Another Study of Woman

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Pages: 33

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Read by Nicholas Clifford (1930-2019) · 1 h 38 min · 3 parts

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Chapter 1
41:20
Chapter 2
32:09
Chapter 3
25:09

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About this book

The conversation at Mademoiselle des Touches's supper table becomes the centre of a portrait of fashionable Paris. Honoré de Balzac begins with the formal gathering, then follows the more intimate company that stays to exchange anecdotes and opinions. Artists, politicians and friends share the table, where Émile Blondet asks de Marsay which experience first revealed his vocation as a statesman. Their talk connects personal recollection with changes in French society.

In the discussion of a "perfect lady," Blondet describes clothes, shoes, a shawl and the way a woman moves through the street. These small observations reveal the standards by which the speakers judge refinement and rank. Presented in English translation, this French fiction gives readers a close view of social conversation as both entertainment and a means of defining status. The guests' certainty about manners makes their judgments as revealing as the people they describe.

About the author

Honoré de Balzac

Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) was a French novelist whose vast Human Comedy, a connected series of novels and stories, is a monument of literary realism and one of the great achievements of world literature.