Continued the discussion on self-esteem and self-respect...

The 'hero' of Honoré de Balzac's masterpiece, Lost Illusions, is a young man from the French provinces, Lucien Chardon. Lucien, who has aspirations of being a famous writer, is in love with a married woman, Madame de Bargeton, who is, in the social circles of the small town of Angoulême, the very epitome of style and aristocracy.

Madame de Bargeton, a woman in her thirties, reciprocates the attention of her 'twenty-something' admirer, and after one well-orchestrated scandal by a jilted lover, convinces Lucien to accompany her (and her dim-witted cuckold of a husband) to Paris. Lucien is easily convinced. There is nothing Lucien feels he would not do for his lover, borrowing money from his impoverished family, and leaving a day before his only sibling's wedding.

In Madame de Bargeton, Lucien sees the epitome of feminine beauty, and in Paris, he sees the stage on which to build a literary career. Yet, when in Paris changes begin to occur. One evening, Madame de Bargeton invites Lucien to a drama production in a Paris theatre in which she is the guest of her aristocratic, prominent and very-much fashionable cousin, the Marquise d'Espard.

As a moth attracted to the brightest light...

It takes but a short while of gazing wonderstruck in the Theatre, for Lucien to see the contrast between the women of Paris and his lady of Angoulême. In Lucien's mind, every woman at the Theatre is far more attractive than his lover from the Provinces. Their hair, their make-up, their dress, their speech, everything about the Parisian women, pales his Madame into the background; in fact, he promptly falls in love with the Marquise, completely enamoured by a woman that he has but known for less than an hour

As Balzac writes of Lucien's thoughts, and the real drama unfolding in the Theatre: "he was fascinated by Madame d'Espard and fell in love with her immediately… The pretty little ways, the delicacy of speech, the refined tone of voice and slender proportions of this woman, so well-born, so highly placed, so envied, in short this queenly person, made the same impression on the poet as Madame de Bargeton had made on him in Angoulême". (Balzac, 1971, p. 178)

Returning to Lucien sitting in the Theatre gazing at the Marquise; his logic for doing so is simple, he does not love Madame de Bargeton, but is infatuated by her beauty, and flattered in the hope of her reciprocation. As a moth is attracted to the brightest light, so Lucien, turns his gaze from one woman to the next, whichever shines brightest to his fancy.

The reasons for Lucien's sudden loss of interest in Madame de Bargeton, a woman with whom he had pleaded with tears on his knees but a month before, can be found in the writing of St. John Chrysostom, in his, "On Marriage and Family Life".

Chrysostom in attempting to instruct the young men of his audience as to the fickleness of loving a woman based on physical beauty alone, spoke thus: "The beauty of the body, if it is not joined with virtue of the soul, will be able to hold a husband for twenty or thirty days, but will go no farther before it shows its wickedness and destroys all its attractiveness. As for those who radiate the beauty of the soul, the longer time goes by and tests their proper nobility, the warmer they make their husband's love and the more they strengthen their affection for him. Since this is so, and since a warm and genuine friendship holds between them, every kind of immorality is driven out. Not even any thought of wantonness ever enters the mind of the man who truly loves his own wife, but he continues always content with her". (Chrysostom, 1991, p. 100)

Expanding on Chrysostom's logic, a beautiful book cover can fascinate anyone, but the content of the book can only be appreciated and understood by a someone. To be enamoured by the book's cover will last a short while before boredom sets in; it is the writing within the book which challenges the mind and spirit, and feeds the reader to grow.

For this reason the French author, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, in Chapter 21 of his universally acclaimed fairy-tale, The Little Prince, has the Prince learn a lesson from the Fox which he has tamed: "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye".

To place physical beauty before spiritual,
is to grasp the short-term before the everlasting...

Our eyes being physical become tired long before our soul's which are immortal. It is our souls which give immortality to love, and not our physical beings. Further to this, King Solomon teaches in his Proverbs, that the woman who should capture the heart of a righteous man has the following characteristics:

"She gets up while it is still dark giving her household their food, giving orders to her serving girls. She sets her mind on a field, then she buys it; with what her hands have earned she plants a vineyard. She puts her back into her work and shows how strong her arms can be. She knows that her affairs are going well; her lamp does not go out at night. She sets her hands to the distaff, her fingers grasp the spindle. She holds out her hands to the poor, she opens her arms to the needy. Snow may come, she has no fears for her household, with all her servants warmly clothed … When she opens her mouth, she does so wisely; on her tongue is kindly instruction. She keeps good watch on the conduct of her household, no bread of idleness for her. Her children stand up and proclaim her blessed, her husband, too, sings her praises: Many women have done admirable things, but you surpass them all!' Charm is deceitful, and beauty empty; the woman who fears Yahweh is the one to praise." (Proverbs 31: 15 - 21; 26 - 30, The New Jerusalem Bible)

That we indeed have a real crisis before us is without doubt. Naomi Wolf in her study The Beauty Myth, (1991) even goes as far to say of contemporary society: "Women have face-lifts in a society in which women without them appear to vanish from sight". To place physical beauty before spiritual, is to grasp the short-term before the everlasting, and is to place "due-dates" on relationships as we do with nearly all else in our ever increasingly "disposable world".

In a world which places so much importance on the physical beauty of the individual, and which through the media manufactures for us what we know as 'beautiful', it is vital for each of us to take a stand back from the bright lights which fascinate us, to come to terms with who and what is attracting us, and who and what we are attracting to ourselves. Even some of our greatest religious heroes have needed a reminder to eschew from the superficial understanding of humanity as in the case of the Prophet Samuel who was reprimanded by God: "Take no notice of his appearance or his height, for I have rejected him; God does not see as human beings see; they look at appearances but Yahweh looks at the heart". (1 Samuel 16: 19, The New Jerusalem Bible)

Two hundred years ago, the Irish poet, Thomas Moore, returned home one evening to find his wife distraught. Moore's wife was a woman renowned for her physical beauty, and there she was sitting in the parlour of their home shrouded in tears. She had been informed that she had succumbed to an incurable illness to which her skin would constantly peel and flake; she was fearful of losing her husband's love, by becoming disfigured.

As legend teaches us, Moore settled his wife to sleep and then went to pen a hymn for her, which strikes at the very core of how human beings are to love one another, with the spiritual preceding the physical. Moore's wife awoke to the following words, words which leave the likes of Lucien Chardon as men and women who have never understood the meaning of love:

"Believe me if all those endearing young charms,
Which I gaze on so fondly today, were to change by tomorrow
And fleet in my arms, like fairy gifts fading away.
Though would'st still be adored, as this moment thou art,
Let thy loveliness fade as it will.

And around the dear ruin, each wish of my heart,
Would entwine itself verdantly still.
It is not while beauty and youth are thine own
And thy cheeks, unprofaned by a tear,
that the ferver and faith of a soul can be known,
To which time will but make thee more dear,
No the heart that has truly loved, never forgets,
But as truly loves on to the close.

As the sunflower turns, on her god when he sets,
The same look which she'd turned when he rose."

Andrew

Photo Credits: Clicking on each of the photos will take you to the original source of the image. harald wittmaack, Ulm, BW, Germany http://www.sxc.hu/photo/632186

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©2006 Dr Andrew Thomas Kania

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