Balzac's Go-Between: The Case of Honorine

This article examines four interlinked themes in Balzac's Honorine: space, time, language and sexuality. Each theme is shown to combine or cross categories. Firstly, space or distance both weaken and strengthen a sense of personal identity. Secondly, time is either prolonged into the "eternal feminine" of an organic, flower-like Honorine, or demolished with perfectly timed Parisian wit. Thirdly, language creates the intimacy of the confession or estrangement between Maurice and Onorina. Fourthly, sexualities are established and transposed in a story told by a man acting as a go-between between the sexes. Honorine is the story of a diplomat-host on the subject of a "femme-chimère" and, therefore, both by and about the absent, unavailable or unknowable Other, whether gendered as "man" or "woman." (ONH)