Eugenie Grandet

Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) produced a huge collection of novels novellas and short stories earning him recognition as a great master of the novel as well as one of the creators of literary realism. He collected and arranged his works under the name La Comédie humaine which he then divided into eight major topics. Eugénie Grandet was placed in the section titled Scenes from Provincial Life. The story takes place in the French town of Saumur where a miserly but respected man called old Grandet lives with his wife servant and daughter Eugénie. Greedy and power-hungry Grandet is a dominant force in the novel as he is in his community and home. Unable to entirely overcome the genetic and learned behaviors inherited from her father Eugénie Grandet is a wonderfully human character and her ability to draw sympathy without imposing judgments on the reader is testimony to Balzac''s artistic skill as a novelist.