Justice in the works by Honoré de Balzac: from the tablets of stone to the sterling tablets

Resumo

Among the writers who have become the court clerks for the difficult enforcement of justice, Balzac holds a prominent role — at least within the small-scale society spawned by literature, a microcosm of the macrocosm. Balzac, about whom one could say, without any exaggeration, that he really introduced the judicial world into the literary one, as the former comes to fuel countless plots in his works. Feeling nostalgic for an organic society terminated by the French Revolution, Balzac’s conception of justice dates back to that era and, according to him, the balance tipped, from then on, from the rule of law to a different social order symbolised by the contract, guaranteeing a new social compact — whose shortcomings are extensively scrutinised in The Human Comedy. But does justice reflect the law? Anything but sure, according to the Duke of Chaulieu and the warnings he professes in Letters of Two Brides: “From now on, only penal or financial laws shall rule: your money or your life.” One can only have further doubt when Vautrin, a character outlawed from society, rises to the rank of chief of the civil police force, which the real-life precedent of Eugène François Vidocq cannot entirely account for: beyond the particular case, Balzac hints at a structural change, the very one that goes along with entering the ice-cold waters of civil society.