Sarrasine

A frame story is a relatively brief narrative that bookends a work’s main story, often sharing themes, characters, symbols, etc. with the latter. The structure of Sarrasine places the main plotline within a frame narrative centered on the unnamed narrator and Madame de Rochefide. The narrator recounts the story of Sarrasine and La Zambinella decades after events supposedly occurred, allowing Balzac to place a geographically and temporally distant tale within the contemporary Parisian context of the La Comédie Humaine series. The two distinct settings are linked by common themes (for example, The Artificiality of Gender Roles) and motifs (for example, memento mori), by the artwork in the de Lanty family home, and by the figure of La Zambinella. 

The main plotline of the novella is a typical Romantic tragedy, following the conventional arc of a passionate young man meeting a tragic and violent demise after falling in love and succumbing to overwhelming passion. However, the frame story recontextualizes the dramatic narrative into a simple piece of gossip revealed in another man’s campaign of seduction.