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Balzacian Aporia: The Case of La Vieille Fille

In the majority of the critical assessments of Balzac's La Vieille Fille, the inconsistencies and contradictions found within the portrayal of its picturesque characters have either been considered flaws or have been the subject of attempts at rationalization. The present article, which shares a starting point with the perspective adopted by Fredric Jameson, argues that these inconsistencies are linked, through an acceptance of the inevitability of aporia, to the way both fiction and writing acknowledge their ultimate impossibility. It goes on to show that the radical ambiguity of Balzac's text with regard to truth and falsehood, and the generic instability it displays, point to a representation, at the level of political allegory, in which difference is deprived of all pertinence, while arguing, more generally, that it is the activity of representation itself that is Balzac's central concern.