Colonel Chabert by Honoré de Balzac (Book Analysis): Detailed Summary, Analysis and Reading Guide

By Bright Summaries

Unlock the more straightforward side of Colonel Chabert with this concise and insightful summary and analysis!

This engaging summary presents an analysis of Colonel Chabert by Honoré de Balzac, which follows the titular character’s struggle to adapt to life in France after he was for years presumed dead. Chabert, a former war hero and a man of integrity, finds that there is no place for him in France’s new society, which is ruled by greed, selfishness and injustice, and is callously manipulated by his conniving ex-wife. The novel is one of the Scenes of Private Life in Balzac’s The Human Comedy, a hugely ambitious series of around 90 novels and novellas which aimed to depict the entirety of 19th-century French society. Balzac was one of France’s most prolific and influential writers, and his work played a major part in laying the groundwork for the modern realist novel.

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This in-depth and informative reading guide brings you:
• A complete plot summary
• Character studies
• Key themes and symbols
• Questions for further reflection

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• Language: English
• Publisher: BrightSummaries.com
• Release date: May 24, 2017
• ISBN: 9782806295507

Book preview

French writer

Born in Tours in 1799.

Died in Paris in 1850.

Notable works:

The Chouans (1829), novel

Eugénie Grandet (1833), novel

Father Goriot (1835), novel

Honoré de Balzac was one of the major French writers of the 19th century. As a young man, he found his way into the world of the Parisian aristocracy, where he became a fixture in the years that followed. However, he was soon ruined by various disastrous business ventures and his excessive lifestyle: literary writing, which he undertook passionately and diligently, became his only way of paying off his debts.

He was an ambitious man and embarked on a monumental work, La Comédie Humaine (The Human Comedy), which features more than 90 novels and which aimed to draw a complete portrait of the society of his time, so vast that it could compete with the official records. The most famous novels in the series include Eugénie Grandet (1833) and Father Goriot (1835).

Balzac is considered to be one of the founding fathers of the modern realist novel.

A gripping intrigue

Genre: novella

Reference edition: De Balzac, H. (2015) Colonel Chabert. Trans. Marriage, C. and Bell, E. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform.

1st edition: 1832

Themes: honour, war, revenge, marriage, money

Although Colonel Chabert first appeared in 1832, the definitive version of the novel was not published until 1844. It forms part of the Scènes de la vie privée (Scenes from Private Life) of Balzac’s Comédie humaine, and tells the story of Hyacinthe Chabert, a former colonel in Napoleon’s