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Legitimacy, Surrogacy and Betrayal in the Value of Art and Family in Honoré De Balzac's Le Cousin Pons and Donna Tartt's the Goldfinch

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Legitimacy, Surrogacy and Betrayal in the Value of Art and Family in Honoré De Balzac's Le Cousin Pons and Donna Tartt's the Goldfinch University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Masters Theses Dissertations and Theses March 2017 Precarious Provenance: Legitimacy, Surrogacy and Betrayal in the Value of Art and Family in Honoré de Balzac's Le Cousin Pons and Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch Ryan Coburn University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/masters_theses_2 Part of the French and Francophone Literature Commons Recommended Citation Coburn, Ryan, "Precarious Provenance: Legitimacy, Surrogacy and Betrayal in the Value of Art and Family in Honoré de Balzac's Le Cousin Pons and Donna Tartt's The Goldfinch" (2017). Masters Theses. 461. https://doi.org/10.7275/9479761 https://scholarworks.umass.edu/masters_theses_2/461 This Open Access Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Dissertations and Theses at ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Masters Theses by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. PRECARIOUS PROVENANCE: LEGITIMACY, SURROGACY AND BETRAYAL IN THE VALUE OF ART AND FAMILY IN HONORÉ DE BALZAC’S LE COUSIN PONS AND DONNA TARTT’S THE GOLDFINCH A Thesis Presented By RYAN PAUL COBURN Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts Amherst in partial fulfillment Of the requirements for the degree of MASTER OF ARTS February 2017 French and Francophone Studies PRECARIOUS PROVENANCE: LEGITIMACY, SURROGACY AND BETRAYAL IN THE VALUE OF ART AND FAMILY IN HONORÉ DE BALZAC’S LE COUSIN PONS AND DONNA TARTT’S THE GOLDFINCH A Thesis Presented By RYAN PAUL COBURN Approved as to style and content by: _________________________________________________ Luke Bouvier, Chairperson _________________________________________________ Philippe Baillargeon, Member __________________________________________ Luke Bouvier Graduate Program Director French and Francophone Studies, LLC Department __________________________________________ William Moebius Chair, Department of Languages, Literatures, and Cultures ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS First and foremost, I would like to express my eternal gratitude to Luke Bouvier for his unwavering support, patience and guidance throughout this whole process. His keen insight, steady voice of reason and invaluable edits are what got me through even the toughest of times and helped remind me that there was a light at the end of the tunnel. (Even if that light wasn’t always bright [AC].) Six years ago Luke was just another one of my teachers. Since then I have had the pleasure of working with him in several other capacities: while he remained one of my teachers, he also transitioned into my Graduate Program Director, my advisor and mentor and ultimately ended up being a true friend. Luke, I can’t thank you enough. I would also like to extend a special thanks to Philippe Baillargeon, who like Luke, helped make my UMass experience one best chapters of my life thus far. It was Philippe who encouraged me to pursue a Master’s degree in the first place and who was always there to pick me up when I was down and to point me down the right path. A true shoulder to cry on and a brofessor in every sense of the word, your warmth and generosity will never be forgotten. Finally, I would like to thank Nathalie from the bottom of my heart. You’ve stood by me through it all and haven’t stopped encouraging me since day one. You believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself and for that I can’t thank you enough. You’re my rock (the smartest rock that I’ve ever known!) and I would be nowhere without you. iii ABSTRACT PRECARIOUS PROVENANCE: LEGITIMACY, SURROGACY AND BETRAYAL IN THE VALUE OF ART AND FAMILY IN HONORÉ DE BALZAC’S LE COUSIN PONS AND DONNA TARTT’S THE GOLDFINCH February 2017 RYAN PAUL COBURN, B.A., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST M.A., UNIVERSITY OF MASSACHUSETTS AMHERST Directed by: Luke Bouvier This thesis focuses on the problematic nature of art valuation, more specifically concerning the ideas of use-value and exchange-value in Honoré de Balzac’s Le Cousin Pons and Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch. Written in nineteenth-century France, Balzac’s novel paints a bleak portrait of what he believes to be a morally corrupt society obsessed with the lesser things in life such as money and status rather than what is truly important: culture and art. In her novel, which bears a striking resemblance to Balzac’s, Tartt presents her perception of present-day United States, also plagued with moral corruption and disregard for the cultural significance of art, but ultimately attempts to convey the message that art will prevail and transcend not only time but human weakness as well. This analysis will attempt to trace the evolution of the value of the collections of art in these two novels. Through the examination of the themes of legitimacy, surrogacy and betrayal, I will analyze the paradoxes of value of both art and family structure. iv TABLE OF CONTENTS Page ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................... iii ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... iv LIST OF FIGURES .......................................................................................................... vii CHAPTER INTRODUCTION ...............................................................................................................1 I. ARTWORK, FAMILY STRUCTURE AND THE PARADOXES OF VALUE ..........12 A. Real and Surrogate Families .....................................................................................12 1. Sylvain Pons...........................................................................................................12 2. Theodore Decker ....................................................................................................22 B. Art Collections ..........................................................................................................34 1. Le Musée Pons .......................................................................................................36 2. The Goldfinch.........................................................................................................48 3. Hobie’s Changelings ..............................................................................................58 II. THE ELUSIVE VALUE OF ART, FAMILY AND SELF-WORTH ..........................68 A. Betrayal of Family and Art .......................................................................................68 1. Theodore Decker ....................................................................................................68 2. Sylvain Pons...........................................................................................................76 B. Art and Self-Worth: Crises of Value .........................................................................82 1. The Goldfinch.........................................................................................................82 2. Hobie’s Changelings ..............................................................................................87 v 3. Le Musée Pons .......................................................................................................88 CONCLUSION ..................................................................................................................91 APPENDIX : A SAMPLING OF WORKS REFERENCED ..........................................101 BIBLIOGRAPHY ............................................................................................................106 vi LIST OF FIGURES Figure Page 1. The Goldfinch, Carel (1654) Mauritshuis……………………………..………..101 2. The Madonna and Child with Saint Joseph, Saint John the Baptist and a Donor, del Piombo (1517) The National Gallery………………………………………102 3. Peter and Paul, della Porta (1513) Pinacoteca Vaticana……………………….103 4. Portrait of a Young Venetian Woman, Durer (1507) Dahlem Museum………..104 5. Wooded Landscape with Travellers and Beggars on a Road, Hobbema (1668) Windsor Castle………………………………………………………………….105 vii INTRODUCTION “En effet, tout s’enchaîne dans le monde réel. Tout mouvement y correspond à une cause, toute cause se rattache à l’ensemble; et, conséquemment, l’ensemble se représente dans le moindre mouvement.”1 This Master’s thesis will discuss the problematic nature of art valuation, centered on the ideas of use-value and exchange-value in Honoré de Balzac’s Le Cousin Pons and Donna Tartt’s The Goldfinch. The task of art valuation is multi-layered and complex. First, an object must be recognized as art and deemed to embody some sort of value, by someone other than the producer. In this initial phase, the work must be made public to some degree and then accepted as art by the audience to whom it is presented. Pierre Bourdieu describes this process of art becoming cultural objects valued by society in his work, The Field of Cultural Production: “The work of art is an object which exists as such only by virtue of the (collective) belief which knows and acknowledges it as a work of art.”2 This process, however, is not limited to recognizing objects as art, since it can be seen, for example, as mirroring the process that a private company goes through to become public during an initial public offering (IPO), in hopes of having its value recognized as a monetary value on the entity itself. Such a parallel leaves the reader no choice but to begin thinking
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