Process Structure in Balzac's La Rabouilleuse

Balzac's La Rabouilleuse (1842) exploits an innovative plot structure to insist on the changes taking place in France, especially the way the middle class was crushing the outstanding young people that France so desperately needed. Plot centered novels usually follow the actions of a central character or group. In La Rabouilleuse everyone and every action follows the inheritance from Paris to provincial Issoudun, and back to Paris. The narrator describes a society where religion had lost its power, where the local government was so inbred that change was impeded, where traditional families in a patriarchal system had been replaced by irregular couples, where, in short, mediocracy reigned. (AHP)