The Thirty-Year-Old Woman

"The Thirty-Year-Old Woman" occupies an honorable place in Balzac's legacy, complementing the vibrant palette of "Scenes from Private Life". The elegant and tender narrative of love in its highest manifestations has simultaneously become a requiem for married life. The heroine of the novel, Julie, an extraordinary, independent, and freely expressive woman, bids farewell to youthful illusions and is disappointed in marriage. After all, "it is not the sorrows themselves that ruin us, but the lost hopes." And when you are melting from the indifference and coldness of your husband, doesn't it sometimes seem that "legal love is more burdensome than illicit passion"?

"...And since in France, and indeed in the whole wide world, thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of women feel misunderstood and disappointed, they find in Balzac a doctor who first named their ailment. He excuses any misstep they take, as long as it is driven by love; he is bold enough to say that not only the "thirty-year-old woman," but also the "forty-year-old woman," and even she, who has experienced and comprehended everything, has the highest right to love." Stefan Zweig