Eugénie Grandet (1833) is a novel by French author Honoré de Balzac.
Written as Balzac began to formulate the grand scale of his La Comédie
humaine sequence, Eugénie Grandet was eventually tied into the
universe of his epic realist masterpiece, a holistic vision of
nineteenth-century French society which sought to observe the
consequences of the political, religious, and economic shifts of the
Revolution and in its aftermath. This novel looks to the moral failings
of a particular nouveau riche family, whose accumulation of wealth has
quickly erased any sense of their working-class origins.
After the Revolution, master cooper Felix Grandet married the daughter
of a successful merchant, ascended in the political and social life of
the town of Saumur, and quietly amassed an immense wealth through
industry and inheritances from his wife's family. Now an old man, Felix
possesses a fortune he feels no inclination to use, not even to improve
the daily lives of his ailing wife and young adult daughter Eugénie, who
faces frequent incursions from local suitors intent on marrying her to
attain her father's wealth. When Felix's nephew Charles arrives from
Paris with a letter from the patriarch's estranged brother Guillaume,
tragic circumstances force him to choose between habitual greed and the
immense pressure of performing what for anyone else would be a basic act
of generosity. Eugénie Grandet is a powerful story of fortune, power,
and the ease with which these lead to moral failure.
Published at the dawning of Balzac's most productive and
critically-acclaimed period, this novel is not only a good introduction
to his lengthy La Comédie humaine sequence, but an irreplaceable work
of nineteenth-century realist literature.
With a beautifully designed cover and professionally typeset manuscript,
this edition of Honoré de Balzac's Eugénie Grandet is a classic of
French literature reimagined for modern readers.
