Aunt Bei (fu Lei Complete Works)
by H
About This Novel
"Aunt Bei" is a novel written by French writer Balzac in his later years. The story takes place in Paris in 1838 and revolves around the fate of Baron Hulot de Hervé and his family. The Baron had served as a military auditor and director of munitions in the republican era. Now he was the head of one of the most important departments of the War Department, and was also a counselor of state. He was awarded the second class of the Legion of Honor. The novel describes how, driven by crazy passion that lost his reason and morality, he gradually ruined the reputation of his family and the honor of the army, embarked on the criminal path of speculation, fraud, and embezzled military funds, and finally lost his reputation. Hulot is a very symbolic character. His fall means the end of the glory of the old era and reflects the moral corruption of the entire upper class. The typical example of Aunt Bei belongs to Balzac's style and also shows the deepening of Balzac's creation. This is a "paranoid" character, and a complex full of contradictions: city and countryside, civilization and barbarism, rebellion and decadence, are cleverly intertwined, integrating rich life connotations and social consciousness.
What Readers Think
Rating
Community(0)
Official(1)Scraped 4d ago
Exaggerated yet realistic story
With so many characters, I still feel less reliable than Lawyer Luo. His parents are a little obsessed, and his sister's husband is unreliable. It is really not easy to have a relatively complete family in the end. It's hard to change a person, otherwise there wouldn't be so many stories.
Rating
Community(0)
Official(1)Scraped 4d ago
Exaggerated yet realistic story
With so many characters, I still feel less reliable than Lawyer Luo. His parents are a little obsessed, and his sister's husband is unreliable. It is really not easy to have a relatively complete family in the end. It's hard to change a person, otherwise there wouldn't be so many stories.
