Customer Reviews

Physiologie de Mariage

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A consideration of marriage among the upper classes with particular focus on how to prevent your wife being unfaithful. Balzac turns from the pseudo-scientific (eg his calculations that prove there is a 'floating mass' of at least fifteen hundred thousand illicit passions in France) to the philosophical to the anecdotal. Dry in parts, elsewhere very funny and had me thinking 'how true'. Here the husband will find advice on how to avoid being one of the 'fore-ordained' (guaranteed to be cuckolded); how to arrange your house so that Madame have no opportunity to conceal a lover...I love Balzac's thoughts on sharing a bed with one's beloved: 'If one of your rivals had found a way of placing you in full view of the woman who is dear to you in a situation in which you must appear sublimely ridiculous- for example with your mouth all distorted like that of a mask or with your eloquent lips dribbling...'

Balzac's 'meditations' begin with the general, move on to the 'internal and external means of defence' and culminate in a section on 'civil war'- chapters here include 'various weapons ' a) 'the headache' b) 'the nerves' and 'on relatives and other allies'. Throughout he peppers his work with aphorisms, my favorite of which has to be 'A lover only tells a woman that which may raise her self esteem; a husband, even a loving husband, can never refrain from giving advice and he always conveys it with an air of reproach'. How true! And amazing to think Balzac drafted this work of wisdom and insight aged only 25!