SHORT STORY COLONEL CHABERT PDF

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A presentation on Colonel Chabert by Honore De Balzac . Including themes, literary technique, and characters analysis...

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VIVA VOCE BACKGROUND Le Colonel Chabert (English: Colonel Chabert) is an 1832 novella by French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850). It is included in his series of novels (or Romanfleuve) known as La Comédie humaine (The Human Comedy), which depicts and parodies French society in the period of the Restoration (1815–1830) and the July Monarchy (1830– 1848). This novella, originally published in Le Constitutionnel, was adapted for six different motion pictures, including two silent films. THEME SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION By comparison, Chabert's precarious legal position prevents him from reclaiming his former identity or constructing a new social identity, whereas Countess Ferraud is able to use marriage as a means to transform herself from the "comtesse de l'Empire" to the "comtesse de la Restauration." Chabert, bound to his past, perpetually remains "le colonel," "le vieux soldat," "un débris de l'Empire," who lacks the proper tools to parvenir in modern society where the authentic document controls the successive validation and invalidation of one's identity. As Sandy Petrey explains it: "[T]he dialectic of presence and absence ridicules every concept of existence in itself and affirms the supreme reality of existence as socially represented." Petrey, Sandy. "Balzac's Empire: History, Insanity, and the Realist Text." Historical Criticism and the Challenge of Theory. Ed. Janet Lavarie Smarr. Urbana: U of Illinois Press, 1993. THE TRANSITION OF ERA In Le Colonel Chabert, Mme Chabert's parvenu marriage to the Count Ferraud, a descendant of the Vieille Noblesse, responded to Napoleon's idea of "fusion" between the old and new aristocracies (Chabert, 86) re, grand-officier de la Légion d'Honneur" (62), which makes them both the fabrications of the illusion of an era. The Countess, however, manipulates the system constructed by others, and chooses each role in a rapidly changing world. Securing Napoleon's signature on the contract for her second marriage, to an aristocrat, she moves from a passing political system to a coming one.

The so-called colonel Chabert apparently survives being buried alive at the battle of Eylau in 1807 and returns to Paris under the Restoration so changed he is unrecognizable. Yet he is every bit as much out of place in literature as he is in society. Empire (Chabert), and the Restoration (Countess Ferraud) Lyons, Martyn. Napoleon Bonaparte and the Legacy of French Revoluton. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1994. LITERITURE TECHNIQUE Third person omniscient Symbolism Metonomy use of metonymy, as a source of narrative tension where a showdown of sorts ensues between the Empire (Chabert), and the Restoration (Countess Ferraud), reunited in Derville's study. Colonel Chabert appears as would a grand officer of the Legion of Honor, tucking one hand into his vest in a Napoleonic gesture Metaphor (Death) (Era) This idea is further reinforced by the use of metonymy, the trace of the metaphor (the end) throughout the text. In dividing the text into "fixed points of interpretation," or narrative tableaux, metonymy allows for the constant building and breaking of illusions, as reduced to the opposition between life and death. In Le Colonel Chabert, the end is already present in the beginning and thus the plot functions as a means to return Chabert to the grave. This idea is further reinforced by the use of metonymy, the trace of the metaphor (the end) throughout the text. In dividing the text into "fixed points of interpretation," or narrative tableaux, metonymy allows for the constant building and breaking of illusions, as reduced to the opposition between life and death. 301 Departing from Derville's study, Chabert's legal inexistence is determined when one of the clerks asks, "Est-ce le colonel mort à Eylau?" This question is swiftly followed by the

conclusion that the Chabert in question is "bien mort"; Chabert's death was a recorded fact in Victoires et conquêtes, and his widow has since remarried to Count Ferraud. P 246 this flash of Chabert's former glory, may only exist on the level of myth because figures like Chabert have no place in post-imperial society; they are subjects of art and heroes in historical volumes like Victoires et Conquêtes. Therefore, Chabert is an "unwelcomed ghost in this new society that refuses to recognize the elevated status attained by a child of the Acting for herself but also, as it were, on behalf of society, Countess Ferraud ensures this fate for Chabert PERSONAL THOUGHTS This point is further elaborated in the comparison that Balzac draws between the parvenu status of Chabert and that of Countess Ferraud. As an orphan who found a family in the military and a father in the Emperor, Chabert rose through the ranks to the grade of colonel, and was given a title and fortune. However, in the last scene of the novella, he is in the Hospice de la Vieillesse where he no longer thinks of himself as Chabert, let alone as a human being: “Pas Chabert, pas Chabert! Je me nomme Hyacinthe . . . Je ne suis plus un homme, je suis le numéro 164, septième salle.”325 In contrast, the Countess Ferraud, an exprostitute who married into the Imperial aristocracy and inherited Chabert's fortune at the time of his alleged death, enticed an aristocrat of meager fortune seeking to fulfill his own political ambitions. In marrying Chabert's widow, Count Ferraud admits his wife into the upper echelons of the Restoration aristocracy replaced by humanity’s greed for money and rank. The cruelty of the Countess Ferraud shows greed’s victory over honor and morality, a battle that de Balzac uses as commentary for the French society as a whole. Chabert, for his part, epitomizes the goodness of humanity until the very end. Even in jail, he asserts that “it is better to be rich in feeling than in dress,” thereby bucking the social norms that had caused him to be “suddenly sickened with disgust for humanity” (95). This disgust for humanity stems from the greed, competition and immorality that de Balzac portrays running rampant in France. nature of the law and the nature of humanity (which Balzac asserts is present in the law) that he lost his faith in humanity too. At the end of the novel, Derville and Godeschal reflect on Chabert’s degradation into a childlike being, and conclude that lawyers deal “the same ill feelings repeated again and again, never corrected” and are “mourning for virtue and hope” Chabert represented virtue and hope but was utterly destroyed by the rest of society. I think that

maybe Balzac’s purpose in portraying the law office as such a disgusting place was to highlight the fact that the law deals with the ugly side of man. He tried to get his money from his wife, and even insisted upon an agreement in which she would return to him despite having two children with another man. That seems like a pretty low act to me. At that time, he didn’t seem to be considering what would be best for those children or his wife, but rather he was looking out for himself. He wanted to be rich and have a strong social standing initially, despite the costs of these desires to those around him. I do believe that at the end he genuinely changed once he realized that his wife, who was pulled by those same desires, became into the selfish, unethical person that tried to trick him. Rather than just criticizing the negative aspects of humanity and society, I think that de Balzac demonstrated that such a society sometimes forces people to look inside themselves and find what really matters. Like Colonel Chabert, those that literally can’t afford the lifestyle of selfishness and lack of morals see the flaws in society and the “wealthier” lifestyles. In writing this book, de Balzac may be trying to get his audience to see what they need to do to become better people, Coming back from the dead, he chose to remain as a ghost rather than accept life as it is now lived by those around him. Stories that depended on exact observation of circumstances, moved on to the changes of feeling and behaviour of men and women brought up under different disposition; The Countess has no visible parents, no heredity, no family other than that of her husband. She denies having any background or history. A social chameleon, she moves easily from man to man, first as a prostitute, then as a wife, changing social class with each liaison. Yet even the highest reaches of society do not represent a final, fixed situation for her. If she appears to be waging a desperate struggle to retain the aristocratic position she holds through her husband, le comte Ferraud, it is perhaps only to give herself a foothold from whic As a woman, of course, la comtesse Ferraud will never be able to achieve identity through her name, which is subject to change in marriage. A woman has many names, but her legal names are not her own. Since the narrative voice and the male characters in this text insist on stereotyping la comtesse Ferraud as "woman," denying her individuality, let us examine the stereotype

through the critical optic of feminist theory, for I too see her, though for different reasons, as lacking in individuality and personal identity. She is not a person, but a figure. he Countess was gazing at the distance, and preserved a calm countenance, showing that impenetrable face which women can assume when resolved to do their worst (les femmes determinees a tout) With the kind of power she exhibits, it would be naive to attempt to read la comtesse Ferraud as a victim of masculine social institutions. We must continue to read her, to the extent that she can be read at all, as a villain, the way most critics have done. When I first read Colonel Chabert, it pains me so as what had happened to him....