Honoré de Balzac

Name: A Woman of Thirty
Author: Honoré de Balzac

A Woman of Thirty (1842)

Summary

Honoré de Balzac’s A Woman of Thirty (1842), a cornerstone of La Comédie humaine’s Scènes de la vie privée, traces the turbulent life of Julie d’Aiglemont, a woman confronting the contradictions of marriage, longing, and maternal responsibility. Through six interwoven narratives, Balzac examines Julie’s disillusionment with her unremarkable husband, her unfulfilled romance with Lord Arthur Grenville, and the tragic consequences of her later liaison with Charles de Vandenesse.

The novel delves into the psychological and social constraints of 19th-century womanhood, exploring themes of sexual frustration, guilt, and the damaging impact of societal judgment. Dedicated to painter Louis Boulanger, it merges intimate drama with historical references, culminating in a moving reflection on redemption and the burden of a mother’s legacy. Balzac’s unflinching depiction of Julie’s suffering and strength underscores his desire to reveal the concealed struggles of women’s lives.

Quotes from A Woman of Thirty (Honoré de Balzac)

Honoré de Balzac, A Woman of Thirty (1842)

“ To console the sufferer, you must be able to divine the past which she hugs in bitterness to her soul like a remorse; it is like an avalanche in a valley; it laid all waste before it found a permanent resting-place.
The Marquise was suffering from this anguish, which will for long remain unknown, because the whole world condemns it, while sentiment cherishes it, and the conscience of a true woman justifies her in it. It is with such pain as with children steadily disowned of life, and therefore bound more closely to the mother's heart than other children more bounteously endowed. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Honoré de Balzac, A Woman of Thirty (1842)

“ There is not character in women's faces before the age of thirty. The painter discovers nothing there but pink and white, and the smile and expression that repeat the same thought in the same way—a thought of youth and love that goes no further than youth and love. But the face of an old woman has expressed all that lay in her nature; passion has carved lines on her features; love and wifehood and motherhood, and extremes of joy and anguish, having wrung them, and left their traces in a thousand wrinkles, all of which speak a language of their own ”

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Source: Wikisource

Honoré de Balzac, A Woman of Thirty (1842)

“ Julie continued. "Yes, do not think that I live. Sorrow is just as fatal as the dreadful disease which you have cured. I do not think that I am to blame. No. My love is stronger than I am, and eternal; but all unconsciously it grew in me; and I will not be guilty through my love. Nevertheless, though I shall be faithful to my conscience as a wife, to my duties as a mother, I will be no less faithful to the instincts of my heart. Hear me," she cried in an unsteady voice, "henceforth I belong to him no longer."
By a gesture, dreadful to see in its undisguised loathing she indicated her husband. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Honoré de Balzac, A Woman of Thirty

“ If melancholy comes over us by the margin of a great water, another indelible law of our nature so orders it that the mountains exercise a purifying influence upon our feelings, and among the hills passion gains in depth by all that it apparently loses in vivacity. Perhaps it was the light of the wide country by the Loire, the height of the fair sloping hillside on which the lovers sat, that induced the calm bliss of the moment when the whole extent of the passion that lies beneath a few insignificant-sounding words is divined for the first time with a delicious sense of happiness. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Honoré de Balzac, A Woman of Thirty (1842)

“ Julie sprang up, and flung herself into his arms. Through her sobbing he caught a few passionate words, "To know happiness, and then to die.—Yes, let it be so."
All Julie's story was summed up in that cry from the depths; it was the summons of nature and of love at which women without a religion surrender. With the fierce energy of unhoped-for joy, Arthur caught her up and carried her to the sofa; but in a moment she tore herself from her lover's arms, looked at him with a fixed despairing gaze, took his hand, snatched up a candle, and drew him into her room. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Honoré de Balzac, A Woman of Thirty

“ Moina, beautiful and fascinating from childhood, was Mme. d’Aiglemont’s favorite; loved beyond all the others with an instinctive or involuntary love, a fatal drawing of the heart, which sometimes seems inexplicable, sometimes, and to a close observer, only too easy to explain. Her darling’s pretty face, the sound of Moina’s voice, her ways, her manner, her looks and gestures, roused all the deepest emotions that can stir a mother’s heart with trouble, rapture, or delight. The springs of the Marquise’s life, of yesterday, to-morrow, and to-day, lay in that young heart. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Honoré de Balzac, A Woman of Thirty (1842)

“ Had Helene avenged her father? Her jealousy surely was the sword of God. And yet when I looked at the mother I shivered. What fearful ordeal awaited her when she should return to her husband, the judge before whom she must stand all her days? And here with her was an inseparable, incorruptible witness. A child's forehead is transparent, a child's face hides no thoughts, and a lie, like a red flame set within glows out red that colors even the eyes. But the unhappy woman had not thought as yet of the punishment awaiting her at home; she was staring into the Bievre. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Honoré de Balzac, A Woman of Thirty (1842)

“ Vandenesse said to himself this time as he left the Marquise, "and for my misfortune I love a woman wedded to her memories. It is hard work to struggle against a dead rival, never present to make blunders and fall out of favor, nothing of him left but his better qualities. What is it but a sort of high treason against the Ideal to attempt to break the charm of memory, to destroy the hopes that survive a lost lover, precisely because he only awakened longings, and all that is loveliest and most enchanting in love?" ”

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Source: Wikisource

Honoré de Balzac, A Woman of Thirty (1842)

“ A mother's love finds language in smiles, they are a part of the divine right of motherhood. The Marquise could not smile. She flushed red as she felt the cure's eyes. She had hoped to act a mother's part before him, but neither she nor her child could deceive him. And, indeed, when a woman loves sincerely, in the kiss she gives there is a divine honey; it is as if a soul were breathed forth in the caress, a subtle flame of fire which brings warmth to the heart; the kiss that lacks this delicious unction is meagre and formal. The priest had felt the difference. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Honoré de Balzac, A Woman of Thirty (1842)

“ I quaked for fear during the first engagement, but never since.—I am used to such peril, and—I am your daughter," she said; "I love it."
"But how if he should fall?"
"I should die with him."
"And your children?"
"They are children of the sea and of danger; they share the life of their parents. We have but one life, and we do not flinch from it. We have but one life, our names are written on the same page of the book of Fate, one skiff bears us and our fortunes, and we know it."
"Do you so love him that he is more to you than all beside?" ”

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Source: Wikisource

Honoré de Balzac, A Woman of Thirty

“ Julie’s strange, perturbing presentiments were suddenly realized. Through her preoccupation with Arthur she had loved to imagine that with that gentle, refined face he must remain faithful to his first love. There were times when she felt proud that this ideal, pure, and passionate young love should have been hers; the passion of the young lover whose thoughts are all for her to whom he dedicates every moment of his life, who blushes as a woman blushes, thinks as a woman might think, forgetting ambition, fame, and fortune in devotion to his love,—she need never fear a rival. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Honoré de Balzac, A Woman of Thirty (1842)

“ Love has its own instinct, finding the way to the heart, as the feeblest insect finds the way to its flower, with a will which nothing can dismay or turn aside. If feeling is sincere, its destiny is not doubtful. Let a woman begin to think that her life depends on the sincerity or fervor or earnestness which her lover shall put into his longings, and is there not sufficient in the thought to put her through all the tortures of dread? It is impossible for a woman, be she wife or mother, to be secure from a young man's love. ”

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Source: Wikisource

Honoré de Balzac, A Woman of Thirty

“ Julie triumphed over the Countess in her own salon, filled as it was with beautiful women and women of fashion. Julie’s liveliness and sparkling wit gathered all the most distinguished men in the rooms about her. Her costume was faultless, for the despair of the women, who one and all envied her the fashion of her dress, and attributed the moulded outline of her bodice to the genius of some unknown dressmaker, for women would rather believe in miracles worked by the science of chiffons than in the grace and perfection of the form beneath. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Honoré de Balzac, A Woman of Thirty (1842)

“ The murderer came up a little nearer. Some light within seemed to glow through Helene's beauty, grave and maidenly though it was, coloring and bringing into relief, as it were, the least details, the most delicate lines in her face. The stranger, with that terrible face still blazing in his eyes, gave one tender glance to her enchanting loveliness, then he spoke, his tones revealing how deeply he had been moved.
"And if I refuse to allow this sacrifice of yourself, and so discharge my debt of two hours of existence to your father; is not this love, love for yourself alone?" ”

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Source: Wikisource

Honoré de Balzac, A Woman of Thirty

“ The two were Julie and Lord Grenville, but this Julie seemed to be a new creature. The unmistakable color of health glowed in her face. Overflowing vitality had brought a light into her eyes, which sparkled through a moist film with that liquid brightness which gives such irresistible charm to the eyes of children. She was radiant with smiles; she felt the joy of living and all the possibilities of life. From the very way in which she lifted her little feet, it was easy to see that no suffering trammeled her lightest movements ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Honoré de Balzac, A Woman of Thirty

“ I am Helene’s mother only in the sense that I brought her forth. When she needs me no longer, there will be an end of my motherhood; with the extinction of the cause, the effects will cease. If it is a woman’s adorable prerogative that her motherhood may last through her child’s life, surely that divine persistence of sentiment is due to the far-reaching glory of the conception of the soul? Unless a child has lain wrapped about from life’s first beginnings by the mother’s soul, the instinct of motherhood dies in her as in the animals. ”

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Source: Gutenberg

Honoré de Balzac, A Woman of Thirty

“ The sound of his voice was dreadful to hear.
“Two hours?” said the Marquis, wavering.
“Two hours,” echoed the other.
Then quite suddenly, with a desperate gesture, he pushed back his hat and left his forehead bare, and, as if he meant to try a final expedient, he gave the General a glance that seemed to plunge like a vivid flash into his very soul. That electrical discharge of intelligence and will was swift as lightning and crushing as a thunderbolt; for there are moments when a human being is invested for a brief space with inexplicable power. ”

Honoré de Balzac

Summary

Quotes from A Woman of Thirty (Honoré de Balzac)

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