How long does it take to read Cousin Bette?
Cousin Bette by Honoré de Balzac takes about 8 hours 7 minutes to read at 250 words a minute.
Part of The Human Comedy
Previous: Un homme d’affaires Next: Jésus-Christ en Flandre
About 8 hours 7 minutes
A week or two of reading
First published 1888. 443 pages, about 121,825 words.
17 days at 30 minutes a day
Estimate based on 275 words per page.
At other speeds
| Slow, 150 words a minute | 13 hours 32 minutes |
| Average, 250 words a minute | 8 hours 7 minutes |
| Fast, 400 words a minute | 5 hours 5 minutes |
The page count is the median across 69 editions, so your copy may differ. How we calculate.
About the book
Poor, plain spinster Bette is compelled to survive on the condescending patronage of her socially superior relatives in Paris: her beautiful, saintly cousin Adeline, the philandering Baron Hulot and their daughter Hortense. Already deeply resentful of their wealth, when Bette learns that the man she is in love with plans to marry Hortense, she becomes consumed by the desire to exact her revenge and dedicates herself to the destruction of the Hulot family, plotting their ruin with patient, silent malice. Cousin Bette is a gripping tale of violent jealousy, sexual passion and treachery, and a brilliant portrayal of the grasping, bourgeois society of 1840's Paris. The culmination of the Comedie humaine, Balzac's epic chronicle of his times, it is one of his greatest triumphs as a novelist.
Subjects: Fiction, Social life and customs, Chinese fiction, French fiction, Crime, Personality and emotions
