Between the Sheets: The Perils of Courtship by Correspondence in Balzac's La Femme abandonnée

Set in Restoration Normandy, this novella offers a psychological analysis of the free union between the Marchioness de Beauséant and Baron de Neuil. Won over against her better judgement by Gaston's pressing suit Claire gives him nine years of happiness before he deserts her for a more conventional relationship, then finds he cannot live without her and commits suicide. The protagonists write letters to each other at crucial moments: these exchanges mask true feelings, triggering unsought consequences. Letters fulsome and brief, read and unread mark the equivocal rise and fateful decline of this relationship. Loyal intent, true intimacy and lasting solidarity would have left no place for a correspondence that by its very existence is misleading. (DWL)