Guest Lecture : Kristina Roney

Balzac, Society and the Birth of Modern Finance is a monograph project studying the rise of modern financial markets in France during its transition from a traditional agricultural to modern industrial economy through the literature of Honoré de Balzac. It traces the advancement of industrial financial markets from banking and credit to bonds, onto industrial specialization and investment portfolio diversification, before finally progressing into purely speculative products such as newspaper subscriptions and insurance policies. This trajectory demonstrates a clear divergence away from the material nature of an agricultural economy’s focus on land as sole source of investment and into increasingly nebulous forms of intangible investment commodities. This can further lead to investments in an ultimate, albeit informal, but purely intangible and sensual experience of sex to be covered in this final chapter. As Dorothy Kelly so aptly notes in her analysis of La Cousine Bette, “[w]hen men are unfaithful and pursue their own desires heedless of their families, sex disconnects from marriage and becomes a commodity that undermines the family’s well-being.”[1] Although the prior statement refers exclusively to male infidelity, this gendered approach reveals the historical events that set such schemes into motion and the motivations behind engagement by each of the two sexes.

[1] Dorothy Kelly, “Balzac, Gender and Sexuality: La Cousine Bette,” The Cambridge Companion to Balzac, Cambridge UP, 2017, pp 111-26, 124, emphasis added.