A spinster cousin, humiliated for years by her more fortunate relatives, quietly engineers the ruin of the entire family in one of Balzac's darkest studies of envy.
Books mentioned in Cousin Bette (2)
Manon Lescaut by Abbé Prévost: “as Figaro, Lovelace, and Manon Lescaut have immortalized Beaumarchais, Richardson, and the Abbe Prevost.”
Les Chouans by Honoré de Balzac: “And he put on the scowl that had brought his soldiers to attention when he was beating the broom on the heaths of Brittany in 1799. (See _Les Chouans_.)”
Books that mention Cousin Bette (7)
Lady Audley's Secret by Mary Elizabeth Braddon: “alike upon the metaphysical diablerie of the Peau de Chagrin, and the hideous social horrors of "Cousine Bette."”
The Tragic Muse by Henry James: “I read Balzac for instance--I encounter the admirable portrait of Valérie Marneffe in _La Cousine Bette_."”
The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf: “seeing that it was _La Cousine bette_, bade her throw it away if she found it too horrible”
Within a Budding Grove by Marcel Proust: “playing upon the title of Balzac's story, "Le Cousin Bête".”
Reading Like a Writer by Francine Prose: “The first paragraphs of Balzac's Cousin Bette function, to extend the cinematic metaphor, as a succession of tracking shots.”
Cousin Pons by Honoré de Balzac: “Every one, no doubt, wishes to know what became of the heroine of a story only too veracious in its details; a chronicle which, taken with its twin sister the preceding volume, La Cousine Bette, proves that Character is a great social force.”