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The Lily in the Valley
by
Honoré de Balzac
general information | review summaries | our review | links | about the author
| Title: | The Lily in the Valley |
| Author: | Honoré de Balzac |
| Genre: | Novel |
| Written: | 1836 (Eng. 2024) |
| Length: | 266 pages |
| Original in: | French |
| Availability: | The Lily in the Valley - US |
| The Lily in the Valley - UK | |
| The Lily in the Valley - Canada | |
| Le Lys dans la vallée - Canada | |
| Le Lys dans la vallée - France | |
| Die Lilie im Tal - Deutschland | |
| El lirio en el valle - España | |
| from: Bookshop.org (US) |
- French title: Le Lys dans la vallée
- Translated by Peter Bush
- Previously translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley (1891), May Tomlinson (1897), James Waring (1897), and Lucienne Hill (1957)
- With an Introduction by Geoffrey O'Brien
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Our Assessment:
A- : peculiarly, almost overly romantic tale, very nicely done
See our review for fuller assessment.
| Source | Rating | Date | Reviewer |
|---|---|---|---|
| London Rev. of Books | . | 23/1/2025 | Raymond N. MacKenzie |
From the Reviews:
- "(A)n outlier in Balzac’s work, and many of the generalisations we make about him won’t easily apply to it. It may be his most Romantic book: more lyrical, subtler and more autobiographical than most of the Comédie humaine. It is much less concerned with chronicling society or asserting the determining effect of economics and environment. (...) Félix’s love for Madame de Mortsauf is expressed and analysed with remarkable and un-Balzacian pastoral lyricism. (...) (A)t the end, the woman to whom this book-length letter has been addressed makes her reply, and what she says in just a few pages makes us want to go back and reconsider everything. It’s a brilliant touch, adding yet another layer to this rich and complex novel" - Raymond N. MacKenzie, London Review of Books
Please note that these ratings solely represent the complete review's biased interpretation and subjective opinion of the actual reviews and do not claim to accurately reflect or represent the views of the reviewers. Similarly the illustrative quotes chosen here are merely those the complete review subjectively believes represent the tenor and judgment of the review as a whole. We acknowledge (and remind and warn you) that they may, in fact, be entirely unrepresentative of the actual reviews by any other measure.
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The complete review's Review:
The Lily in the Valley is presented almost entirely as an account by Félix de Vandenesse, written for the woman he is pursuing, Natalie de Manerville, in response to her demand; as he puts it: "you want my past, and here you have it".
Félix admits that: "a ghost dominates my life", and here he unburdens himself, at considerable length.
(The novel closes, however, with a letter that Natalie writes in response to Félix's outpouring.)
[The novel basically opens and closes with Natalie's name -- Félix's salutation to start the novel; her signature at the end of her letter closing it -- but the first mention is misspelled (as 'Mannerville') in this edition.]
Félix had an unhappy childhood -- "so totally ignored that the servants felt sorry for me", for example.
He describes himself as: "small, skinny, and pallid, even in my twenties" and found himself, as he approached adulthood:
Childish in body and old in thought, I had read so much, meditated so much, that metaphysically I was acquainted with life's lofty heights by the time I was on the verge of experiencing the tortuous twists of the gullies and gravelly paths on its plains.At the first gala ball he attends comes the decisive encounter that then looms so large over much of his life. He is overwhelmed by the activity and withdraws to a bench in a corner; a woman sits down beside him (he imagines she: "decided I must be a child dozing off while waiting for his mother to return at her convenience" -- and indeed, she later admits: "when I first saw you, I'd have said you were thirteen") -- and he finds himself bewitched by her bared shoulders and impulsively (though only after making sure that no one is looking): "threw myself at that back, as an infant throws himself on his mother's bosom. I kissed and nuzzled those shoulders". The woman is shocked, but doesn't make too much out of it (though she does quickly leave).
The woman is Henriette de Mortsauf, married to a considerably older and very temperamental count and with two sickly young children, Jacques and Madeleine. Sent to the country, Félix conveniently winds up in her proximity, and becomes a fixture in the Mortsauf home. He is madly in love, while Henriette, though clearly fond of the young man, keeps their relationship proper and chaste. The count -- prone to losing his temper -- remains oblivious.
Henriette is tied to the countryside property and her family. Her husband is not very competent, her children sickly, and so she has to hold everything together. Félix is a welcome confidant, but she watches her step with him otherwise -- and eventually implores him to go to Paris, to launch his career: "Channel all that excess energy into high-flying ambition".
She remains his greatest ambition -- "she possessed my entire heart", but it's a hopeless passion, never (physically) amounting to more than a kiss of her hand ("never the palm"). The time he spends in her proximity is idyllic -- but when he does eventually go to Paris he is seduced by the Englishwoman Lady Dudley, who really does a number on him:
Where could I ever find the words to describe my first six months, when I was constantly prey to enervating ecstasies of a love so packed with pleasure, varied by knowledge that comes with experience, and which conceals its expertise beneath the violence of passion ?He finds himself torn:
She was mistress of my body. Mme de Mortsauf was wife of my soul.Mme de Mortsauf -- no longer 'Henriette' for him, she then decrees -- is shattered, and though she does not push him entirely away, she crumbles under the weight of it all. In a letter to him she reveals just how much his attentions had also meant to her, but theirs was a union that could not be. (Somewhat creepily, Henriette seems to have been grooming her daughter for Félix: "Madeleine, whom I raised so fondly for you", positioning, as she says, the girl between herself and him so that: "Madeleine would be yours"; fortunately, Félix doesn't even seem to have even grasped her intentions -- and, just in case, Madeleine eventually tells him in no uncertain terms that he certainly can't count on this outcome.)
Henriette is the ghost that haunts his life, with a good dose of Lady Dudley then added to make the mix all the more haunting. Natalie, to whom the whole account is addressed, at least has his number, at the latest after he reveals all this: "Do you know nothing about women" she shakes her head in her summing-up letter.
Félix's gushing account is a convincing one of a young, naïve man in love -- verging on or near the ridiculous, but so honestly heartfelt that it reads and rings sympathetically true. Balzac lays bare all his foolishness -- a neat contrast also with what, for the most part, are two very strong women (with Natalie, though barely a presence, showing herself to be similarly strong (and more secure)). The background of the times -- Napoleon's return from Elba ! "the disasters in Waterloo" ! the Bourbon Restoration --, though not much delved into, also provides additional support to the narrative and story.
Not typical Balzacian fare, with its so very strongly personal focus, The Lily in the Valley is a very fine romantic (if untypically so) tale, another very solid work by the master.
- M.A.Orthofer, 1 February 2025
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The Lily in the Valley:
- New York Review Books publicity page
- Folio publicity page
- Le Livre de Poche publicity page
- Flammarion publicity page
- Insel publicity page
- Le Lys dans la vallée site
- Between the books (French)
- Léa Bory (French)
- Harvard Review
- Les Livres de George (French)
- Los Angeles Review of Books
- Making Words
- On the Seawall
- Michael Peverett
- revistadelibros (Spanish)
- Un fil à la page (French)
- Honoré de Balzac at books and writers
- Peter Brooks on Honoré de Balzac
- See Index of French literature
- See Index of Books Written Before 1900
- Other books from New York Review Books
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The great French author Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) is best known for his multi-volume 'Human Comedy'.
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© 2025 the complete review
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