms are used in the feminine form of actrice and comédienne, conveying a sense of what Balzac perhaps sees as a natural female acting capacity, or perhaps a female imperative to subscribe to the rules of the social comedy.

The characters who engage in the social comedy are at least semi-omniscient and are spectators as well as actors, for it is only in relation to the roles played by others and in awareness of the social code that they are able to judge their own performance. Valérie Marneffe in La Cousine Bette, always alternating between her positions as wife and mistress, acts in full awareness of her roles: ‘Mme Marneffe, se sachant étudiée, se comporta comme une actrice applaudie’,¹³⁴ and plays a scene of the self-sacrificing, virtuous woman with such credibility that it reduces Crevel to tears, as she quickly shifts from actress to spectator to mock both the role and Crevel's gullibility. Valérie's power lies in her semi-omniscience and her ability to distinguish between her different roles without ever losing sight of her material aims.

Some of Balzac's less well-known female characters are equally remarkable for their acting capacities, for example Honorine is a ‘comédienne de bonne foi’, who is capable of giving ‘regards qui feraient la gloire d'une actrice’,¹³⁵ and later confesses ‘J'ai bien joué mon rôle de femme: j'ai trompé mon mari’,¹³⁶ again like Valérie she is fully aware of the role she is playing. Similarly, the duchesse de Carigliano hides her true feelings with calm words ‘dont la richesse d'intonation et l'accent inimitable eussent fait envie à la plus célèbre actrice de ce temps’.¹³⁷ Honorine and the duchesse de Carigliano act out a role which is predetermined by their sex and status, and in which the gestures, speech, and facial expressions are determined by social convention. In this sense the image of women as actresses can be applied to all of the women in La Comédie humaine who move in the salons, drawing-rooms, ball-rooms and theatres of Parisian society, for on the social stage along with Mmes d'Espard, de Langeais, de Beauséant, de Restaud and de Nucingen, they play out the roles which they have been born and married into, aware that a critical public is watching their every move. Permanent respite from the gaze of society is achieved by total withdrawal from the social stage, as in the case of the duchesse de Langeais and Mme de Beauséant, who, tired of wearing metaphorical masks, withdraw to provincial convents.¹³⁸

The wearing of the social mask is exemplified at an early stage in Balzac's work in the figure of the estranged wife of Chabert in Le Colonel Chabert (1832). The demands of Mme Ferraud's roles as wife and mother and her own material interests cause her to display her acting talents:

Il fallait être comédienne pour jeter tant d'éloquence, tant de sentiments dans un mot. […] Pour se trouver un moment à l'aise elle monta chez elle, s'assit à son secrétaire, déposa le masque de tranquillité qu'elle conservait devant le comte Chabert, comme une actrice qui, rentrant fatiguée dans sa loge après un cinquième acte pénible, tombe demi-morte et laisse dans la salle une image d'elle-même à laquelle elle ne ressemble plus.¹³⁹

For Mme Ferraud, as for the duchesse de Langeais and Mme de Beauséant, the wearing of the social mask is as morally and physically exhausting as the parts played in the theatres of Paris by Balzac's fictional actresses Coralie and Florine.¹⁴⁰ As with other uses of theatrical imagery, the metaphor gains its fullest signification when considered in relation to the historicity of Balzac's portrayal of the theatrical world in La Comédie humaine as a whole.

The most frequent examples of Balzac's characters metaphorically defined as players of the social comedy can be found in Béatrix (1838-1845), and in Modeste Mignon (1844), in which novels the entire plot depends on intrigue and role play. Béatrix and Modeste, however, are not just actresses playing out the roles governed by their sex and status, but are also in some sense directors of the drama in which other characters act out their given roles. The intrigue of Modeste Mignon centres on Modeste's self-appointed ‘rôle de la jeune première’,¹⁴¹ and the mounting of a sub-plot in which there are to be ‘deux personnages pour un rôle’.¹⁴² Each of the characters in the subplot deploys ‘le talent d'un grand acteur’,¹⁴³ and Modeste's undoing is that while she believes she is playing a self-appointed role, that role is ultimately written by another hand.

Béatrix's undoing similarly results from a series of events in which she poses as an actress but which escapes her control. Béatrix's problem is that her rival, Camille Maupin, is a more accomplished, and indeed actual, dramatist who engineers the drama between herself and the other characters much as if she were literally creating a piece of theatre. Béatrix becomes aware of this in the second part of the novel where on the arrival of Conti, she declares to Camille, ‘je reconnais là votre infernal talent d'auteur: la vengeance est complète, et le dénouement est parfait’.¹⁴⁴ The controlling position is then usurped by Conti who creates a scenario in which he plays ‘l'homme soupçonneux et jaloux’ and gives to Calyste ‘le rôle d'un amoureux contrarié’.¹⁴⁵ In accepting this role Calyste becomes not only an actor but also the dupe or puppet of Conti who is both actor and director in this phase of the intrigue. When Béatrix has fled with Conti, Camille refers to her rival as ‘une actrice de second ordre’,¹⁴⁶ because she had been unable to play her role convincingly to the last. In the rivalry between Camille and Béatrix the skill of Camille as a dramatist, proves far superior in directing events to the skill of Béatrix as an actress.

In Balzac's metaphorical theatre of life the actor may only avoid becoming a puppet if he is fully aware of the role that he is playing, has learned it to perfection and is able to control the reactions of his audience. It is primarily the lions of the Comédie humaine, such as de Marsay, de Trailles, du Tillet, and du Châtelet, in their roles as dandies, financiers and politicians, who have this capacity. The individual's ability to achieve this position, Balzac explains in Modeste Mignon, depends on his ability to satisfy a new audience:

Ce détail indique les dangers que court le héros d'un salon à sortir, comme Canalis, de sa sphère; il ressemble alors à l'acteur chéri d'un certain public, dont le talent se perd en quittant son cadre et abordant un théâtre superieur.¹⁴⁷

In La Comédie humaine the transition of the young man from provincial arriviste to Parisian dandy, can be interpreted as that of the actor who must learn to dominate a new public. It is this ability to convince their public which marks the distinction between Eugène de Rastignac and Lucien de Rubempré as actors on the Parisian stage. While Eugène is able to control the reactions of his public by adapting to the demands of Paris, Lucien is never able adequately to do this. Eugène is never explicitly referred to as an actor, and this is indicative both of the sincerity which remains with him until his final defiant cry to society in Le Père Goriot, and the fact that he does not submit to the directing influence of Vautrin. In an abstract sense, however, Eugène becomes an actor as soon as he gets engaged in the social code after his first visit to the de Restaud household, immediately equipping himself with the necessary costumes and gestures to play his role, and his actions become subject to a greater director than Vautrin, to the general economic determinism which governs Parisian society. Eugène's greatest moment of awareness comes when he sees the miserable death bed of Goriot ‘sous les diamants des deux sœurs’,¹⁴⁸ and from that moment he can be seen as an actor who can make the distinction between the superficial appearance and the underlying truth. Eugène's final defiant declaration in the novel is a demonstration of his ability to play in the Parisian drama with sufficient awareness of what lies behind and beneath.

Lucien, on the other hand, believes himself to be an actor but is little more than a puppet, who is not aware that his actions are always being directed from beyond the immediate scene. Even Lucien's success on the narrow, provincial stage of Angoulême is engineered in the first place by Mme de Bargeton and after his return from Paris by Cérizet. Peter Brooks notes:

Lucien experiences melodrama—the manichaestic extremes, the unbearable contrasts, the struggle of light and darkness, the accumulation of menace—without ever mastering it, without himself becoming the dramatist of experience.¹⁴⁹

Lucien is always the actor who follows the directions of others and is never able to take control and direct his own actions. He is described as ‘un homme à la fois prince et comédien’,¹⁵⁰ and ‘une femmelette qui aime à paraître’,¹⁵¹ but he is unable to distinguish his roles from his real self and continues acting in the coulisses of life, switching social and political allegiances, as he does in the coulisses of the Panorama-Dramatique. Lucien's inability to interpret and direct his own actions is a weakness which is quickly identified by Vautrin, who upon saving Lucien's life declares, ‘Je suis l'auteur, tu seras le drame’. Just as he has been the dupe of du Châtelet, his enemies in the press, and the Cointet brothers, Lucien is now to be the puppet of Vautrin. Unlike Eugène who plays out his chosen role according to the general rules prescribed by society, Lucien flouts society's laws, does not adhere to the social comedy, and without a director his posturings are futile. Vautrin points out to Lucien that had he hidden his relationship with Coralie, he would have been able to marry Mme de Bargeton and achieve social respect and success:

Les grands commettent presque autant de lâchetés que les misérables; mais ils les commettent dans l'ombre et font parade de leurs vertus. […] Vous avez eu publiquement pour maîtresse une actrice, vous avez vécu chez elle, avec elle; vous n'étiez nullement répréhensible, chacun vous trouvait l'un et l'autre parfaitement libres; mais vous rompiez en visière aux idées du monde et vous n'avez pas eu la considération que le monde accorde à ceux qui obéissent à ses lois. […] Dès lors vous ne serez plus coupable de faire tache sur les décorations de ce grand théâtre appelé le monde.¹⁵²

Lucien can only master the stage when he has been fully initiated into the social comedy and his every move is calculated and minutely directed by Vautrin.

Vautrin is the semi-omniscient director of all the subsequent dramas which take place in Splendeurs et misères. From the sphere of the underworld Vautrin functions both as actor and director. Vautrin appears on the social stage in his successive disguises, which are necessary for his transition from the troisième dessous to the light of the social stage. He is in no sense a puppet or even an actor fulfilling a role, rather he is one of the metaphorical actor/directors who, prompted by material interests and individual ambitions, write both their own roles and those of the characters around them. Vautrin only briefly puts himself at risk by abandoning his role:

Aussi Jacques Collin, en garde contre lui-même, avait-il jusqu'alors admirablement bien joué son rôle d'innocent et d'étranger, soit à la Force, soit à la Conciergerie. Mais abattu par la douleur, écrasé par sa double mort, car, dans cette fatale nuit, il était mort deux fois, il redevint Jacques Collin. Le surveillant fut stupéfait de n'avoir pas à dire à ce prêtre espagnol par où l'on allait au préau. Cet acteur si parfait oublia son rôle, il descendit la vis de la tour Bonbec en habitué de la Conciergerie.¹⁵³

Like Mme de Beauséant and the duchesse de Langeais, who in the face of suffering abandon their social roles, Vautrin's submission to personal grief and to the irreversible, indomitable fact of Lucien's death, lies in the temporary abandoning of his roles.

The power to direct the drama of life in any way is given only to some in La Comédie humaine, to the lions and to the secret societies, while the rest remain at best conscious actors performing according to the social rules and at worst unwitting dupes or puppets. Even those who seem to hold the strings are driven by a superior force, however, for the drama represented in La Comédie humaine is directed by the new gods of this era, by money, passion and personal ambition. The lives and actions of all the characters of La Comédie humaine who are explicitly referred to as actors, or who in the context of the overall theatrical metaphor can be interpreted as actors, are governed or affected by the forces of material determinism and individual interests.

It is possible to see from these examples that the metaphor of the character as an actor serves three main narrative purposes throughout La Comédie humaine. Firstly, the image of the actor is used to indicate the relative importance of the characters in the action and also to describe their gestures and expressions. Secondly, the image describes the characters as players of the social comedy who adopt the roles prescribed by social convention, and as well as actors may also be puppets or directors. Finally, the metaphor becomes an expression for the overall moral and ideological concerns of La Comédie humaine, since all characters are in some sense actors who portray false appearances and whose movements and speeches are directed not only by social conventions but by economic determinism and individual interests.

THE DRAMA OF PRIVATE AND DOMESTIC LIFE

In La Comédie humaine, while the term comédie is reserved for the play of masks and roles which Balzac perceives to be prevalent in both Paris and the provinces, the term drame usually indicates the process by which the mask and the surface appearance are penetrated to reveal the realities or further transgressions which lie beneath. The drame is the most prolific theatrical metaphor of La Comédie humaine, numbering 64 examples in the appendix to this chapter and constituting almost 27٪ of the total identified.¹⁵⁴ These examples include use of the term both in its secondary, popular sense to denote situations or sequences of events which are highly emotional, tragic, or turbulent, and in its primary, more strictly theatrical sense, as a work to be performed by actors on stage.¹⁵⁵ In its contemporary theatrical sense the term drame denotes the highly emotional and spectacular representations of the Romantic drama and may be distinguished from its original definition by Diderot in the previous century as a serious and, above all, realistic dramatic genre which was neither tragedy nor comedy.¹⁵⁶

In many instances, Balzac appears to use the metaphor of the drame in its merely popular, secondary sense which is connected to the contemporary theatre only by association. There is, for example the ‘drame de la Révolution’¹⁵⁷ referred to in Les Chouans, the ‘drame commercial’¹⁵⁸ of César Birotteau, and the ‘drame terrible d'une instruction criminelle’ of Splendeurs et misères.¹⁵⁹ Of course, it is easy to equate Balzac's use of the drame as a metaphor in these instances, and particularly in Splendeurs et misères, with an impulse towards the contemporary melodrama which was reliant on the kind of turbulent and sensational events featured in the plots of these novels.

In certain other, more remarkable instances, Balzac's use of the metaphor of the drame stands in a much stricter relationship to the theatre. In these cases the drame in its contemporary stage sense functions as a contrast with Balzac's writing through which he defines how he believed the theatre should be. Critics have not remarked upon this phenomenon in La Comédie humaine, and indeed Balzac's own failure in the theatre is partly attributed¹⁶⁰ to the supposed fact that he had no clearly defined dramaturgy to offer other than the vague notion of the need to ‘faire vrai’. … It is true that, unlike Hugo, Balzac at no stage explained his dramatic theory in any kind of separate treatise, but it is not true that this is because he had no theory. It has perhaps been the mistake of some critics of Balzac's theatre to study his dramatic works in isolation from his novels, for Balzac's dramaturgy is to be found in La Comédie humaine in his usage and explanations of the metaphor of the drame, and particularly in Le Père Goriot and Eugénie Grandet.

The opening pages of Le Père Goriot contain perhaps the best known example of Balzac's metaphorical use of the term drame with which to define his novel:

Néanmoins, en 1819, époque à laquelle ce drame commence, il s'y trouvait une pauvre jeune fille. En quelque discrédit que soit tombé le mot drame par la manière abusive et tortionnaire dont il a été prodigué dans ces temps de douloureuse littérature, il est nécessaire de l'employer ici: non que cette histoire soit dramatique dans le sens vrai du mot; mais, l'œuvre accomplie, peut-être aura-t-on versé quelques larmes intra muros et extra.¹⁶¹

It is clear from Balzac's reference to ‘douloureuse littérature’ that he understands the ‘sens vrai du mot’ of the drame here in its literary and therefore theatrical sense rather than in a merely popular sense. For Balzac, according to these opening statements, the events of his novel do not constitute the type of highly emotional drama which could be found on the contemporary stage, but he claims that they may nevertheless produce a kind of theatrical pathos. Balzac's own sense of drama here is contrasted with the contemporary stage drama (which is seen to devalue the term drame), and is equated with truth which he believed to be lacking from the theatre of his day: ‘Ah! sachez-le: ce drame n'est ni une fiction, ni un roman. All is true.’¹⁶²

On first sight it seems as though Balzac might merely be making the point through metaphor that life itself is more dramatic in a popular sense than anything which is represented on the literal theatre stage. This is seen particularly in the description of the boarders, who, as part of this drama of real life, are themselves living dramas:

Ces pensionnaires faisaient pressentir des drames accomplis ou en action; non pas de ces drames joués à la lueur des rampes, entre des toiles peintes, mais des drames vivants et muets, des drames glacés qui remuaient chaudement le cœur, des drames continus.¹⁶³

Again, Balzac emphasises the distinction between his own definition of drama and the bright lights and spectacle of the current stage tradition. The most significant aspect of this image is that the boarders are described not as dramas which are highly visible and played out on the stage of society, but as silent and hidden dramas. It is the drama of the hidden, private and domestic realm which most interests Balzac. By insisting that the characters contain their dramas within them, Balzac strives to awaken interest and curiosity in the banality of the boarding house and in mean characters at the bottom of the social scale.¹⁶⁴ Of course, Vautrin, Goriot and Rastignac are singled out for amplification, but the other boarders also remain interesting because they too have their hidden dramas which Balzac seeks to uncover.

Balzac's declared intention in these opening metaphors is of course belied by the subsequent events of the novel, which turn out to be highly emotional and melodramatic. Balzac is more successful in carrying out his declared intention in Eugénie Grandet, where he resists the impulse towards melodrama. Here too Balzac borrows the vocabulary of the theatre to analyse and mark the stages of his creative process and to justify these to the reader, and it is in contrast to the prevailing form of the drama that he justifies to the reader the possibly disappointing ending of Eugénie Grandet:

Ce dénouement trompe nécessairement la curiosité. Peut-être en est-il ainsi de tous les dénouements vrais. Les tragédies, les drames, pour parler le langage de ce temps, sont rares dans la nature. […] Ici, nulle invention.¹⁶⁵

Balzac is insistent here upon the truth of the outcome of his novel which stands in opposition to the contemporary stage drama, which he claims does not represent reality.¹⁶⁶ Certainly, Eugénie's ultimate resignation to the slow passage of the remainder of her provincial life is more poignant and more credible than the expedient and more melodramatic endings of other of Balzac's novels which are brought about by sudden deaths and unexpected revelations.¹⁶⁷ Nevertheless, in his preface to this novel, Balzac does refer metaphorically to the events which are to unfold as a drame, but here he seems to be hinting not at the stage drama as understood in ‘le langage de ce temps’, which he refers to in the epilogue, but rather at something distinct from that:

Si tout arrive à Paris, tout passe en province: là ni relief, ni saillie; mais là, des drames dans le silence; là, des mystères habilement dissimulés; là des dénouements dans un seul mot; là, d'énormes valeurs prêtées par le calcul et l'analyse aux actions les plus indifférentes.¹⁶⁸

What Balzac appears to be formulating here, and in the opening of Le Père Goriot, is a notion of renewal of the drame bourgeois which had been defined and advocated in the previous century by Diderot.

Balzac continues in his preface to Eugénie Grandet with metaphors borrowed from painting, speaking of ‘touches de pinceau’, ‘tableaux’ and ‘clair-obscur’. This strengthens rather than detracts from the impression that through metaphor Balzac is expressing a dramaturgy after the manner of Diderot, for in his Entretiens sur Le Fils naturel Diderot had drawn close analogy between his vision of the drame bourgeois and the Flemish school of painting which depicted detailed interiors with dramatic use of light.¹⁶⁹ Certainly Balzac's intention to write a type of realistic, almost anti-dramatic drame in Eugénie Grandet, is carried out in the text of the novel which progresses by a series of interior scenes largely devoid of coups de théâtre.

That Balzac intends his metaphorical use of the drame to be understood in a specifically theatrical context, rather than as merely denoting a series of turbulent events, can be seen in a passage from Facino Cane (1836). Here Balzac intervenes in the narrative to tell of the plethora of dramas which he claims can be perceived beneath the surface of society:

Vous ne sauriez imaginer combien d'aventures perdues, combien de drames oubliés dans cette ville de douleur […] il faut descendre trop bas pour trouver ces admirables scènes ou tragiques ou comiques, chefs-d'œuvre enfantés par le hasard.¹⁷⁰

Balzac's references to scènes and chefs-d'œuvre ground his metaphor in the theatre rather than in merely popular terminology. Again in Le Cousin Pons (1846-47), Balzac emphasises by use of complementary theatrical vocabulary that the ‘drame de cette vie obscure’¹⁷¹ is not merely a metaphor for a series of turbulent events:

Ici commence le drame, ou, si vous voulez, la comédie terrible de la mort d'un célibataire livré par la force des choses à la rapacité des natures cupides qui se groupent à son lit, et qui, dans ce cas, eurent pour auxiliaires la passion la plus vive, celle d'un tableaumane, l'avidité du sieur Fraisier, qui, vu dans sa caverne, va vous faire frémir, et la soif d'un Auvergnat capable de tout, même d'un crime, pour se faire un capital. Cette comédie, à laquelle cette partie du récit sert en quelque sorte d'avant-scène, a d'ailleurs pour acteurs tous les personnages qui jusqu'à présent ont occupé la scène.¹⁷²

The juxtaposition and substitution of comédie and drame in particular call to mind Diderot's definition of the drame as a form which would be unhampered by restrictive, established definitions of genre. This, combined with words which might be seen to evoke theatrical pathos, such as terrible, frémir, passion, and more specific theatrical terms such as avant-scène and acteurs, seems to indicate that Balzac sees this private drama in relation to the actual theatre stage.

The point is noted by Félix Davin who remarks in his introduction to the Etudes philosophiques (1834), that it is above all the dramas of private and hidden passion which interest Balzac:

Il est allé les chercher [ces passions et ces types] dans la famille, autour du foyer; et fouillant sous ces enveloppes en apparence si uniformes et si calmes, il en a exhumé tout à coup, des caractères tellement multiples et naturels en même temps, que tout le monde s'est demandé comment des choses aussi familières, aussi vraies, étaient restées si longtemps inconnues.¹⁷³

Part of Balzac's gift as a novelist, and as the historien des mœurs is that, as the Davin text says, he is able to wrest the interesting and the dramatic from within the familiar and the real. Just as Diderot had advocated almost a century earlier, Balzac is penetrating the private sphere to show a drama enacted by the people who actually lived it, and through close alignment with the real strives to make his audience forget that it is witnessing a fiction and believe that it is party to real events.¹⁷⁴

Balzac's purpose in describing hidden events and private circumstances as dramas is of course consistent with his overall process of uncovering what lies beneath social norms and apparently calm exteriors. The oxymoron of the silent drama is the means by which he makes the intangible tangible and brings in to the public arena conflicts which are not normally visible. Throughout La Comédie humaine Balzac uncovers the private, inner dramas which are played out both within the small theatre of the family and, more secretly still, within the heart of the individual. There is the ‘[…] drame se jouant dans l'âme’¹⁷⁵ of Colonel Chabert whose private tragedy is played out in the sombre law offices of Derville, where such scenes are described as the ‘drames de la Morgue’;¹⁷⁶ in Mémoires de deux jeunes mariées love is described by Louise to Renée as a tragedy or a ‘drame joué au fond des cœurs’;¹⁷⁷ in Honorine Octave describes his unhappy state as ‘le drame de mon âme’;¹⁷⁸ and the love intrigue of Béatrix is described as a ‘drame diabolique’ and as a ‘drame tragique’ which unfolds ‘dans toute son étendue au fond des cœurs’.¹⁷⁹ Similarly, the central love interest of La Muse du département is described as ‘une de ces longues et monotones tragédies conjugales qui demeureraient éternellement inconnues’. ‘Inconnues’ that is, until Balzac chooses to expose them by penetrating the private domain, metaphorically to ‘stage’ those hidden dramas for his public.

In all of these examples, and there are many more,¹⁸⁰ love is the metaphorical drama which is played out silently in the souls of the characters. The notion that the drama is silent or stifled makes the violently contrasting emotions and extreme suffering engendered by that love all the more intense. The drame thus attains a claustrophobic pressure when contained within the heart of the individual. The tragedy of Eugénie Grandet, of Octave and of Chabert is that this drama of love remains hidden within them forever, known only to themselves, the narrator and the reader. Conversely the events of the second part of Béatrix, which is entitled Le Drame, come about because the hidden drama must be known, and the reader is prepared for this by the mounting tension of contrasts which must escape beyond the innermost confines of each individual. The drama announced by the title is borne out by the explosion of real feeling which the protagonists can no longer contain beneath a veneer of social convention.¹⁸¹

The metaphor of the hidden drama which surfaces in the life of an otherwise ordinary individual is perhaps best exemplified in Pierrette (1839-40). A little studied work, Pierrette is the embodiment of the private drama, of terrible events played out behind the closed doors of a provincial town. It is in every sense the drama of a character whose life would appear to be anti-dramatic. The metaphor of the drame occurs in Pierrette at five intervals throughout the novella's 143 pages. In the first instance the metaphor is employed self-consciously by Balzac to awaken the reader's interest in his subject, which he describes as:

Un de ces drames obscurs qui se passent en famille et qui, pour demeurer secrets, n'en sont pas moins terribles, si vous permettez toutefois d'appliquer le mot de drame à cette scène d'intérieur.¹⁸²

As in the opening of Le Père Goriot, Balzac justifies his use of dramatic metaphor to his reader and acknowledges that the events described in the novel may not be what the reader would recognise as dramatic either in the contemporary theatrical or popular sense. Again Balzac juxtaposes dramatic metaphor with the image of the ‘scène d'intérieur’ borrowed from painting, as he had done in the preface to Eugénie Grandet, apparently unconsciously approximating his definition of the drama to that of Diderot. Through the metaphor of the private, hidden drama Balzac leads his reader to expect a similar set of tragic circumstances to that which had brought him great commercial success in Eugénie Grandet, and in this the reader is not to be disappointed.

As will be seen in the next chapter, the metaphor of the drama surrounding Pierrette is integrated into the narrative through theatrical presentation of the text as her life becomes ‘le drame domestique que la venue de Brigaut détermina dans la maison Rogron’.¹⁸³ Pierrette's personal tragedy, like that of Eugénie Grandet, lies in the fact that the drama of her suffering and her lover's desperation, goes unheard and undiscovered until it is too late: ‘Le bavardage d'un amant au désespoir éclaira ce drame domestique au médecin, sans qu'il en soupçonnât l'horreur ni l'étendue’.¹⁸⁴ Balzac's insistence on the term ‘drame domestique’ in Pierrette not only foretells the type of stage drama which he was later to develop in his play La Marâtre in 1848, but is entirely necessary for the outcomes of the plot. It is precisely because the drama is enacted behind the closed shutters of the provincial house and not in a public, Parisian setting, that its tragedy remains undetected and unavoidable, eventually culminating in what Balzac successively describes as a ‘drame fatal’ and a ‘drame horrible’.¹⁸⁵

Through this examination of the metaphor of the drame in Balzac's novels, it is possible to see that he had been developing since the early 1830s, and in conscious opposition to the Romantic drama, his own idea of a sort of intimate or domestic drama. Balzac eventually transferred this dramaturgy from metaphorical representation in his novels to actual stage representation in La Marâtre, which he called a ‘tragédie bourgeoise’¹⁸⁶ and a ‘drame comme on en peut trouver à tout moment en fouillant les mystères de la vie privée,’¹⁸⁷ and through which, according to his claims in a letter to Madame Hanska in May 1848, he hoped to revive the French stage: ‘Ce que je voulais je l'ai obtenu: une rénovation, et la littérature dramatique reconnaîtra que je vais me faire une large part.¹⁸⁸ Unfortunately, after the second act the play errs on the side of melodrama, but even the harshest of critics saw La Marâtre as a literary revolution and agreed that through it Balzac had succeeded in transferring from the novel to the stage his primary dramatic principle: ‘faire vrai’.¹⁸⁹

Despite the overwhelming prevalence of melodrama in many of the plots of Balzac's novels, it is possible to conclude from the examples given here that, through his use of the drame as a metaphor with which to describe and distinguish his novels, Balzac expresses his own dramaturgy which is that of a realistic and intimate drame bourgeois. It is not only the realism and intimacy of his novels, but also the specific dramaturgy which Balzac expresses in his novels and puts into practice in La Marâtre, which establishes him at a midpoint in the development of the modern theatre, between Diderot's theories in the previous century and the Naturalist theatre of Zola and the Théâtre Libre towards the end of the century.¹⁹⁰ The fact that when Balzac uses the drame as a metaphor, he more often than not intends the term to be understood in its theatrical sense will be underpinned in the next chapter which examines the way in which Balzac presents the text using dramatic techniques and elements of stagecraft.

CONCLUSION—A COHERENT SYSTEM

From the examination in this chapter it is possible to see that Balzac's exploitation of the theatre as a descriptive resource is not simply the product of an indeterminate notion of the world as a theatre or of an impulse towards melodrama, but corresponds to a strict system, in which images are used to express the novels' central concerns. Within this scheme the drame is an image of the private, domestic realm through which Balzac formulates and expresses his dramaturgy, the comédie or scène is an image of social role-play, the théâtre is the image of the location of action often played out in full view of society, and the dessous and coulisses are images of the true causes of events. In accordance with this system Balzac's characters are defined as actors who are described by reference to established theatre characters, and who emerge either as puppets, comédiens or actor/directors, whose actions are determined by materialism and individualism.

From the analysis of this scheme it has been possible to expand the observations made by Brooks and Adamson and it is now possible to conclude that the theatrical metaphor is not only relevant to those novels situated in the labyrinth of Paris and which stand in close relationship to theatrical melodrama, such as Illusions perdues, Splendeurs et misères and La Cousine Bette, but is also fundamental to the mode of expression of other novels such as Pierrette, Eugénie Grandet and Les Chouans. Balzac's use of theatrical metaphor is both systematic and all-embracing and is an expression of the most melodramatic series of peripeteia in Splendeurs et misères, and of the most lingering and silent tragedy in Eugénie Grandet.

Furthermore, it is important to consider Balzac's use of theatrical metaphor in relation to the historicity of his treatment of the actual Parisian theatre in La Comédie humaine. It is only in relation to Balzac's revelations concerning the actual theatre world that his imagery attains its fullest signification, for through theatre Balzac's fictional world becomes self-contained. Balzac does not rely on assumed knowledge of the external reality to which the theatrical metaphor refers his reader, but provides that knowledge in the texts. The images of characters as actors are amplified by Balzac's exposure of life in the theatre with its physical, mental and financial demands and moral compromises. Similarly, the image of society as a theatre with its wings and backstage areas is amplified by the exposure of backstage practices in the actual theatre, by the corrupt dealings of the feuilletons and the claque and the machinations of actors, directors and dramatists, and by the economic forces which govern the theatre. The historical treatment of the theatre and the exploitation of the theatre as a source of imagery are to some extent interdependent in Balzac's vision.

It has also been shown here that Balzac's use of theatrical metaphor covers the whole thematic, locational and chronological period of La Comédie humaine. From the mid 1830s onwards, however, a more abundant and systematic exploitation of theatrical imagery can be seen, particularly in the allusions to established dramatic characters, and this seems to indicate Balzac's increasing preoccupation with the notions of role-play and false appearance which characterise his mature work. It would be erroneous to suggest that Balzac's use of theatrical metaphor is a direct consequence of his own attempts to write for the stage, since he did not devote himself to the theatre in any serious way until the 1840s, and the theatrical metaphor is already well-developed in novels written in the mid and late 1830s. Rather the metaphor derives from the combined effect of Balzac's vision of life and of his awareness of the need to ‘dramatise’ the novel in order to awaken and sustain the reader's interest.

The theatre provides Balzac with an established vocabulary and typology with which to describe his novels and characters. To some extent the borrowing of theatrical vocabulary to describe the novel at the beginning of the nineteenth century was essential to Balzac since the novel had no such vocabulary of its own. While the theatrical tradition had a familiar and established terminology, the novel had no means to describe its processes. As a highly self-conscious author, Balzac borrows metaphors and vocabulary from the established literary form both in order to analyse and justify his own process of creation and in order to communicate effectively with the reader. Only through recognisable images can the reader see behind the metaphor to what is signified, and these images are to be found in what has been shown to be the dominant social institution of Balzac's period, in the theatre. It is precisely through a metaphor which has its basis in showing and seeing that Balzac reveals his process of uncovering society to the reader. The process of this exposure is expressed by Balzac in a letter to Madame Hanska by means of a theatrical metaphor which summarises his creation of La Comédie humaine: ‘Les mœurs sont le spectacle, les causes sont les coulisses et les machines, les principes, c'est l'auteur.¹⁹¹

Notes

1. See: Peter Brooks. The Melodramatic Imagination, and ‘Balzac, Melodrama and Metaphor’ in The Hudson Review (Summer, 1969), pp. 213-228; Donald Adamson ‘Chance and Necessity’ in Balzac, ‘Illusions perdues’, pp. 72-74.

2. Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination, pp. 122-123.

3. Donald Adamson, Balzac, Illusions perdues, pp. 72-73.

4. Hugo, ‘William Shakespeare’, in Œuvres complètes, ed. Albin Michel (Paris: Ollendorf), vol. I, pp. 117-118: ‘Etre fécond, c'est être agressif. Un poète comme Isaïe, comme Junénal, comme Shakespeare, est en vérité, exorbitant. Que diable! On doit faire un peu attention aux autres, un seul n'a pas droit à tout, la virilité toujours, l'inspiration partout, autant de métaphores que la prairie, autant d'antithèses que la chère, autant de contrastes et de profondeur que l'univers, sans cesse la génération, l'éclosion, l'hymen, l'enfantement, l'ensemble vaste, le détail exquis et robuste, la communication vivante, la fécondation, la plénitude, la production, c'est trop, cela vide le droit des autres’.

5. Pierre Citron, ‘Du nouveau sur le titre de la Comédie humaine’ in RHLF (1959), pp. 91-93, argues for 1839-1840, and F. Baldensperger, ‘Une suggestion anglaise pour le titre de la Comédie humaine’ in RLC (Oct-Dec 1921), makes a claim for 1835.

6. AP, vol. I, pp. 11-17.

7. See: Peter Demetz, ‘Balzac and the zoologists: A concept of the Type’ in The Discipline of Criticism (Yale University Press, 1968), pp. 397-418; Guzine Dino, ‘L'Aspect historique et social des types chez Balzac’, in Europe, revue mensuelle, no. 429-430 (Jan-Feb, 1965), pp. 295-302; Willi Jung, Theorie und Praxis des Typischen bei H. de Balzac (Tübingen: Stauffenberg, 1983).

8. Corres., vol I, p. 35, à Laure 1819.

9. … Balzac's admiration of Racine can be seen in much of his early correspondence. See: Corres., vol. I, pp. 35, 36, 52, 58, 60, 61, & 65.

10. See appendix II section a [of Theatre in Balzac's La Comédie humaine, 2000], for full index of contemporary plays referred to in LCH.

11. In the overall context of this chapter the analysis here will be restricted to explicit instances of metaphor and simile and will not include any examination of perceived models of characterisation which Balzac may have borrowed from Shakespeare and Molière. Such an examination has already been conducted by P. J. Tremewan with regard to Shakespeare, and by P. Barrière and Geneviève Delattre with regard to Molière. See: P. J. Tremewan, ‘Balzac et Shakespeare’, AB (1967), pp. 259-303. Tremewan looks in particular at King Lear as a model for Le Père Goriot, pp. 287-293. Goriot is never directly compared to Shakespeare's Lear in the course of the narrative, however. Tremewan notes that Goriot is referred to as a ‘colimaçon’ and a ‘mollusque’ and that these images are applied to Lear in Act I, scene v. These images are not considered relevant to the present analysis. See also: P. Barrière, ‘Les Sources classiques de la Comédie humaine’, in Honoré de Balzac et la tradition littéraire classique, pp. 74-98. Barrière examines an extensive range of possible classical sources which may have provided Balzac with the inspiration for plots and characters. He treats in particular Molière's L'Avare as a model for Grandet. There is no explicit reference to Harpagon in Eugénie Grandet, however. Harpagon, like Lear, seems to have interested Balzac as an exception rather than as a type. In relation to Molière, see also: Geneviève Delattre, Les Opinions littéraires de Balzac, pp. 51-83.

12. See: J. Bochner, ‘Shakespeare en France, 1733-1830’, in RLC (Jan.-Mar., 1965), pp. 44-65; J. L. Borgerhoff, Le Théâtre anglais à Paris sous la Restauration (Paris: Hachette, 1912); M. Guizot, ‘Shakespeare et son temps’, in Œuvres complètes de Shakespeare (Paris: Didier, 1821).

13. FE, vol. II, p. 313.

14. See for example LMH, vol. IV, p. 221, 29 February 1848, in which Balzac describes the revolution: ‘Il y a eu un mélange de gaminerie, de sublimité, de force, qui a fait du jeudi un drame de Shakespeare’, and Études sur M. Beyle where Balzac describes the duchesse de Sanseverina in La Chartreuse de Parme as, ‘franche, naïve, sublime, résignée, remuée comme un drame de Shakespeare’, L'Œuvre de Balzac, 16 vols. (Paris: Formes et Reflets, 1950-1953), vol. XIV, p. 1171.

15. DL, vol. V, p. 984.

16. FYO, vol. V, pp. 1075-1076.

17. Be., vol. VII, p. 210.

18. Be., VII, p. 413.

19. Act III scene iii.

20. Be., vol. VII, p. 413-414.

21. CP, vol. VI, p. 667. See Donald Adamson's article on Le Cousin Pons in Modern Language Review, (April 1964).

22. MM, vol. I, p. 548.

23. S, vol. XI, p. 763.

24. Be., vol. VII, p. 152.

25. MJM, vol. I, p. 324.

26. BS, vol. I, p. 120.

27. IP, vol. V, p. 282.

28. Fir., vol. I, p. 153.

29. CM, vol. III, p. 592.

30. CA, vol. IV, p. 1036.

31. D. B. Wyndham Lewis, Molière, The Comic Mask (London: Eyre, 1959), pp. 89-95.

32. PG, vol. III, p. 158.

33. FE, vol. II, p. 304.

34. MD, vol. IV, p. 785.

35. Hereafter referred to as Splendeurs et misères.

36. SetM, vol. VI, p. 437.

37. Le Constitutionnel, 18 Nov. 1846.

38. CP, vol. VII, p. 577.

39. CP, vol. VII, p. 571.

40. CP, vol. VII, p. 624.

41. Be, vol. VII, pp. 57.

42. IP, vol. V, p. 637.

43. The brief character portrait also, of course, demonstrates the influence not only of the theatre but of other visual art forms, for example, the contemporary trend for caricature exemplified by the works of Henry Monnier, which rely on the concentration of essential characteristics. In this sense Balzac is a caricaturist in words.

44. IP, vol. V, pp. 557, 600, 653, & 732.

45. MM, vol. I, pp. 500, 600, 612, & 648.

46. UM, vol. III, pp. 799, 850, 883, & 914.

47. FE, vol. II, p. 331.

48. CP, vol. VII, p. 549.

49. IP, vol. V, p. 265.

50. IP, vol. V, pp. 274-283.

51. Les Deux Poètes appeared for the first time in 1837, and Un grand homme de province à Paris in 1839. The third part, Les souffrances de l'inventeur, was not written and published until 1843. See: Histoire du texte, IP, vol. V, pp. 1119-1126.

52. MM, vol. I, pp. 500, 600, 612 & 648.

53. UM, vol. III, pp. 799, 850, 883, & 914.

54. IP, vol. V, p. 557.

55. IP, vol. V, p. 600.

56. IP, vol. V, p. 653.

57. IP, vol. V, p. 732.

58. PG, vol. III p. 141.

59. UM, vol. III, p. 850.

60. UM, vol. III, p. 914.

61. CM, vol. III, p. 551.

62. MM, vol. I, p. 500.

63. MM, vol. I, p. 501.

64. Ibid., p. 600.

65. Ibid., p. 612.

66. MM, vol. I, pp. 505-506.

67. IP, vol. V, p. 711.

68. MM, vol. I, p. 480.

69. PG, vol. III, p. 142.

70. SetM, vol. VI, p. 828.

71. DF, vol. II, p. 36.

72. Ch., vol. VIII, p. 913.

73. Ch. vol. VIII, pp. 919-920.

74. B, vol. II, p. 692.

75. TA, vol. VIII, p. 503.

76. B, vol. II, p. 819.

77. MD, vol. IV, p. 740.

78. FE, vol. II, p. 349.

79. FE, vol. II, p. 285.

80. SetM, vol. VI, p. 623.

81. IP, vol. V, p. 174.

82. Ibid., p. 249.

83. Ibid., p. 283.

84. Ibid., p. 284.

85. Ibid., p. 249.

86. Ibid., p. 271.

87. MJM, vol. I, p. 222 & CV, vol. IX, p. 810.

88. P, vol. IV, p. 69.

89. EG, vol. III, p. 1040.

90. EG, vol. III, p. 1192.

91. CV, vol. IX, p. 699.

92. MM, vol. I, p. 628.

93. PG, vol. III, p. 186.

94. IP, vol. V, pp. 419-420.

95. EHC, vol. VIII, p. 339.

96. Peter Brooks, ‘Balzac, Melodrama and Metaphor’ in The Hudson Review, XXII (no. 2, Summer 1969), pp. 213-228; and The Melodramatic Imagination, pp. 2-11, & pp. 118-130.

97. Ibid., pp. 122-123.

98. SetM, vol. VI, p. 431.

99. Ibid., p. 828.

100. Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination, p. 121.

101. Be., vol. VII, p. 388.

102. S, vol. VI, p. 1050.

103. Composed of the Ancien régime and of the ‘new’ aristocracy represented by characters such as Goriot's daughters.

104. F, vol. V, pp. 793-796.

105. Ibid., p. 793.

106. SetM, vol. VI, p. 446.

107. Peter Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination, pp. 2-3.

108. Peter Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination, pp. 119-120.

109. Be., vol. VII, p. 228.

110. F30, vol. II, p. 1106.

111. MCP, vol. I, pp. 88-89.

112. IP, vol. V, p. 410.

113. IP, vol. V, p. 342.

114. Ibid., p. 373.

115. Ch, vol. VIII, pp. 925, 974, 975, 992, 1043, & 1120.

116. MM, vol. I, pp. 593, 600, 612, 649-650, 673, 681, & 682.

117. SetM, vol. VI, pp. 585, 735, 835, 837, & 886.

118. Ch., vol. VIII, p. 925.

119. Ibid., p. 974.

120. Ibid., p. 970.

121. Ibid., p. 975.

122. Ibid., p. 992.

123. Ibid., p. 1120.

124. The question of what Balzac means by ‘drama’ will be addressed in the final section of this chapter.

125. SetM, vol. VI, p. 886.

126. See also: DF, vol. II, p. 114; Be., vol. VII, p. 304, TA, vol. VIII, p. 648; PG, vol. III, p. 161; CM, vol. III, p. 582.

127. FE, vol. II, 334.

128. Be., vol. VII, p. 68.

129. UM, vol. III, p. 860.

130. Ch., vol. VIII, p. 925.

131. Ch., vol. VIII, p. 974.

132. Ch., vol. VIII, p. 1120.

133. PG, vol. III, p. 119.

134. Be., vol. VII, p. 258.

135. H, vol. II, pp. 570-571.

136. Ibid., p. 593.

137. BS, vol. I, p. 156.

138. The playing of the social comedy is a female imperative for the maintenance of reputation and virtue. See Marie-Henriette Faillie, La Femme et le code civil dans La Comédie humaine de Honoré de Balzac (Paris: Didier, 1968), pp. 91-164.

139. Col., vol. III, pp. 359-362.

140. For example FE, vol. II, pl 320 ‘Pendant chaque représentation, Florine change deux ou trois fois de costume, et rentre souvent dans sa loge épuisée, demi-morte’. …

141. Ibid., p. 612.

142. MM, vol. I, p. 600.

143. Ibid., p. 593.

144. B, vol. II p. 823.

145. Ibid., p. 826.

146. Ibid., pp. 827-828.

147. MM, vol. I, pp. 649-650.

148. PG, vol. III, p. 266.

149. Peter Brooks, The Melodramatic Imagination, p. 124.

150. IP, vol. V, p. 554.

151. Ibid., p. 578.

152. IP, vol. V, p. 700.

153. SetM, vol. VI, p. 835.

154. The terms of drame and tragédie have been listed together in the appendix since in Balzac's novels they are often juxtaposed and treated as synonymous. The term tragédie, by far the more infrequent of the two, is usually used in a popular rather than strictly dramatic sense to complement the metaphor of the drama of life which in many instances becomes a drame tragique. See, for example: Ch., vol VIII, pp. 970, 1007, 1015, & 1186.

155. The term drame had been accepted by the Académie Française for inclusion in the dictionary only in 1762, subsequent to Diderot's definition of the drame in his Entretiens sur le Fils naturel (1757) and De la poésie dramatique (1858). See: Jean-Pierre Sarrazac, ‘Genres anciens, genre nouveau’, in Le Théâtre en France, ed. Jacqueline de Jomaron, 2 vols. (Paris: Armand Colin, 1992), vol. I, p. 310.

156. See: Denis Diderot, ‘De la poésie dramatique’ in Œuvres complètes, 20 vols. (Paris: Garnier, 1875). ‘J'ai essayé de donner dans Le Fils naturel l'idée d'un drame qui fût entre la comédie et la tragédie’.

157. Ch., vol. VIII, p. 970.

158. CB, vol. VI, p. 272.

159. SetM, vol. VI, p. 700.

160. W. S. Hastings, The Drama of H. de Balzac, p. 143; René Guise, Introduction to Balzac's theatre, p. XI; Milatchitch, Le Théâtre de H. de Balzac, p. 324.

161. PG, vol. III, p. 49.

162. PG, vol. III, p. 50.

163. PG, vol. III, p. 57.

164. Ian Watt prescribes two important general conditions for the novel successfully to portray the lives of ordinary individuals: ‘The society must value every individual highly enough to consider him the proper subject of its serious literature; and there must be enough variety of belief and action among ordinary people for a detailed account of them to be of interest to other ordinary people, the readers of novels.’ The Rise of the Novel (London: Chatto & Windus, 1957), p. 60. The second of these conditions is partly fulfilled by Balzac in the creation of his fictional characters through his own idea of the dramatic.

165. EG, vol. III, p. 1201.

166. … ‘Victor Hugo n'est pas vrait’, LMH, vol. II, p. 177.

167. La Cousine Bette, for example, in which Balzac deems no less than seven deaths to be necessary to the resolution of the plot, or La Fille aux yeux d'or, in which Paquita is murdered and her lover and keeper sensationally find themselves to be brother and sister.

168. EG, vol. III, p. 1025.

169. Diderot, Entretiens sur ‘Le Fils naturel’: ‘je pense pour moi que si un ouvrage dramatique était bien fait et bien représenté, la scène offrirait aux spectateurs autant de tableaux réels qu'il y aurait dans l'action de moments favorables au peintre’, and ‘Le spectateur est au théâtre comme devant une toile où des tableaux divers se succéderaient comme par enchantement’.

170. FC, vol. VI, p. 1020.

171. CP, vol. VII, p. 489.

172. CP, vol. VII, p. 630.

173. LCH, vol. X, p. 1208.

174. The republication of Diderot's Le Fils naturel in 1857 included a prologue and epilogue in which Diderot claimed to have been invited by a character named Dorval to watch this family drama from a hiding place within the family home: ‘J'entrai dans le salon par la fenêtre, et Dorval, qui avait écarté tout le monde, me plaça dans un coin, d'où sans être vu, je vis et j'entendis ce qu'on va lire’. Diderot strives to create the impression that he is penetrating the real, private realm, just as Balzac does in his novels.

175. Col., vol. III, p. 315.

176. Ibid., p. 369.

177. MJM, vol. I, p. 292.

178. H, vol. II, p. 554.

179. B, vol. II, pp. 856 & 821.

180. See, for example, Cath., vol. XI, p. 388: ‘Le drame profondément caché’; EG, vol. III, p. 1193: ‘Le drame commencé depuis neuf ans’, PMV, vol. XII, p. 169: ‘ce drame conjugal’.

181. B, vol. II, pp. 823-824.

182. P, vol. IV, p. 34.

183. Ibid., p. 98.

184. P, vol. IV, p. 141.

185. Ibid., pp. 106 & 152.

186. LMH, vol. IV, p. 299.

187. Corres., vol. V, p. 315.

188. LMH, vol. IV, p. 365.

189. See: Gautier La Presse, 29 May, 1848; Pontmartin, Revue des Deux Mondes, 29 May 1848; Janin, Les Débats, 29 May, 1848, all of whom saw in the play's realism and originality a desirable renovation of the drama. When the play was restaged in 1859 Sarcey saw it as a ‘révolution’ and ‘le premier essai d'une comédie nouvelle’. See: ‘La Marâtre’ in L'Opinion Nationale, 12 September, 1859.

190. Émile Zola, Le Naturalisme au théâtre: ‘Un fait se déroulant dans sa réalité et soulevant chez les personnages des passions et des sentiments, dont l'analyse exacte serait le seul intérêt de la pièce. Et cela dans le milieu contemporain avec le peuple qui nous entourne’. Zola's theories were finally put into practice by André Antoine at the Théâtre Libre, which opened on 30 March 1887. In his Causerie sur la mise en scène (1903), Antoine clearly expressed the idea of the ‘quatrième mur’ through which the private drama could be seen, as suggested by Diderot and Zola and practised by Balzac in his novels.

191. LMH, vol. I, p. 270.

List of Abbreviations

Titles of works by Balzac given in the footnotes and appendices to this thesis are abbreviated as indicated below, and, unless otherwise stated, refer to these editions.

Corres	Correspondance, Textes réunis, classés et annotés par Roger Pierrot, 5 vols. (Paris: Garnier Frères, 1960-1969).
LMH	Lettres à Madame Hanska, Textes réunis, classés et annotés par Roger Pierrot, 4 vols. (Paris: Delta, 1967-1971).
LCH	La Comédie humaine, édition publiée sous la direction de Pierre-Georges Castex, Bibliothèque de la Pléiade, 12 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1976-1981).

The titles of individual works within La Comédie humaine are abbreviated according to the list below. The dates following each title are the dates of composition according to the new Pléiade edition, and, unless stated otherwise, are those which are used for the purpose of chronology throughout the present thesis.

Ad.	Adieu	(1830)
AEF	Autre étude de femme	(1832-39)
AP	Avant Propos	(1842)
AR	l'Auberge rouge	(1831)
AS	Albert Savarus	(1842)
Ath.	La Messe de l'athée	(1836)
B	Béatrix	(1838-45)
Be.	La Cousine Bette	(1846)
Bo.	La Bourse	(1832)
Boi.	Les Héritiers Boirouge	(1836)
Bou.	Les Petits Bourgeois	(1843-44)
BS	Le Bal de Sceaux	(1829)
CA	Le Cabinet des antiques	(1836-38)
Cath.	Sur Catherine de Médicis	(1837-41)
CB	César Birotteau	(1833-37)
Ch.	Les Chouans	(1828-29)
Ch-O	Le Chef-d'œuvre inconnu	(1831; 1837)
CM	Le Contrat de mariage	(1835)
Col.	Le Colonel Chabert	(1832)
Com. sal.	La Comédienne de salon	(1841)
Cor.	Maître Cornélius	(1831)
CP	Le Cousin Pons	(1846-47)
CSS	Les Comédiens sans le savoir	(1844-46)
CT	Le Curé de Tours	(1832)
CV	Le Curé de village	(1838-39)
DA	Le Député d'Arcis	(1839-47)
Dés.	Une passion dans le désert	(1830)
DF	Une double famille	(1830)
DL	La Duchesse de Langeais	(1833)
Do.	Massimilla Doni	(1837)
Dr.	Un drame au bord de la mer	(1834)
DV	Un début dans la vie	(1841-42)
DxA	Les Deux Amis	(1830-31)
E	Les Employés	(1837-38)
EF	Etude de femme	(1830)
EG	Eugénie Grandet	(1833)
EHC	L'Envers de l'histoire contemporaine	(1842-44; 1847)
ELV	L'Elixier de longue vie	(1830)
EM	L'Enfant maudit	(1831-36)
Ep.T	Un épisode sous la Terreur	(1829)
F	Ferragus	(1833)
FA	La Femme abandonnée	(1832)
FC	Facino Cane	(1836)
FE	Une fille d'Eve	(1838-39)
Fir.	Madame Firmiani	(1832)
FM	La Fausse Maitresse	(1841)
F30	La Femme de trente ans	(1829-34)
FYO	La Fille aux yeux d'or	(1834-35)
Gam.	Gambara	(1837)
Gau.	Gaudissart II	(1844)
Gb.	Gobseck	(1830)
Gr.	La Grenadière	(1832)
H	Honorine	(1842)
HA	Un homme d'affaires	(1844)
IG	L'Illustre Gaudissart	(1833)
In.	L'Interdiction	(1836)
IP	Illusions perdues	(1836-43)
Lys.	Le Lys dans la vallée	(1834-35)
Ma.	Les Marana	(1832-33)
MC	Le Médecin de campagne	(1832-33)
MCP	La Maison du chat-qui-pelote	(1829)
MD	La Muse du département	(1843)
Mes.	Le Message	(1832)
MJM	Mémoires de deux jeunes mariées	(1838-41)
MM	Modeste Mignon	(1844)
MN	La Maison Nucingen	(1837)
P	Pierrette	(1839-40)
Pay.	Les Paysans	(1838-45)
PCh.	La Peau de chagrin	(1830-31)
PG	Le Père Goriot	(1834-35)
PGr.	Pierre Grassou	(1839)
Phy.	Physiologie du mariage	(1826-29)
PM	La Paix du ménage	(1829)
PMV	Petites misères de la vie conjugale	(1830-45)
Pr.B	Un prince de la Bohème	(1840)
Pro.	Les Proscrits	(1831)
R	La Rabouilleuse	(1840-42)
RA	La Recherche de l'Absolu	(1834)
S	Sarrasine	(1830)
Sér.	Séraphîta	(1833-35)
SetM	Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes	(1838-47)
SPC	Les Secrets de la Princesse de Cadignan	(1839)
TA	Une ténébreuse affaire	(1838-40)
Th.	Le Théâtre comme il est	(1847)
UM	Ursule Mirouèt	(1840-41)
ZM	Z. Marcas	(1840)

The titles of commonly cited periodicals are abbreviated as follows:

AB	Année balzacienne
RLC	Revue de littérature comparée