# The Jealousies of a Country Town — Character guide

> Key figures in The Jealousies of a Country Town by Honoré de Balzac.

- [Mlle. Cormon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_jealousies_of_a_country_town_se/characters/mlle_cormon.md): Rose Cormon is the richest unmarried woman in Alençon, and her hand in marriage is the town's most contested prize. Her vanity, her piety, and her fear of dying unwed pull her between the Chevalier de Valois's aristocrat
- [Victurnien d'Esgrignon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_jealousies_of_a_country_town_se/characters/victurnien.md): Victurnien is the sole heir of an ancient name stripped of its fortune, raised by an aunt and a notary to believe the world owes him deference. His charm and recklessness collide with the d'Esgrignons' desperate pride, a
- [Maître Chesnel](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_jealousies_of_a_country_town_se/characters/chesnel.md): Chesnel is the bourgeois steward who saved the d'Esgrignon estates during the Revolution and has served them ever since with a devotion bordering on worship. His reverence for the old name blinds him to the family's faul
- [Chevalier de Valois](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_jealousies_of_a_country_town_se/characters/chevalier_de_valois.md): The Chevalier is Alençon's most polished survivor: a nobleman of threadbare means whose rouge, diamonds, and enormous appetite disguise decades of gallantry and debt. He and du Bousquier circle Mlle. Cormon like rival ch
- [Du Bousquier](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_jealousies_of_a_country_town_se/characters/du_bousquier.md): Du Bousquier is the town's new power: a man of the Revolution who made his fortune in army contracts and now wants respectability to match his money. Rebuffed by the aristocracy he once helped to ruin, he nurses a grudge
- [Mlle. Armande](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_jealousies_of_a_country_town_se/characters/mlle_armande.md): Mlle. Armande is the pious, self-effacing woman who saved the family's lands during the Terror and has managed its dwindling household ever since. She loves Victurnien with a devotion that blinds her to his faults and ma
- [Suzanne](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_jealousies_of_a_country_town_se/characters/suzanne.md): The wily, magnificent Suzanne slips through Alençon's drawing rooms as a maid with a past, then reinvents herself on the Parisian stage.
- [Du Croisier](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_jealousies_of_a_country_town_se/characters/du_croisier.md): A wealthy forage-contractor turned banker whose twice-refused ambition curdles into a smothered, decades-long hatred of the d'Esgrignons and Chesnel.
- [Mme. Granson](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_jealousies_of_a_country_town_se/characters/mme_granson.md): A poor widow of Alençon who stakes her hopes on her son Athanase's marriage to Mlle. Cormon, the town's most eligible heiress.
- [Athanase Granson](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_jealousies_of_a_country_town_se/characters/athanase_granson.md): A studious, sensitive young man whose hopeless love for the wealthy Mlle. Cormon drives him toward a quiet, devastating despair.
- [Mme. Camusot](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_jealousies_of_a_country_town_se/characters/mme_camusot.md): The wife of Alençon's magistrate, a woman of fashion and calculation whose drawing-room gossip shapes the town's social verdicts.
- [M. de Troisville](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_jealousies_of_a_country_town_se/characters/m_de_troisville.md): An Olympian vicomte and d'Esgrignon kinsman whose noble name and connections lend the old family a shield against provincial malice.
- [Abbé de Sponde](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_jealousies_of_a_country_town_se/characters/abbe_de_sponde.md): As Mlle. Cormon's pious uncle and spiritual advisor, the Abbé commands the confidence of the entire town, his high integrity and considerable fortune making him a person of importance. Yet beneath his saintly composure r
- [Émile Blondet](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_jealousies_of_a_country_town_se/characters/emile_blondet.md): Son of the local judge, Blondet has escaped Alençon for the glitter of Parisian letters, where he moves among the circles of the day as a sharp-penned observer. His return home places him between two worlds: the fashiona
- [Diane de Maufrigneuse](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_jealousies_of_a_country_town_se/characters/diane.md): Radiant, well-born, and thoroughly versed in the ways of Parisian society, Diane de Maufrigneuse descends upon the provinces like a comet, trailing rumors of elegance and intrigue. She becomes the lover of the young Vict
- [President du Ronceret](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_jealousies_of_a_country_town_se/characters/president_du_ronceret.md): As a local magistrate, du Ronceret wears the robe of impartial justice while nursing private grievances against the aristocracy that has long overshadowed his ambitions. He belongs to that class of provincial notables wh
- [Old M. Blondet](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_jealousies_of_a_country_town_se/characters/old_m_blondet.md): Vice-President Blondet belongs to the solid, unglamorous stratum of provincial society—the legal men whose judgments shape daily life in a country town. As Émile's father, he represents the respectable bourgeois world hi
- [Duchesse de Maufrigneuse](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_jealousies_of_a_country_town_se/characters/duchesse_de_maufrigneuse.md): Diane's mother, a prominent figure in Parisian high society.
- [Mme. du Croisier](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_jealousies_of_a_country_town_se/characters/mme_du_croisier.md): Du Croisier's wife, who harbors a secret grudge.
- [Marquis de Pombreton](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_jealousies_of_a_country_town_se/characters/marquis_de_pombreton.md): An elderly nobleman and relative of the d'Esgrignons.
- [Princess Goritza](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_jealousies_of_a_country_town_se/characters/princess_goritza.md): A foreign princess who appears in Parisian society.
- [Césarine](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_jealousies_of_a_country_town_se/characters/cesarine.md): A young woman in Alençon.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/the_jealousies_of_a_country_town_se/characters