Reading Order
Eugénie Grandet Reading Order
Eugénie Grandet (1833) by Honoré de Balzac is the most perfectly constructed novel of the Comédie humaine — the story of Eugénie Grandet, the only child of a miser père Grandet in the small town of Saumur, who falls in love with her Parisian cousin Charles, gives him her gold savings, and then waits seven years for him to return from the Indies while her father controls every aspect of her life. The novel is constructed with a precision that the longer Comédie humaine novels cannot achieve: the Saumur setting is established with architectural and sociological thoroughness in the first twenty pages, the characters are immediately typical and immediately individual, and the emotional economy of the novel (in which Eugénie's love and her father's avarice are placed in direct opposition, both forms of absolute devotion to a single value) is maintained throughout without relaxation. Balzac presents Eugénie as one of the few genuinely virtuous characters in the Comédie humaine — she is not stupid, she sees her father's avarice and Charles's eventual betrayal clearly — and the provincial setting is used not as a background for action but as a social determinant: Saumur forms Eugénie as surely as Paris forms Rastignac, and the forms it gives her are incompatible with the Paris that Charles has chosen.
Where to start
Eugénie Grandet
Complete Eugénie Grandet Book List
- 1Buy
Eugénie Grandet
Honoré de Balzac·1833·The complete novel; Balzac revised it substantially between the 1833 serial publication and the 1839 book edition; the book edition is definitive - 2Buy
Le Père Goriot
Honoré de Balzac·1835·The companion in paternal obsession: where Goriot's obsession is paternal love, Grandet's is avarice; both are studies in the absolute devotion to a single value that destroys everything around it in the Comédie humaine - 3Buy
César Birotteau
Honoré de Balzac·1837·The bourgeois commercial companion: the perfumer who rises and falls through commercial ambition is the Saumur world seen from a different angle — bourgeois virtue and its destruction by the Paris financial world that Charles chose over Eugénie - 4Buy
Ursule Mirouet
Honoré de Balzac·1841·The provincial novel that is closest to Eugénie Grandet in construction and moral tone: the innocent provincial girl protected by her guardian and threatened by her avaricious cousins; the same structure of provincial virtue against bourgeois avarice - 5Buy
Middlemarch
George Eliot·1872·The English counterpart in provincial virtue: Dorothea Brooke is the English Eugénie — the woman of genuine virtue and large spiritual ambition confined by a provincial world that cannot accommodate her; both are studies in wasted female greatness
Eugénie Grandet — Frequently Asked Questions
What is avarice and why is it Balzac's central vice?
For Balzac, avarice is the bourgeois form of absolute passion — the single-minded devotion to one value (money) that characterizes the bourgeoisie as Stendhal's vanity characterizes the aristocracy. Père Grandet's avarice is not a moral failing but a social force: it is what the Saumur business world has made him, and it shapes every relationship he has. Balzac presents it with the same fascinated horror he gives to all forms of obsession in the Comédie humaine.
Is Charles a villain in Eugénie Grandet?
Balzac is careful not to make him simply villainous. Charles is a young Parisian dandy who has been genuinely kind to Eugénie while in Saumur and who makes the rational calculation, when his prospects improve in the Indies, that an heiress is better than his provincial cousin. His betrayal is the action of a man who has been formed by Paris and cannot be expected to value what Saumur values. Balzac presents this as sociological determinism rather than individual wickedness.
Why is Eugénie virtuous when all the men around her are avaricious?
Balzac argues that provincial women of a certain type — isolated from commerce and from the social ambitions of Paris — can develop a purity of character impossible in the city. Eugénie has no outlet for her intelligence or energy except love, and so her love is total, patient, and uncorrupted by calculation. This is both her virtue and her tragedy: the quality that makes her exceptional makes her incompatible with the world as it is.
What happens to Eugénie at the end?
She inherits her father's enormous fortune, marries the Président de Bonfons (for whom she has no feeling but who will be politically useful), and lives the rest of her life as one of the richest women in Saumur, doing good works, refusing to spend on herself. The ending is quietly devastating: the fortune that was supposed to represent everything beautiful is in the hands of someone who doesn't want it and cannot use it for the life she actually wanted.
Is Eugénie Grandet a good introduction to Balzac?
Yes — for readers who prefer concentrated, controlled fiction to the sprawling ambition of the longer novels. Eugénie Grandet is complete in itself, does not require knowledge of other Comédie humaine characters, and achieves in a single volume what Le Père Goriot achieves in its multiple parallel plots. After Eugénie Grandet, the ideal next step is either Père Goriot (for Comédie humaine breadth) or La Cousine Bette (for the other great Balzac of female virtue destroyed by the surrounding world).
Monthly Newsletter
Never miss a big release
Get the most anticipated upcoming books delivered to your inbox once a month — no spam, no filler.
Monthly only. Unsubscribe anytime.
Book links are Amazon affiliate links. As an Amazon Associate, BookReleaseRadar earns from qualifying purchases at no extra cost to you.