"The Duchess at Prayer" and Balzac’s "La Grande Breteche"

Honoré de Balzac (1799 - 1850) is a French novelist and playwright. He is considered a co-founder of the realist movement in European literature.

As stated in 3.8.1, Wharton refers to Balzac as the first novelist to have further looked into the relationship between characters and their living quarters or dwellings. [1] This interrelation is explored in "The Duchess at Prayer" as closer inspected in an earlier point. This, however, is not the only connection to Balzac that can be found in the story. The actual thematic contents also echo Balzac's work, more precisely his story "La Grande Bretèche" from 1831. A short plot summary shall follow below:

Dr. Horace Bianchon discovers an abandoned mansion near the town of Vendôme. This is 'La Grande Bretèche'. The doctor, intrigued, tries to enter the ruined house a few nights in a row but is unsuccessful in his endeavors. Defeated, he returns to the inn where he is staying. He questions the locals about the mansion and is told a story by several different people, including a lawyer and the innkeeper.

Late owner Madame de Merret, forbade anyone from entering the house upon her death. No matter if it were workmen, visitors, or government officials, for 50 years after her death no one was to enter the house. The lawyer telling part of the story was given the task and provided with the funds to ensure that her dying wish be accomplished.

Dr. Bianchon learns that Madame de Merret had a Spanish lover for a short period of time. In an unfortunate turn of events, Madame de Merret's husband returned early from a business trip while her lover was at the house. The lover hid himself in the closet, but the husband, upon hearing a sound, confronted his wife about the noise. Crumpling under the pressure of her husband’s questioning, Madame de Merret swore upon a crucifix that there was no one in the closet. However, she threatened to leave her husband if he were ever to open the closet out of suspicion (and so prove his distrust of her word). Monsieur de Merret, in response to this, sent for a mason to wall up the closet, trapping the lover inside, alive.

Terrified, Madame de Merret passed along a message to the mason asking him to break a hole in the door when her husband was not looking before completely walling the closet off. The mason did this, and Madame de Merret caught a final glimpse of the maddened eyes of her lover through the hole. Once the closet was walled up completely, Madame and Monsieur de Merret stay in the bedroom for several days, listening to the muffled noise coming from the closet. Because of this traumatic experience, Madame de Merret declared her house off-limits upon her death.[2]

"La Grande Bretèche" utilizes a nested narrative in a similar way "The Duchess at Prayer", having the main story be placed into a framework narrative and come to the reader second hand. Using a story within a story to convey a tale plays with reader's perceptions of figures and events, casts doubt on the reliability of the narrators and is inherently well-suited to suspenseful stories.

A second main parallel to "The Duchess" is the subject matter. A wife is cheating on her husband and he grows to suspect her of infidelity. There is a scene of confrontation. Following this, the lover is entombed and subsequently dies. Balzac lets Madame de Merret live on, Wharton, on the other hand, has Violante die at the hands of her husband. If "The Duchess at Prayer" can be seen as having been inspired by "La Grande Bretèche", it also spins the tale further in terms of intensity and gravity. The Duchess has no chance at redemption and no chance to move past the events presented; as is typical of especially Wharton's earlier works, there is no hope and no way out for her.

[1] see Stevenson 2010

[2] see de Balzac 1831