"It was Woman, with her sudden fears, her irrational whims, her instinctive fears, her unprovoked bravado, her daring and her delicious delicacy of feeling" Who is speaking in this way? Is it the story's hero, concerned to ignore the castrato concealed beneath the woman? Is it the man Balzac, endowed by his personal experience with a philosophy of Woman?
Interesting that the prompt is gender fluidity.
THE DEATH OF THE AUTHOR / ROLAND BARTHES
Barthes, Roland. 1967. “Death of the Author.” Edited by Brian O’Doherty. Translated by Richard Howard. Aspen 5+6 (Fall/Winter): Item 3. http://www.ubu.com/aspen/aspen5and6/threeEssays.html#barthes.
authoritative source of information
No joke is funny unless you see the point of it, and sometimes a point has to be explained.
Sounds logical, in the abstract. But the explanation is often known to “kill the joke”, to decrease the humour potential. In some cases, it transforms the explainee into the butt of a new joke. Something similar has been said about hermeneutics and æsthetics. The explanation itself may be a new form of art, but it runs the risk of first destroying the original creation.