The Thirty-Year-Old Woman

The famous novel by Honoré de Balzac "The Thirty-Year-Old Woman" belongs to the section "Scenes from Private Life" of the vast cycle "The Human Comedy," and it is thanks to this work that the winged expression "a woman of Balzac's... age" was born. The work on the text of the novel, composed of independent stories, some of which were previously published in magazines, lasted more than ten years. In the consistently arranged stories, the author unfolds before the reader the life story of Julie d'Eglemon, whom we meet in the early pages as a young girl, hopelessly in love with her future husband. Observing the fate of the heroine, the author reflects on the nature of love between a man and a woman, parental love, modern marriage, and contemporary society. In this edition, the novel is published in a new translation.