Louisiana State University LSU Digital Commons LSU Master's Theses Graduate School 2014 L'Envers de l'histoire de Jacques Collin: On a New Approach to Balzac's Most Infamous Criminal Mastermind Lauren Elise Pendas Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College Follow this and additional works at: https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses Part of the French and Francophone Language and Literature Commons Recommended Citation Pendas, Lauren Elise, "L'Envers de l'histoire de Jacques Collin: On a New Approach to Balzac's Most Infamous Criminal Mastermind" (2014). LSU Master's Theses. 1617. https://digitalcommons.lsu.edu/gradschool_theses/1617 This Thesis is brought to you for free and open access by the Graduate School at LSU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in LSU Master's Theses by an authorized graduate school editor of LSU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. L’ENVERS DE L’HISTOIRE DE JACQUES COLLIN: ON A NEW APPROACH TO BALZAC’S MOST INFAMOUS CRIMINAL MASTERMIND A Thesis Submitted to the Graduate Faculty of the Louisiana State University and Agricultural and Mechanical College in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in The Department of French Studies by Lauren Elise Pendas B.A., Louisiana State University, 2008 December 2014 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Given the substantial time and energy I have invested in composing this thesis, everyone in my life has certainly come to view it as the black hole into which I have disappeared for over two years. I feel like a different person after having finally completed an incipient version of my project, whose materialization as a sort of manifesto evokes the integral role that the ideas therein have come to play in my approach to existence. There are no words to express the gratitude I feel for its unwitting benefactors, my family and my boyfriend, whose continuous support in spite of their completely valid exasperation is the only reason I survived it without debt or dementia. I must also thank my three advising professors, Dr. Greg Stone, Dr. Alexandre Leupin, and Dr. Frank Anselmo, whose ongoing encouragement and compassion in spite of many delays to my defense prevented me from giving up on understanding art, psychoanalysis, and the human condition on more than a superficial level. Last but not least, I must acknowledge my indebtedness to Honoré de Balzac and Jacques Lacan for their lifelong efforts to illuminate the unapparent yet essential elements of the human experience. Though the bulk of the works that they left behind still remains unknown to me, my journey of reading them to this point has already provided a stable foundation for my worldview, renewed my faith in humanity, and refined my vision of how to contribute to its progress. In this moment, my greatest hope is that I will remember to continue this journey, to keep exploring the never-ending paths that their works have opened before me and that everyday life ceaselessly threatens to obscure—the paths to the universal, fellow human beings, and singularity which forge the way to empathy, altruism, and self-awareness. ii TABLE OF CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ................................................................................................................................................................ ii ABSTRACT ...................................................................................................................................................................................... iv CHAPTER 1. INTRODUCTION: ON A NEW APPROACH TO THE APEX PREDATOR OF BALZAC’S PARIS .................... 1 1.1 Established Approaches to Understanding the Singularly Seductive, Particularly Remarkable “Vautrin” .............................. 8 1.2 Balzac and Lacan on the Human Condition’s Universal Frames ............................................................................................ 17 1.3 Letting Go of “Vautrin”: Jacques Collin’s Subjectivity and Balzac’s Moral Purpose ............................................................ 37 CHAPTER 2. L’HISTOIRE OFFICIELLE: COLLIN AS AN EXCEPTIONAL FIGURE OF MASTERY ..................................... 45 2.1 The Impression Made by Collin’s Initial Description in Le Père Goriot................................................................................ 45 2.2 In Search of the Source of Collin’s Power .............................................................................................................................. 54 2.2.1 The Worldview Collin Imposes on his Protégés .............................................................................................................. 55 2.2.2 The Unmatched Understanding of the Mind Informing Collin’s Modus Operandi ......................................................... 64 2.3 Balzac’s Employment of Readers’ Visceral Attraction to “Vautrin” ...................................................................................... 73 CHAPTER 3. L’HISTOIRE SECRÈTE: HOW BALZAC ASSERTS COLLIN’S TYPICAL SUBJECTIVITY .............................. 86 3.1 How Balzac Leads Readers to Challenge Collin’s Façade of Mastery ................................................................................... 90 3.1.1 Ambiguity and Empty Space as Constructive Obstacles to Understanding Collin .......................................................... 90 3.1.2 Collin’s Soliloquy in Vautrin as the Link Uniting Readers’ Glimpses of his Humanity ................................................. 97 3.2 Collin until 1816: Balzac on the Subject’s Division ............................................................................................................. 116 3.2.1 The Circumstances Shared by Collin’s Initial Arrest and Primary Trauma ................................................................... 117 3.2.2 Collin’s Reactive Formation of his Worldview as the Prohibition Complex’s Resolution ............................................ 124 3.3 Collin After 1816: Balzac on the Symptoms of Subjection to the Symbolic Order .............................................................. 143 3.3.1 Collin’s Protégé Plan as Repetition Automatism ........................................................................................................... 144 3.3.2 Completeness as the Source and Limit of Collin’s Control ........................................................................................... 163 CHAPTER 4. CONCLUSION: ON A NEW APPROACH TO THE MODERN MORALITY CRISIS ....................................... 191 4.1 Collin’s Corruption as the Counterpoint to Balzac’s Textual Ethics .................................................................................... 192 4.2 Embracing the Potential of Art and Psychoanalysis ............................................................................................................. 202 BIBLIOGRAPHY ........................................................................................................................................................................... 207 APPENDIX: SUMMARIES OF THE WORKS IN WHICH COLLIN APPEARS ....................................................................... 209 VITA ............................................................................................................................................................................................... 212 iii ABSTRACT Scholarship has failed to explore adequately how Honoré de Balzac evokes the human condition’s universal elements through his most infamous criminal mastermind: Jacques Collin, alias Vautrin. Unlike analyses of Collin that I have encountered, this thesis takes all three novels and the obscure play in which Collin appears into account, challenges the transparency of his statements and the narration’s descriptions of him, explores the conservative position framing Balzac’s critique of early nineteenth-century Paris, and actively focuses on evidence of Collin’s typical subjectivity (i.e. his insatiable desire and fallibility). Consequently, this reading does not evaluate Collin’s significance solely through his apparent exceptionality and dominance and/or the particular environment that produced him; it shows how Balzac’s nuanced way of attracting readers to Collin, associating Collin with paradoxical symbolism, and revealing patterns structuring Collin’s experience allows the author to reveal the connection between his controversial political thought, his opaque and inconsistent style, and the underlying themes and moral purpose uniting his works—that is, a profound understanding of the human mind anticipating that of psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan. Exploring contradictions between standing approaches to Collin and Balzac and Lacan’s shared ideas about the inescapable limitations characterizing the human condition, the introduction proposes that Balzac establishes Collin as a figure of mastery and then subtly subverts that façade as a means of indirectly exposing Collin’s and readers’ inability to transcend blindness and suffering completely. Examining how the novels construct Collin’s appearance of mastery, the second chapter explores how Balzac’s presentation of Collin motivates readers to deny or ignore evidence of Collin’s subjectivity. The third chapter emphasizes how Balzac undermines Collin’s powerful appeal by presenting how the play clarifies the connection between Collin’s repetitive behavior and his initial, traumatic arrest as well as how Collin’s