Choice Review

White (Univ. of London, UK) studies the shift of social norms at the turn of the century, reflected in the move from the bourgeois realist novel to the naturalist novel. In presenting a pattern of social transgressions--adultery, incest, divorce--from social and legal perspectives, he draws on writings by well-known novelists such as Zola, Maupassant, and Huysmans and by less widely read authors--Hennique, Bourget, Charpentier. The author emphasizes the significant influence of Madame Bovary and L'Education Sentimentale, in which Flaubert examined marital and extramarital issues. White divides his book into four major sections: "The Promiscuous Narrative of Pot-Brouille"; "Pleasures and Fears of Paternity: Maupassant and Zola"; "The Blindness of Passions: Huysmans, Hennique and Zola"; and a coda, "Bourget's Un divorce and the 'honnete femme.'" Frequent French quotations and references to relevant novels and criticism enrich the text. This volume joins Naomi Segal's The Adulteress's Child: Authorship and Desire in the Nineteenth-Century Novel (CH, Sep'93), another useful book on the subject. Chapter notes. General readers and upper-division undergraduates through faculty. L. A. Russell; Rosemont College