La Cousine Bette

"This was written when Balzac was feeling he had not really made the mark he ought to have made and that other people were running away with facile successes. He really needed a kind of counterblast. His politics were the opposite of Hugo’s – he was very suspicious of all these new-fangled ideas about justice; he thought it was quite a good idea to keep people in their place. So, Cousin Bette is a story designed to show you just how awful people are. And, my God, they’re awful! It is one of the most sombre visions of human corruption and perversion, self-indulgence and evil. That’s why I’ve chosen it – it’s a kind of antidote to Victor Hugo. Yes! She manipulates a young whore, Valérie Marneffe, into seducing and tormenting and ruining the head of a household Bette thinks is treating her unfairly. And she succeeds. The great man, a former general, a baron, ends up destitute and his wife and children are ruined. Bette causes a familial cataclysm that’s also a social cataclysm, out of sheer vindictiveness. No. Well, she dies, but I think she dies a happy woman. It’s a very impressive novel and stunningly modern as well. It also has to do with the origins of colonial exploitation – the story of the money is the story of Algeria actually. Balzac had an intuitive understanding of where corruption was to be found, where what was going on was really dirty. And he really pulled out all the stops to give us this portrait of a society that was rotten to the core. Well, curiously, yes, the main figure, the man who is brought down, who is simultaneously corrupt and naive, boorish and charming – he’s vulnerable to this young woman [Valérie Marneffe] and he just can’t resist. Balzac does in the end make you feel quite sorry for a guy who puts everything in jeopardy for a passion he can’t resist. And he doesn’t realise that she’s doing it on purpose. Oh no, I’m afraid not. There isn’t any redeeming feature in Valérie Marneffe, apart from the fact that she’s gorgeous and smart. But no, she’s not nice."