Extract

It is family names that first strike the reader of Balzac's Ursule Mirouët. Not only does the opening chapter parade a staggeringly confusing, multi-hyphenated family history,1 the narrator delights in alluding to what he terms ‘cognomonisme’ (p. 783),2 while the senior aristocratic character possesses an obsession with the Portenduère-Kergarouët lineage. An attentive reading, however, reveals equal significance afforded to Christian names, starting with that of Ursule herself.

That Balzac intended his heroine to be seen as ‘saintly’ is beyond debate. Ursule has ‘saintes inspirations’ (p. 834). She possesses a ‘sainte naïveté’ (p. 857), exerts ‘une si sainte influence’ (p. 841) and is ‘la plus sainte et la plus charmante fille du Gâtinais’ (p. 950), though for the héritiers massed against her she is ‘cette sainte nitouche’ (p. 810; see also p. 775). A more specific association with Saint Ursula is, nonetheless, implied. She is made to refer to ‘Bonne sainte Ursule, ma chère patronne’ (p. 834). If she carefully marks in her almanach the feast days of her fiancé (Savinien), her tutor (Denis) and the aptly-named abbé Chaperon (Jean), the absence of any mark against her own feast day serves only to evoke its presence.

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