Eugénie Grandet: writing, Washington Square, money

1/ I like the house descriptions in Eugénie Grandet. 

“When Charles saw the yellow, smoke-stained walls of the well of the staircase, where each worm-eaten step shook under the heavy foot-fall of his uncle, his expectations began to sober more and more. He fancied himself in a hen-roost. […]

“Why the devil did my father send me to such a place?” he said to himself.

When they reached the first landing he saw three doors painted in Etruscan red and without casings,—doors sunk in the dusty walls and provided with iron bars, which in fact were bolts, each ending with the pattern of a flame, as did both ends of the long sheath of the lock.” (Ch.3) 

Charles is the handsome nephew from Paris—nephew of Monsieur Grandet and cousin of Eugénie. He crashes Eugénie’s birthday party, to everyone’s surprise. 

Now check out the old man’s office, which nobody is allowed to enter: 

“… there, no doubt, while Nanon’s loud snoring shook the rafters, while the wolf-dog watched and yawned in the courtyard, while Madame and Mademoiselle Grandet were quietly sleeping, came the old cooper to cuddle, to con over, to caress and clutch and clasp his gold. The walls were thick, the screens sure. He alone had the key of this laboratory, where—so people declared—he studied the maps on which his fruit-trees were marked, and calculated his profits to a vine, and almost to a twig.” (ibid.) 

What an image. 

Now look at the room poor Charles is going to sleep in. 

“Charles stood aghast in the midst of his trunks. After casting his eyes on the attic-walls covered with that yellow paper sprinkled with bouquets so well known in dance-houses, on the fireplace of ribbed stone whose very look was chilling, on the chairs of yellow wood with varnished cane seats that seemed to have more than the usual four angles, on the open night-table capacious enough to hold a small sergeant-at-arms, on the meagre bit of rag-carpet beside the bed, on the tester whose cloth valance shook as if, devoured by moths, it was about to fall, he turned gravely to la Grande Nanon…” (ibid.) 

Such a nightmare for a dandy Parisian. 

2/ The birthday scene is good—at first the des Grassins and the Crouchots are rivals, both going after Eugénie, i.e. the money, then they’re interrupted by the unexpected arrival of the handsome cousin from Paris and they now form a temporary alliance against the common enemy. The premise of Eugénie Grandet makes me think of Washington Square (I’m aware that Henry James sees Balzac as his master) and I liked Washington Square a lot, but Balzac’s novel now “exposes” a fault with James’s novel: the fact that Morris Townsend is the only one courting and pursuing Catherine Sloper, considering how rich she is. I know the point is the battle of minds between him and Dr Sloper, and then between the 2 men, Catherine, and the aunt, but still… 

3/ The titular character isn’t described till chapter 4, after the house and after everyone else, even the handsome cousin. Eugénie, now infatuated with the cousin, is looking at herself in the mirror and judging her own looks; the description however is Balzac’s—it is Eugénie as seen by her creator, not as seen by herself.

Balzac mentions “softer Christian sentiment”, “love and kindness”, etc. and she has a well-curved bust, but the main point still is that our poor Eugénie isn’t good-looking: enormous head, “masculine yet delicate forehead”, grey eyes, thick nose, round throat, etc. I mean: 

“Eugenie, tall and strongly made, had none of the prettiness which pleases the masses; but she was beautiful with a beauty which the spirit recognizes, and none but artists truly love.” (Ch.4) 

It’s meant to be complimentary but isn’t that flattering, is it? 

I don’t have much to say about the passages about Eugénie falling in love (all the stuff about “virgin modesty” and “happiness” and “angelic nature” blah blah blah get on my nerves a bit and I’m not really a fan of stories about love at first sight), but this is interesting:  

“Perceiving for the first time the cold nakedness of her father’s house, the poor girl felt a sort of rage that she could not put it in harmony with her cousin’s elegance. She felt the need of doing something for him,—what, she did not know.” (ibid.) 

I like that. 

The thing that interests me more than Eugénie’s change, which is natural and expected because of her youth and sheltered life, is that Nanon the servant also changes though she’s still afraid of the master. Charles has an effect on her too. 

SPOILER ALERT: For the rest of the blog post, I will discuss some significant plot points that those of you who haven’t read the book may not want to know.    

4/ Chapter 5 has a marvellous breakfast scene of the morning after the birthday: first Eugénie, now head over heels in love, takes advantage of her father’s absence to make “a feast” for her cousin, with bread, eggs, butter, and so on; then the cousin comes down asking for “anything, it doesn’t matter what, a chicken, a partridge” and the poor girl realises how meagre, how pathetic the meal she has prepared is; the scene is marvellous, the young Parisian and his country relatives unable to understand each other; then the man of the house comes home, to everyone’s panic and Charles’s amazement at their reaction…

What a vivid, lively scene. 

5/ See the moment the miser has to break the news to his nephew: 

“Grandet was not at all troubled at having to tell Charles of the death of his father; but he did feel a sort of compassion in knowing him to be without a penny…” (Ch.5) 

Ugh. 

““The first burst must have its way,” said Grandet […] “But that young man is good for nothing; his head is more taken up with the dead than with his money.”

Eugenie shuddered as she heard her father’s comment on the most sacred of all griefs. From that moment she began to judge him.” (ibid.) 

That’s a significant moment—Eugénie is starting to see her father more clearly and starting to rebel, the way Catherine Sloper does. 

I can’t help thinking that Balzac’s characters are types and can be summed up in one word or one phrase: Monsieur Grandet is the miser, Madame Grandet is the pious wife, Nanon is the faithful servant, Charles is the dandy, Eugénie is the sheltered daughter, etc. The characters in Eugénie Grandet can also be roughly divided into 2 groups: those who are obsessed with money and those who aren’t. Another way of categorising them is selfish people and selfless ones, but the plot of Eugénie Grandet is driven by money and its main theme relates to money, and I expect that whatever Eugénie does will involve money, whether or not she personally cares about it. 

As a type, Monsieur Grandet is a striking study of a miser—he is a force of nature. I mean, he tells his servant to shoot some crows and make soup instead of getting meat from a butcher’s. He even cuts up sugar cubes! 

Here’s the man calculating and scheming. 

“There was in him, as in all misers, a persistent craving to play a commercial game with other men and win their money legally. To impose upon other people was to him a sign of power, a perpetual proof that he had won the right to despise those feeble beings who suffer themselves to be preyed upon in this world.” (Ch.6) 

When thinking about earning, he thinks in millions; when thinking about spending, he thinks in sous. 

That is interesting, and even more interesting if you remember that he is 70. That’s a lot of energy for a 70-year-old man (the year is 1819). 

6/ Out of curiosity, I did a few searches. In the Katharine Prescott Wormeley translation I’m reading (which is on Gutenberg), the word “money” appears 63 times, “gold” or “gold-pieces” 108 times, “francs” 113 times, “louis” 19 times. 

7/ Balzac is cynical: 

“…Charles was a true child of Paris, taught by the customs of society and by Annette herself to calculate everything; already an old man under the mask of youth. He had gone through the frightful education of social life, of that world where in one evening more crimes are committed in thought and speech than justice ever punishes at the assizes; where jests and clever sayings assassinate the noblest ideas; where no one is counted strong unless his mind sees clear: and to see clear in that world is to believe in nothing, neither in feelings, nor in men, nor even in events,—for events are falsified. There, to “see clear” we must weigh a friend’s purse daily, learn how to keep ourselves adroitly on the top of the wave, cautiously admire nothing, neither works of art nor glorious actions, and remember that self-interest is the mainspring of all things here below.” (Ch.8) 

Jeez. 

And more: 

“Charles, so far, had had no occasion to apply the maxims of Parisian morality; up to this time he was still endowed with the beauty of inexperience. And yet, unknown to himself, he had been inoculated with selfishness. The germs of Parisian political economy, latent in his heart, would assuredly burst forth, sooner or later, whenever the careless spectator became an actor in the drama of real life.” (ibid.)

Contrasted with that is the angelic provincial girl: 

“To young girls religiously brought up, whose minds are ignorant and pure, all is love from the moment they set their feet within the enchanted regions of that passion. They walk there bathed in a celestial light shed from their own souls, which reflects its rays upon their lover; they color all with the flame of their own emotion and attribute to him their highest thoughts. A woman’s errors come almost always from her belief in good or her confidence in truth.” (ibid.) 

In all honesty, I’m not really a fan of these passages—I don’t go along with the idea that, except for those who are ignorant and pure, everyone in society has to believe in nothing, has to be false, hypocritical, and calculating, as though there’s nothing beyond it. 

8/ The childlike simplicity of Eugénie, which I assume is meant to be endearing, is getting on my nerves.