Honore de Balzac - Analytical Studies: Physiology of Marriage and Petty Troubles of Married Life

Notice the words: The man of distinction to whom this book is dedicated. Need I say: "You are that man."THE AUTHOR.

The woman who may be induced by the title of this book to open it, can save herself the trouble; she has already read the work without knowing it. A man, however malicious he may possibly be, can never say about a woman as much good or as much evil as they themselves think. If, in spite of this notice, a woman will persist in reading the volume, she ought to be prevented by delicacy from despising the author, from the very moment that he, forfeiting the praise which most artists welcome, has in a certain way engraved on the title page of his book the prudent inscription written on the portal of certain establishments: Ladies must not enter.

The two Analytical Studies, Physiology of Marriage and PettyTroubles of Married Life, belong quite apart from the action of theComedie Humaine, and can only be included therein by virtue of aspecial dispensation on the part of their author, who made for them aneighth division therein, thus giving them a local habitation and aname. Although they come far down in the list of titles, theircreation belongs almost to the formative era. Balzac had just shakenhis skirts clear of the immature dust of the Oeuvres de Jeunesse,and by the publication, in 1829, of The Chouans, had made his firstreal bow to his larger public. In December of that same year appearedthe Physiology of Marriage, followed eleven months later by a fewpapers belonging to Petty Troubles of Married Life. Meanwhile,between these two Analytical Studies, came a remarkable novelette, Atthe Sign of the Cat and Racket, followed soon after by one of themost famous stories of the entire Comedie, The Magic Skin.

We are thus particular to place the two Analytical Studies in time andin environment, that the wonderful versatility of the author maybecome apparentand more: that Balzac may be vindicated from thecharge of dullness and inaccuracy at this period. Such traits mighthave been charged against him had he left only the Analytical Studies.But when they are preceded by the faithful though heavy scene ofmilitary life, and succeeded by the searching and vivid philosophicalstudy, their faults and failures may be considered for the sake oftheir company.

It is hard to determine Balzac's full purpose in including theAnalytical Studies in the Comedie. They are not novels. The few,lightly-sketched characters are not connected with those of theComedie, save in one or two remote instances. They must have beenincluded in order to make one more room in the gigantic mansion whichthe author had planned. His seventh sense of subdivision saw herefresh material to classify. And so these grim, almost sardonic essayswere placed where they now appear.

In all kindness, the Balzac novitiate is warned against beginning anacquaintance with the author through the medium of the AnalyticalStudies. He would be almost certain to misjudge Balzac's attitude, andmight even be tempted to forsake his further cultivation. The mistakewould be serious for the reader and unjust to the author. Thesestudies are chiefly valuable as outlining a peculiarand, shall wesay, forced?mood that sought expression in an isolated channel. Allhis life long, Balzac found time for miscellaneous writingscritiques, letters, reviews, essays, political diatribes andsketches. In early life they were his "pot-boilers," and he neverceased writing them, probably urged partly by continued need of money,partly through fondness for this sort of thing. His Physiology isfairly representative of the material, being analysis in satiricalvein of sundry foibles of society. This class of composition was verypopular in the time of Louis Philippe.

The Physiology of Marriage is couched in a spirit ofpseudo-seriousness that leaves one in doubt as to Balzac's faith withthe reader. At times he seems honestly to be trying to analyze aparticular phase of his subject; at other times he appears to beridiculing the whole institution of marriage. If this be not the case,then he would seem unfitted for his taskthrough the ignorance of abachelorand adds to error the element of slander. He is at faultthrough lack of intimate experience. And yet the flashes of keenpenetration preclude such a charge as this. A few bold touches of hispen, and a picture is drawn which glows with convincing reality. Whilehere and there occur paragraphs of powerful description or searchingphilosophy which proclaim Balzac the mature, Balzac the observant.

On the publication of Petty Troubles of Married Life in La Presse,the publishers of that periodical had this to say: "M. de Balzac hasalready produced, as you know, the Physiology of Marriage, a bookfull of diabolical ingenuity and an analysis of society that woulddrive to despair Leuwenhoech and Swammerdam, who beheld the entireuniverse in a drop of water. This inexhaustible subject has againinspired an entertaining book full of Gallic malice and English humor,where Rabelais and Sterne meet and greet him at the same moment."

In Petty Troubles we have the sardonic vein fully developed. Thewhole edifice of romance seems but a card house, and all virtue merelya question of utility. We must not err, however, in taking sentimentsat their apparent value, for the real Balzac lies deeper; and here andthere a glimpse of his true spirit and greater power becomes apparent.The bitter satire yields place to a vein of feeling true and fine, andgleaming like rich gold amid baser metal. Note "Another Glimpse ofAdolphus" with its splendid vein of reverie and quiet inspiration tohigher living. It is touches like this which save the book and revealthe author.

Petty Troubles of Married Life is a pendant or sequel to Physiologyof Marriage. It is, as Balzac says, to the Physiology "what Fact isto Theory, or History to Philosophy, and has its logic, as life,viewed as a whole, has its logic also." We must then say with theauthor, that "if literature is the reflection of manners, we mustadmit that our manners recognize the defects pointed out by thePhysiology of Marriage in this fundamental institution;" and we mustconcede for Petty Troubles one of those "terrible blows dealt thissocial basis."

The Physiologie du Mariage, ou Meditations de philosophie eclectiquesur le bonheur et le malheur conjugal is dated at Paris, 1824-29. Itfirst appeared anonymously, December, 1829, dated 1830, from the pressof Charles Gosselin and Urbain Canel, in two octavo volumes with itspresent introduction and a note of correction now omitted. Its nextappearance was signed, in 1834, in a two-volume edition of Ollivier.In 1846 it was entered, with its dedication to the reader, in thefirst edition of