Critical Essay | Critical Essay by James R. McGuire

Critical Essay by James R. McGuire

SOURCE: McGuire, James R. “The Feminine Conspiracy in Balzac's La Cousine Bette.” Nineteenth-Century French Studies 20, nos. 3 & 4 (spring-summer 1992): 295-304.

In the following essay, McGuire explores the lesbianism in La cousine Bette and argues that the title character of the novel dies outside the narrative because her sexual rebellion threatens patriarchal society; she must disappear to the margins of the novel, it is argued, so that the virtues of the family can be extolled.

There is something suspicious about the deaths of Lisbeth Fischer and Valérie Marneffe. Bette dies outside of the narrative, parenthetically, of a “phtisie pulmonaire,” yet she is the title character; the scene of Valérie's death is rife with melodrama and moral symbolism. The awkward, expeditious elimination of these two principal female figures leads one to question the actual nature of their transgressive role in La Cousine Bette. Clearly, the theme of deviancy, linked...
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