Ursule Mirouet

Ursule Mirouet

In 1842, eight years before his death, Balzac described Ursule Mirouet as the masterpiece of all the studies of human society that he had written; he regarded the book as 'a remarkable tour de force'. An essentially simple tale about the struggle and triumph of innocence reviled, Ursule Mirouet is characterized by that wealth of penetrating observation so readily associated with Balzac's work. The twin themes of redemption and rebirth are illuminated by a consistently passionate rejection of both philosophic and practical materialism in favour of love. In this case love is aided by supernatural intervention, which itself effectively illustrates Balzac's life-long fascination with the occult.

Ursule Mirouët

Excerpt from Ursule Mirouet: And Other Stories "Ursule Mirouet, dedicated by Balzac to his niece, Sophie Surville, and avowedly written "in the fear of the young person," or, as the author more elegantly puts it, "in uncompromising respect of the noble principles of a pious education," exposes itself by the very fact to two different sorts of prejudice. It is sure to be cried up by one set of judges as "wholesome," and to be cried down by another as "goody." The latter charge is certainly unfair, for Balzac has by no means written the book in rose-pink and sky-blue only, nor has he been afraid to show things more or less as they are. Nevertheless, it is difficult not to admit that evidences of restraint and convention do exist. Ursule - even more than Eugenie, who becomes a person on at least two occasions, her struggle with her father, and her revanche over her cousin - is a thing of shreds and patches, an ideal being in whom that mysterious "candor," to which the French attach such excessive value in a girl, and which they make such haste to do away with altogether in a woman, seems to shut out all positive individuality. She is very nice; but she is not very human. Nor can the machinery of dreams, hypnotism, Swedenborgianism, and whatnot, which Balzac, following out one of his well-known manias, chose to work into the book, be said to add very largely to its verisimilitude. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works."

Ursula Mirouet