Trousers That Are Not Trousers: The Primacy of Materiality in Balzac’s Paris

Abstract

In his 1835 novel Père Goriot, Balzac writes that “Money is life. If you have cash, you can do anything.” However, it was not money alone that was of central importance toBalzac; it was the appearances that could be obtained with money, the destinies that could be unlocked by real material things and the power they signified. My paper aims to underscore the primacy and the role of materiality as a societal force in Restoration Paris by using examples from Balzac’s Père Goriot. More specifically, I intend to share ideas on the ways in which Balzac, who was intimately acquainted with the hierarchy of wealth in Restoration society, revealed the veiled contours of wealth and its inevitable implications on the lives of men and women, most notably their material realities. I do so by developing an interpretation of Balzac’s stylistic approach, social realism, which identified and personified the preponderance of economic realities over feelings and ideas. My research agenda, however, is not limited to a discussion of the material representation of value in Parisian history and culture. Beyond these issues lie broader questions of global relevance, unavoidable for cultural and literary historians concerned with materiality. Through an analysis of the papers and correspondences of Marx and Engels, I will touch upon how Balzac’s social realism was not only a Parisian matter but had important implications for the founders of Communism.