La Maison Nucingen Essai d’analyse comportementale

This article offers an analysis of the economic behaviour of the characters in La Maison Nucingen. What is the motor of their actions ? Where classic theory would respond “interest”, Balzac substitutes a more complex response, mixing behavioural mimicry and the role of the passions. Behind these two competing analyses, we discover the respective advantages and inconveniences of the novelistic narrative and the economic model for the rationalisation of the real.