ABSTRACT
What happens when fakes straddle the line between fiction and reality? In the previous chapter, we saw how widespread fraudulence can be in Balzac’s world: fakes represent a problem, and it is the resolution of this problem that provides the engine of the narratives. In the novels about social hypocrisy, the reader may, if he’s lucky, catch the clues betraying identities concealed behind new names, fortunes, and other disguises. In this sense the reader occupies the position of the detective— or at least plays the role of the detective’s sidekick, since it is the narrator who, like Sherlock Holmes condescending to Watson, often nudges the reader toward an understanding of the truth. Balzac’s world is rife with fakes; the declaration that “All is true!” (Comédie humaine, III, 50) refers only to the mode of representation, whereas in the world represented the author seems to assert with equal gusto that “All is false!” However, while this fraudulence is generally unmasked in the end, it is rarely punished: old Goriot’s daughters maintain the secret of their lowly origins at the price of their father’s permanent erasure; Colonel Chabert sacrifices himself, leaving his scheming wife in control of the new identity she has created; Vautrin turns his coat and joins the forces of order. In short, while the reader finally understands the lies festering at the heart of society, this knowledge remains on the outside of the fictional world, shared between reader and narrator; inside the fiction the moral order remains unchanged.
