“As a general rule, confidences are made to persons below one socially rather than to those above. Much more readily than we can employ our superiors in secret affairs, we make use of our inferiors, who consequently become committed sharers in our most hidden thoughts; they are present at our deliberations.” ― French novelist Honore de Balzac (1799-1850), Cousin Bette (1846)
As this passage indicates, Honore de Balzac had in
mind social inferiors as the recipients of confidences. In a number of his
novels, such as The Bureaucrats, he was sharp enough to realize that
professional inferiors could also be aware of secrets.
Because legal equality of the sexes was decades away
from becoming a reality, Balzac could not imagine a world where professional
inferiors could be women—ones who could turn against a high-ranking
businessman, say, or, better yet, a high-ranking businessman who goes on to
lead a country.
Balzac was psychologically acute enough,
however, to grasp why women, in any setting, could want to bring down those who
unknowingly slight them. He demonstrated that insight repeatedly in his classic
Cousin Bette, his story of a spinster “poor relation” who uses a
lifetime of secrets bestowed unthinkingly by her aristocratic cousins to weave
an inextricable web of revenge against them all.
(The image accompanying this post shows Jessica Lange
as the title protagonist in the 1998 film adaptation of the novel.)
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