Around the time in which Sarrasine was published, Balzac experienced great success with another work, La Peau de Chagrin (1831).
As his career began to take off and his publications began to accumulate, Balzac developed increasingly lavish living habits and frequently made impulsive purchases (such as new furniture for his apartment and a hooded white cashmere gown designed to be worn by a monk, which he wore at night while writing), likely to distance himself from his family's prior debt, which had resulted from his business as an editor and printer's liquidation.
In 1841, an ill Balzac reached an agreement with Furne & Co., Dubochet, Hetzel and Paulin to publish La Comédie humaine.
In the 10 years that elapsed,[clarification needed] Balzac had developed a political career, becoming heavily involved in high society, which influenced much of his writing.
However, he continued to have financial difficulties despite his success, such as with La Cronique de Paris, a magazine he founded and abandoned, though he characteristically hid his worry in order to maintain appearances.
The next evening, the narrator tells Mme de Rochefide about Ernest-Jean Sarrasine, a passionate, artistic boy, who after having trouble in school became a protégé of the sculptor Bouchardon.
The story opens with a description of the extremes of inside and out, day and night, beauty and ugliness, age and youth, male and female that prevail in French high society and at the de Lanty's ball.
[citation needed] The novella ends with Mme de Rochefide and the narrator's condemning the castrato tradition as barbaric.
Barthes refers to Zambinella as "mignon" as it is used in French court society, where it means the homosexual lover, or "pet", of a man in power, in this case the cardinal, the "protector".
The body of the novella and the framed story that the narrator relates to Mme de Rochefide are about Ernest Jean Sarrasine and his unusual relationship with Zambinella.
Because of the popularity of Italian opera throughout 18th-century Europe (except France), castrati such as Farinelli, Ferri, Pacchierotti, and Senesino became the first operatic superstars, earning enormous fees and hysterical public adulation.
Besides the only wanted side effect (the lack of lengthening the vocal cords), a castrato's arms and legs were often disproportionally long, they did not have much muscle mass, and other problems, such as osteoporosis and erectile dysfunction were common later in life.
The story of Sarrasine is made much more believable by the fact that, due to their severe hormonal imbalance, castrati often developed real breast tissue, a condition called gynecomastia.
Those in the Realist movement wanted instead to portray the truth in every situation, avoiding exaggerating a scenario to emphasize only its good or bad qualities.
Realism tends to describe middle or lower class milieux in order to paint a picture of the regular life of a majority of the population at the time the literature was written.
[citation needed] Sarrasine makes many references and allusions to other sources, often to literature (Lord Byron, Ann Radcliffe, Jean-Jacques Rousseau), music (Gioacchino Rossini), religion, and the arts (Girodet's Endymion, Michelangelo).
[4] Furthermore, the replication of the statue into marble, and into two separate portraits (Adonis, and Girodet's Endymion) only perpetuates the symbolic notion that Sarrasine is always influenced by an intrinsic gender ambiguity.
[citation needed] In 2014, Rachel Tapley translated into English Maria Rusana Mulesan's libretto for Richard Beaudoin's opera Sarrasine after Balzac and Scève.