Marriage Contract

Balzac’s novel “The Marriage Contract” (1835) is part of his “Scenes of Private Life,” which is one section of “The Human Comedy,” his great fiction series. A wealthy gentleman wishes to marry a beautiful heiress, whose mother is a Spanish Creole. (In this context, “Creole” refers to a person who is genetically European, but born in a New World colony.) As was common for wealthy families of that time, notaries are hired to negotiate a prenuptial agreement. The details of 19th-century financial a