Double Ending and Moral Scandal in Four Études de mœurs

This article revisits the inescapable combination of a moment (the ending) and an aim (morality) in order to examine diachronically Balzac’s practice of the dénouement based on four Études de mœurs. Responsible for the feeling of darkness and pessimism often associated with the second part of La Comédie humaine, the logic of the split ending is a way for Balzac to represent the moral scandal that revolutionary society is based upon and which it perpetuates.