The Celibates

Three linked stories make up this study of unmarried lives and the damage a loveless existence can do. In Pierrette, an orphaned girl is taken in by grasping cousins who slowly destroy her. The Vicar of Tours turns a squabble over lodgings between two priests into a merciless portrait of petty ambition. A Bachelor’s Establishment follows the ruin visited on a family by an old soldier and a scheming provincial beauty circling an aging bachelor’s fortune. Balzac uses these celibate figures, spinsters, priests, and idle men, to show how thwarted affection curdles into cruelty and greed in the closed world of the French provinces. Free to read as a PDF and EPUB edition.