2005-10-14 Saint Eugenie

"Eugenie Grandet" starts off slowly, with a lot of ponderous scene setting and excessive over-description by Balzac. Nothing much happens for quite a while as the characters of the main protagonists are developed by the author. We meet Grandet, the shrewd miser (who would probably be much admired in todays society), his submissive , long suffering wife and their only child, the saintly Eugenie. The main themes in the story are the conflicts between love and money, worldliness and religion, selfishness and altruism , as Eugenie's love for her cousin causes major fissures within the predictable confines of her small family and the rural community in which she lives. Eugenie bears her suffering and loneliness with stoicism and dignity and Balzac's portrait of her becomes a memorable one as the novel reaches its conclusion.