Sarrasine by Balzac

Balzac’s scheme is so successful that I thought Zambinella was a woman, a beautiful, fragile, womanly perfect woman. However, in the end he reveals that Zambinella was a man. I think every reader will be deceived, and will be shocked as much as Sarrasine. He is stabbed to death when he was in the height of disappointment, anger, sadness, revengefulness, despair, and madness. I sympathize with him. He was made fun of by Zambinella, was disappointed and was killed.

This is a tragedy as well as a comedy. In the last page Madame de Rochefide gets angry to know the ending of the story. She resembles with Sarrasine because both of them become furious at the bad ending. Balzac apparently tried to add some moral taste, which ruins the entertaining element of the story.

Balzac is successful in representing the feeling of the reader. He knows how the reader feels at the shocking revelation. He spends more than one page describing the feeling of Sarrasine. If Balzac had spent only one or two lines to describe Sarrasine’s feeling, that would frustrate the reader. By writing as much as almost two pages, the reader’s psychological unbalance will be cured. The reader always wants a well-balanced ending.