Balzac et consorts: scénographies familiales des conflits historiques dans le roman du XIXe siècle par Pascale Auraix-Jonchière (review)

The theme of family life in nineteenth-century French literature and society has garnered considerable scholarly attention since the 1970s, as evidenced by Eugen Weber's Peasants into Frenchmen: The Modernization of Rural France (1870–1914) (London: Chatto & Windus, 1976) and, more recently, Claudie Bernard's Penser la famille au dix-neuvième siècle (1789–1870) (Saint-Étienne: Publications de l'Université de Saint-Étienne, 2007). The present collection of essays adopts a particularly ambitious approach to this topic by exploring it not merely in relation to French writers of the period (including Balzac, Chateaubriand, Dumas père, Maupassant, and Zola), but also to the works of Dickens and Shelley. As Pascale Auraix-Jonchière explains in her prefatory remarks, family relationships were shaken and often broken by the 1789 Revolution, not least as a result of changes to France's inheritance laws. However, far from seeking to evaluate the accuracy of literary texts as historical documents, this volume focuses on the multiple ways in which they show the upheavals of the Revolution reverberating in the private sphere. Central to this analysis is the concept of 'scénographie', which in its theatrical connotations provides a useful descriptor for exploring how works of fiction dramatized and reflected events unfolding on the wider historical stage. As the absolutism of the Ancien Régime crumbled, so, increasingly, patriarchal authority was called into question. Equally, literature proved a fertile domain in which to explore the themes of adoption, incest, illegitimacy, and mésalliance. Given his well-known interest in the damage wrought to family life by the abolition of primogeniture, Balzac provides an obvious starting point for this discussion. In the opening chapter of the volume, Marion Mas examines Balzac's frustration at what he perceived as the erosion of patriarchal authority, and how this caused him to represent alternative forms of paternal relationship, such as that between Bourgeat, the selfless water-carrier of La Messe de l'athée (1836), and the medical student Desplein. Among the other notable contributions to this volume, François Kerlouégan explores the revolutionary allegory at the heart of George Sand's depiction of family life in Mauprat (1837), while Alex Lascar reflects on the emotional and physical violence engendered by unsuitable marriages, especially in Les Mystères de Paris (1842–43). In a compelling and sometimes disturbing essay, Claudie Bernard also analyses the consequences of aristocratic inbreeding inÉle´mir Bourges's 1884 novel Le Crépuscule des dieux. Striking a delicate balance between discussion of canonical and lesser-known texts, this volume presents a detailed and often insightful re-appraisal of family life in nineteenth-century fiction. While the concept of 'scénographie' is not—perhaps understandably, given the scope of the volume—carried through as systematically as it might have been, this does not diminish the value of a collection that will serve as a useful reference for specialists and students alike.