7: Eugénie Grandet

Honoré de Balzac, Eugénie Grandet

In a sleepy French provincial place called Saumur , old Grandet is a known rich miser. He keeps his wife and daughter, Eugénie living in minimal comfort, while he counts his tinkling, sparkling gold at night and schemes to enrich himself further. One day, Charles Grandet, old Grandet’s nephew, arrives in Saumur, sent by his own bankrupt father to be sheltered from his failure and subsequent suicide. In a few short days, Eugénie falls in love with Charles, Charles learns of his father’s death and bankruptcy, Charles decides to make his fortune in the West Indies, Eugénie gives Charles all her father’s gifts to her to start his journey, and Charles finds himself caring for Eugénie, all under the nose of old Grandet who wants nothing more than to be rid of his poor relation for fear of being asked for his gold. The long denouement of these events occupies the rest of the book.

This book is about misers and their miserly energy. Nearly every character has old Grandet’s miserliness. Eugénie, Charles and old Grandet are all guilty of stinginess. Grandet is the very epitome of a miser, who’s unwilling to part with his money. He keeps his family living in minimal comfort and gets his food for free from his tenants and he avoids spending money at all. In previous times, the people who were rich were bourgeoisie or upper class and they wanted to use their money to maintain their dignity. But after the revolution, anyone could become rich and so we have this new breed of rich people, who at their very roots, are the impecunious peasants who had to hoard their savings little by little in an old sock under the bed and who know the meaning of penury. They have no concept of living with accordance to their income; they still live as though they were poor and don’t want anyone to know that they’re rich, for fear of being robbed. This tendency to cling onto capital is taken to the extreme in old Grandet. Doesn’t old Grandet say again and again that he hasn’t any money, despite the barrels of gold in his room?

Then, there is Charles who is at first a fine dandy with fancy clothes and a generosity disposition. He, in an off-handed remard, offers to give Nanon his dressing robe, which was fine enough to be an altar piece, when he leaves, leaving the old servant with a strong impression of his generosity. In truth, he is just as stingy as Old Grandet. He doesn’t fall in love with Eugénie. He hasn’t room in his heart for her because the drawstrings of his heart are as closely pinched as the drawstrings of Grandet’s purse.

Later, Eugénie also betrays the same stinginess, this time towards herself. She stints herself in clothing and comfort, just as her father did to her. She also stints herself in life because she never leaves that provincial town to find love or a life; she’s to set in the ways of a countrywoman to want to go to Paris and she has no choice but to give up.

So, three Grandets and three different types of stinginess, but all caused by the same ancestral trait of the poor man hoarding all his treasures and hiding them from the prying eyes of his neighbours. And poor Eugénie! Despite her generosity of spirit, she still could not escape the old miserly ways that had enveloped her life for so long. That is the tragedy.