The Hated Son

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

3.4

Word count: 197K words
Chapters: 20

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.The Hated Son by Honoré de BalzacAuthor: Balzac, Honoré de, 1799-1850,Language: English, Class: PQ: Language and Literatures: Romance literatures: French, Italian, Spanish, Portuguese, Release Date: Oct 31, 2004

Editor's review

"The Hated Son" is a short story by Balzac whose very title foregrounds rejection and emotional fissures within family relations. It is well suited to observing how Balzac handles kinship, prejudice, and a sense of fate in a small space: the characters' circumstances are not grand, yet the coldness and pain inside the family are rendered concretely. Project Gutenberg's free electronic edition gives readers low-cost access to the original text and also makes good comparative reading material—set it against Balzac's other family-themed works to see how he treats the same subject differently. While reading, don't rush to judge who is right or wrong; first notice how the situation of being "hated" affects the characters' self-perception and choices, then consider whether the narrator is guiding sympathy. If you are looking for a short story suitable for book-club discussion, both its title and theme readily invite conversation.

Who it's for

A good fit for

Short-story readers interested in family relations and emotional prejudice
Readers who want to encounter Balzac's English text in a shorter format
Organizers needing book-club discussion material who prefer controversial themes
Students and literature enthusiasts studying nineteenth-century family narratives

Not a good fit for

Casual readers expecting strong plot twists and suspense-driven momentum
People who find family-conflict themes oppressive and want light reading
Readers unwilling to read the English original who have no parallel translation available

Reading tips

First focus on how "hated" in the title is made concrete in the text, then sort out the character relationships.
As you read, note the rejected person's reactions and the attitudes of those around them; afterward, summarize the thematic threads.
Read it alongside Balzac's other family-themed short stories and compare differences in narrative perspective.
If using it for a book club, prepare two or three questions in advance about the boundaries between prejudice and kinship.

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

Is this short story suitable for someone who has never read Balzac at all?

Yes. It is not long, and its theme centers on family relations and emotional rejection without relying on extensive background knowledge. First-time Balzac readers can treat it as a sample of his style and get a feel for his character portrayal and narrative tone; if they like it, they can move on to longer works and gradually understand his broader social vision.

How should "hated son" in the title be understood?

The title points to the situation of a son who is hated and rejected within the family, but the specific reasons and manifestations need to be confirmed in the text. When reading, it is better not to treat it merely as a label but to observe how this "being hated" affects relationships, self-perception, and behavioral choices. Different readers may judge differently who deserves more sympathy—this is precisely the room for discussion.

The English original is difficult to read. Are there alternatives?

You can first read a reliable Chinese translation to grasp the plot and character relationships, then return to the English original to appreciate tone and detail. You can also read slowly paragraph by paragraph with a dictionary, focusing on dialogue and psychological description. If using it for a class or book club, it is more reliable to discuss themes via the translation and experience the language through selected passages from the original, combining the two.

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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.