SOURCE: Toumayan, Alain. “Barbey d'Aurevilly, Balzac, and ‘La Vengeance d'une femme.’” French Forum 19, no. 1 (January 1994): 35-43.

In the following essay, Toumayan establishes thematic and “intertextual connections” among Barbey d'Aurevilly's “La Vengeance d'une femme” and Balzac's La fille aux yeux d'or.

Barbey d'Aurevilly's profound admiration for Balzac has provided well-attested keys to understanding Barbey's thematic and narrative universe, especially as concerns Les Diaboliques. Jacques Petit's and Herman Hofer's useful documentation of statements by Barbey and their identification of texts by Balzac which serve as sources or models of Barbey's stories have established clearly and concisely the literary landscape against which Barbey's stories have been understood.¹ Yet all too often, Barbey's numerous references to Balzac or, for that matter, to other authors, once identified as such, are merely labeled “sources” warranting no further commentary; rarely do these references provide a basis for reading Barbey's texts.² In other words, in many...