Domestic Peace

Balzac, Honoré de, 1799-1850Project Gutenberg · United StatesDec 2019

3.3

Word count: 77K words
Chapters: 8

Summary

Project Gutenberg was the first provider of free electronic books, or eBooks. Michael Hart, founder of Project Gutenberg, invented eBooks in 1971 and his memory continues to inspire the creation of eBooks and related technologies today.Domestic Peace by Honoré de BalzacAuthor: Balzac, Honoré de, 1799-1850,Language: English, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Aug 2, 2004

Editor's review

A novella from Balzac's La Comédie Humaine, Domestic Peace centers on the interplay of power, property, and emotion within the family. With a cool, even sharp, touch it depicts the calculation, endurance, and compromise of married and family life, reflecting Balzac's enduring attention to social structure and the human heart. It is short but densely peopled, with restrained narrative pacing, and works well as a brief entry point into Balzac's world. As you read, note the subtext in domestic spaces, property arrangements, and dialogue—these details often reveal more than plot turns do. This electronic edition is an English public-domain text, suitable for reading alongside the French original or a reliable Chinese translation. A word of caution: this is not a warm, cozy family story; readers should come to it expecting a social novel.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Readers who want a short introduction to Balzac's work
Readers who enjoy social novels about family and marriage
Readers interested in nineteenth-century French literature and realist narrative
Students with good English reading ability willing to read a public-domain translation

Not a good fit for

Readers expecting a warm, healing family story
Readers who prefer strong plot and fast-paced narrative
Readers unfamiliar with nineteenth-century French society who are unwilling to look up background

Reading tips

Read an introduction or learn the framework of La Comédie Humaine before starting the text.
Pay attention to reticence and implication in dialogue, and revisit key passages after finishing.
Read it alongside other Balzac short stories on family themes to observe his recurring subjects.
With the English edition, parse long sentences for their main structure rather than translating word by word, and keep your reading rhythm.

About the publisher

Project Gutenberg United States · Founded in 1971

Project Gutenberg is a digital publishing project focused on public-domain ebooks. Its publishing direction centers on classic literary works whose copyright has expired, covering genres such as poetry, drama, fiction, and epic. Representative books include Lyrical Ballads by Wordsworth and Coleridge, Proust's Du côté de chez Swann, Shakespeare's Macbeth and The Complete Works of William Shakespeare, Homer's The Iliad, Dante's La Divina Comèdia: Purgatòri, Cervantes's The History of Don Quixote, Volume 2, and Grahame's The Wind in the Willows. Its author resources consist mainly of classic Western writers such as Wordsworth, Proust, Shakespeare, Homer, Dante, Cervantes, Grahame, and Tolstoy. Its publishing feature is the provision of freely accessible ebooks in EPUB and Kindle formats; it is not a traditional publisher, and publicly available information is limited.

FAQ

Can I read this without having read other works by Balzac?

Yes. This piece is short and its characters are relatively concentrated, and it does not depend on prior events from other works. Still, knowing the overall design of La Comédie Humaine and its historical background will make it easier to understand how the author handles family and society.

Is this book a novel or a short story?

It is one of Balzac's novellas, not long, and suitable for reading in one sitting or two. The focus is not on the scale of events but on the psychological layers in character relationships and dialogue.

Is the English public-domain translation suitable for learning English?

It can serve as extended reading, but nineteenth-century translations have complex sentence structures and are not suitable as an introductory textbook. It is best to have some foundation in English reading first, or to read a Chinese translation for the plot before tackling the English.

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About the author

Balzac, Honoré de, 1799-1850 Author

Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850) was a French novelist best known for his vast series La Comédie humaine. The library holds 143 of his works, including Father Goriot, Lost Illusions, Eugénie Grandet, and several volumes of La Comédie humaine. His writing is distinguished by dense detail, a large cast of characters, and an intricate social network, often linking separate works through recurring figures to portray nineteenth-century French society. He excelled at depicting the power of desire, ambition, and money through precise settings and strong narrative tension, and he exerted a lasting influence on later realist fiction. Beyond the broad outline of his life, public information is limited, so this note focuses on the themes and style of his works.