L’Avare and Le Bourgeois Geltilhomme—reading Molière, thinking about Shakespeare

I read L’Avare (The Miser) and Le Bourgeois Geltilhomme (here translated as The Self-Made Gentleman) in the translation by George Graveley. The latter is also known as The Bourgeois Gentleman, The Middle-Class Aristocrat, or The Would-Be Noble. 

1/ Why do people ignore plays? And neglect the 17th century? Molière is very good and very funny. Laugh-out-loud funny even on paper. 

If we compare him and Shakespeare, Shakespeare’s sense of humour tends to be puns, wordplay, and bawdy jokes (the man’s English after all); these things aren’t in Molière, at least not in the plays I’ve read; his comedy tends to heavily focus on satire, stock characters, farcical elements, fast-paced dialogue, mishearing or misunderstanding, etc. I admit that Molière is funnier, but, because of the nature of their comedy, Shakespeare has more funny lines that can be standalone quotes. 

Another difference is that Molière—not just in these plays but I believe in general—tends to adhere to the classical unities: unity of action (one principal action), unity of time (no more than 24 hours), and unity of place (a single location). Shakespeare doesn’t give a toss.  

2/ I don’t have much to say about The Miser. It’s a delight. One thing I’m gonna note is that even though Molière and Balzac both depict misers in the characters of Harpagon and Felix Grandet, The Miser has not only the light-heartedness of a comedy but also the warmth of a man who makes fun of human foibles but still likes humanity, whereas Eugenie Grandet presents a rather cynical view of the world.  

Molière makes me think of Henry Fielding. 

3/ Like Shakespeare, Molière was also an actor. I just didn’t realise that he gave himself the main roles (Harpagon in The Miser, Jourdain in The Self-Made Gentleman). 

So he’s like Orson Welles. 

4/ Reading these plays—one is about a miser and the other is a social climber—I’ve realised that, unlike Molière, Shakespeare doesn’t really do satire. His comedies are a wide range of genres: farce (The Comedy of Errors), slapstick (The Merry Wives of Windsor), romcom (Much Ado About Nothing), pastoral comedy (As You Like It), and others that are harder to categorise (what kind of comedy is A Midsummer Night’s Dream, for example?), but not satire—one counter-example I can think of is Malvolio in Twelfth Night, but he’s not the central character and more importantly, he may have been initially created as a satire of the Puritans but became an individual, not just a type. 

(My view of Malvolio is heavily influenced by the performance of Richard Briers—he gives the character tragic stature).

Another thing is that Shakespeare has more variety, at least that’s my impression. When I got the Shakespeare bug a couple of years ago, I was reading one play after another—not all his plays at once but still many in succession—and it was all fine. Now I’m exploring Molière—Britannica says he wrote 31 plays (presumably that includes the one-act plays)—the third play, The Self-Made Gentleman, starts to feel a bit samey—it’s still very funny, but I can see the similarities. 

5/ The Self-Made Gentleman is hilarious though. Molière is a bit hard to quote because often the humour is some back-and-forth that goes on for a page or two, but here’s a funny line when Jourdain (the social climber) meets a Marquise: 

“M. JOURDAIN Madam, it is a great honour for me to see myself so fortunate as to be so happy as to have the pleasure that you have had the kindness to accord the favour of doing me the honour of honouring me with the privilege of your presence; and if I had only the merit to merit a merit such as yours, and Heaven, envious of my good fortune, had accorded me the joy of seeing myself worthy… to… to…” 

(Act 3) 

6/ In both plays, Molière gives the strong impression that he pokes fun at different types of people but still likes people—there’s no malice in his laughter—Jourdain is ridiculous, yes, but aren’t we all? In our own ways? 

Is Dangerous Liaisons a cynical book?

Under my previous blog post about Dangerous Liaisons (or Les Liaisons dangereuses), Michael wrote: 

“I feel odd commenting because I’ve never read the book. But I think I still need some convincing that this is a book I would enjoy.

It sounds extraordinarily well written, but didn’t you find the ugliness and corruption of the characters off-putting? I recall, in reading Madame Bovary, feeling like the novel was extremely well-written and a deeply insightful picture of people whom I didn’t like and didn’t want to know (and maybe I’m wrong, but I felt Flaubert felt the same way.) Corrupt or ugly people can be fun to read about of course, but I find I don’t love books where they are the prime focus. There’s a novel by Trollope called The Eustace Diamonds that suffers from this problem; the main character is more or less a sociopath, and I find Thai [sic] tire of her company. Vanity Fair is a counter example, I suppose, but then Becky Sharp is just one character, and there are some other redeeming central characters in that novel that balance her out. Perhaps I’m just an unsophisticated and puritanical American, I don’t know. But Does [sic] Laclos have any redeeming central characters? I guess I just need some convincing that I’d enjoy it.” 

Interesting question, so I thought I’d answer in a blog post. 

To put it simply: is Dangerous Liaisons a cynical book that just focuses on people’s ugliness and corruption? 

I’d say no. 

Firstly, Dangerous Liaisons is not a celebration of cynicism and corruption. The sex games, the manipulation, the way Merteuil and Valmont play with others’ feelings bring misery to everyone involved, including themselves.

Secondly, Choderlos de Laclos dissects the cruelty and depravity of these two characters, but doesn’t depict these traits as universal or common traits of humanity—Merteuil is seen as exceptionally evil; she is, in the end, condemned and shunned by society. 

Contrast that with Balzac’s vision of life in Eugénie Grandet: “She has the noblest qualities of sorrow, the saintliness of one who has never soiled her soul by contact with the world…” (translated by Katharine Prescott Wormeley). In Eugénie Grandet, the world is corrupt; everyone is materialistic, selfish, scheming, dishonest; the father has no humanity; the only good people are Eugénie Grandet, her mother, and Nana, who do not understand society and its lies and deceit, who are not soiled “by contact with the world.” 

That is not the vision of life in Dangerous Liaisons: Cécile de Volanges, her mother Madame de Volanges, Madame de Tourvel, Madame de Rosemonde (Valmont’s aunt) are good people; Danceny is also arguably good-natured, though his infidelity to Cécile is disappointing. 

Thirdly, evil doesn’t triumph. It corrupts, it destroys, but it doesn’t win in the end. Think about King Lear: evil destroys many things in its wake and kills Cordelia (and arguably Lear), but the evil characters of the play—Cornwall, Oswald, Goneril, Regan, Edmund—are all defeated. It is similar with Dangerous Liaisons. 

Choderlos de Laclos depicts two characters who like pulling the strings and manipulating other people and having power over them, but they gradually realise that many things are beyond their control. Despite their cleverness, despite their manipulation, despite their understanding of psychology, Merteuil cannot control Valmont, Valmont cannot control his own feelings for Tourvel, Merteuil cannot triumph over Cécile. Their little games are all futile. 

Contrast Laclos’s vision of life in Dangerous Liaisons and the vision of life in Naomi: Tanizaki’s book is a picture of perversity, control, and baseness; the manipulative character triumphs in the end; Naomi left a bad taste in my mouth. That is not the case for Dangerous Liaisons. 

Most importantly, Dangerous Liaisons is a masterpiece. Choderlos de Laclos’s psychological insight and talent for characterisation are astonishing. Even if it doesn’t end up as one of your favourite novels (which after all is personal), it is very much worth reading. 

On Eugénie Grandet, or my problems with Balzac

Spoiler alert: I usually don’t put up a spoiler alert even though I spoil everything, but Eugénie Grandet has an interesting plot and I will discuss significant plot points that you may not want to know, including the ending. 

1/ Eugénie Grandet, if you don’t know the book, is about the daughter of the richest man in Saumur, who happens to be a miser. There are 2 families in town competing for Eugénie, because of her inheritance—Eugénie doesn’t know because she’s not aware of how rich her family is, Monsieu Grandet knows they’re after his money but keeps hanging out with them in order to squeeze money out of them. Everyone in town watches and gossips and speculates about which family will get Eugénie, but everything takes a new turn when one day her handsome cousin Charles from Paris crashes her 23th birthday party. 

Check out this line.   

““Dear Eugenie, a cousin is better than a brother, for he can marry you,” said Charles.” (Ch.9) 

HAHAHAHAHAA. 

2/ Do I become grumpier and more irritable over time? I wonder. Or is it still Hong lou meng hangover? I mean, look at this passage about first love in Eugénie Grandet: 

“Eugenie took delight in lulling her cousin’s pain with the pretty childish joys of a new-born love. Are there no sweet similitudes between the birth of love and the birth of life? Do we not rock the babe with gentle songs and softest glances? Do we not tell it marvellous tales of the golden future? Hope herself, does she not spread her radiant wings above its head? Does it not shed, with infant fickleness, its tears of sorrow and its tears of joy? Does it not fret for trifles, cry for the pretty pebbles with which to build its shifting palaces, for the flowers forgotten as soon as plucked? Is it not eager to grasp the coming time, to spring forward into life? Love is our second transformation...” (ibid.)  

I cut that short—Balzac went on a bit more. I don’t doubt that her feeling is genuine, but I can’t get out of my head the thought that this is love at first sight, she barely knows the guy. I can’t take it very seriously.  

However I like this, which is said by Nanon the ugly servant: 

““If I had a man for myself I’d—I’d follow him to hell, yes, I’d exterminate myself for him; but I’ve none. I shall die and never know what life is…”” (ibid.) 

That’s a moving moment that may almost be corny, but so far Nanon has been nothing but a simple, faithful, and accepting servant, a cliché of a character—this line suggests that there’s something more. 

Later on, Nanon also secretly disobeys her master when he punishes Eugénie, though I’m not going to get ecstatic and praise the “realism” of the character after seeing the wide range of servants depicted in Hong lou meng.

3/ Balzac has sympathy for women: 

“In all situations women have more cause for suffering than men, and they suffer more. Man has strength and the power of exercising it; he acts, moves, thinks, occupies himself; he looks ahead, and sees consolation in the future. It was thus with Charles. But the woman stays at home; she is always face to face with the grief from which nothing distracts her; she goes down to the depths of the abyss which yawns before her, measures it, and often fills it with her tears and prayers. Thus did Eugenie. She initiated herself into her destiny. To feel, to love, to suffer, to devote herself,—is not this the sum of woman’s life?” (Ch.9) 

Such a good passage. 

This, of course, is about the 19th century. Now there are plenty of things for women to do to distract themselves. 

However, I’m getting rather fed up with all the stuff about moral qualities and love and sadness improving the beauty of the female characters. 

“From that day the beauty of Mademoiselle Grandet took a new character. The solemn thoughts of love which slowly filled her soul, and the dignity of the woman beloved, gave to her features an illumination such as painters render by a halo. Before the coming of her cousin, Eugenie might be compared to the Virgin before the conception; after he had gone, she was like the Virgin Mother,—she had given birth to love. These two Marys so different, so well represented by Spanish art, embody one of those shining symbols with which Christianity abounds.” (ibid.) 

Later on: 

“…answered the old notary respectfully, struck with the beauty which seclusion, melancholy, and love had stamped upon her face.” (Ch.11) 

Come on. 

Her mother also becomes more beautiful: 

“…his angel of gentleness, whose ugliness day by day decreased, driven out by the ineffable expression of moral qualities which shone upon her face. She was all soul. The spirit of prayer seemed to purify her and refine those homely features and make them luminous. Who has not seen the phenomenon of a like transfiguration on sacred faces where the habits of the soul have triumphed over the plainest features, giving them that spiritual illumination whose light comes from the purity and nobility of the inward thought?...” (ibid.) 

This is the way Balzac describes her at the beginning:

“Madame Grandet was a dry, thin woman, as yellow as a quince, awkward, slow, one of those women who are born to be down-trodden. She had big bones, a big nose, a big forehead, big eyes, and presented at first sight a vague resemblance to those mealy fruits that have neither savor nor succulence. Her teeth were black and few in number, her mouth was wrinkled, her chin long and pointed.” (Ch.2) 

Her yellow skin is mentioned several times throughout the novel. Now go back and look at the “angel of gentleness” passage again. 

Do you like those passages? I don’t, but can’t quite explain why I find them irritating. Balzac’s better at describing the house.  

4/ The miser is hard—his daughter’s suffering doesn’t bother him, his wife’s illness doesn’t concern him, the only thing that can soften him is the fear of losing his wife’s estate to the daughter. The only thing that holds any meaning for him is money. 

Eugénie does change through the course of the story, (almost) like James’s Catherine Sloper—love and belief in herself give her the strength to stand up against her father, for the first time in her life. But at the same time I can’t help thinking, is Balzac not one-sided in reinforcing the miser’s hardness and unreasonableness over and over again, and siding with Eugénie in the matter of gold? Of course it is her gold and she can do whatever she wants with it, but is it wise to give away all of it when she herself isn’t aware of how rich she is and that’s all she thinks she has? In Washington Square, Dr Sloper may be unkind to Catherine but he isn’t wrong about Morris Townsend and isn’t wrong about expressing his concern. 

Monsieur Grandet remains consistently himself all the way to the end. Once in a while he feels a bit bad, (almost) like he has a conscience, and there is one moment when he feels torn between remaining where he is and coming to hug his daughter but the feeling doesn’t last long. He thinks like a miser, talks like a miser, and acts like a miser—there is no complexity, no more depth to him, and he has that monomania, that pointless obsession with gold till the last moment. He is defined by a single trait, a single obsession. 

5/ There is a mistake in the book: in the first chapter, the narrator says that in 1806, Monsieur Grandet is 57 (his wife is 36 and Eugénie is 10). 

Now in chapter 12, the narrator says Monsieur Grandet is 82 in the year 1827, when he should be 78. 

6/ Nobody told me that Charles went to the Indies and became a slave trader! 

“Crossing the line had brushed a good many cobwebs out of his brain; he perceived that the best means of attaining fortune in tropical regions, as well as in Europe, was to buy and sell men. He went to the coast of Africa and bought Negroes, combining his traffic in human flesh with that of other merchandise equally advantageous to his interests.” (Ch.13) 

Fucking hell. I didn’t expect that. 

Balzac expands: 

“He sold Chinamen, Negroes, birds’ nests, children, artists; he practised usury on a large scale; the habit of defrauding custom-houses soon made him less scrupulous about the rights of his fellow men.” (ibid.) 

I don’t mean that I didn’t expect Charles to do it because of what I thought about him, I mean that I didn’t expect Balzac to write it in his novel. 

This passage is interesting: 

“By dint of jostling with men, travelling through many lands, and studying a variety of conflicting customs, his ideas had been modified and had become sceptical. He ceased to have fixed principles of right and wrong, for he saw what was called a crime in one country lauded as a virtue in another. In the perpetual struggle of selfish interests his heart grew cold, then contracted, and then dried up. The blood of the Grandets did not fail of its destiny; Charles became hard, and eager for prey.” (ibid.) 

That’s good.

Charles’s letter to Eugénie at the end is, I think, excellent. Cold, frank. I won’t put it here—you have to read it for yourself.  

7/ After the letter, which is written so well, Balzac throws this in my face: 

“Some women when they see themselves abandoned will try to tear their lover from the arms of a rival, they will kill her, and rush to the ends of the earth,—to the scaffold, to their tomb. That, no doubt, is fine; the motive of the crime is a great passion, which awes even human justice. Other women bow their heads and suffer in silence; they go their way dying, resigned, weeping, forgiving, praying, and recollecting, till they draw their last breath. This is love,—true love, the love of angels, the proud love which lives upon its anguish and dies of it. Such was Eugenie’s love after she had read that dreadful letter.” (ibid.) 

I’m sorry but what kind of bullshit is this? 

Throughout the novel, Balzac’s intrusive narrator keeps making generalisations about women—women this, women that…, which I find nonsensical and utterly annoying. This is even more annoying because it comes right after the letter, which is excellent. 

Remember that Eugénie falls in love with Charles at first sight and knows him for 3 days—3 days! She barely knows him, and more importantly, the Charles she knows is not him in his normal environment, but him in exceptional circumstances, staying in her house instead of living in Paris, and facing the shock of grief and loss of fortune at the same time. 7 years have passed, and I’m expected to think that this is true love and “the love of angels”? 

I understand that women in the past had confined lives, but I don’t think that I’m imposing modern standards on a 19th century novel. I’m sure that Jane Austen would have laughed at it, considering her views on first impressions and love at first sight. 

It is one thing to portray Eugénie as she is, it’s a different thing for the intrusive narrator to express that view. 

8/ The ending is thought-provoking, I can see why many readers love it. In a way she changes—she becomes hardened and turns part of herself off. But in a way she doesn’t—she is still a Grandet, her lifestyle remains exactly the same as when her father’s alive, and she puts on a mask before the world, just like her father. 

I think Henry James got the inspiration from Balzac’s novel and wrote a greater book. Apart from characters’ complexity, I think the difference is in vision. In Washington Square, Catherine becomes hardened and disillusioned as she comes to understand, and see through, the 2 men that mean the most to her—her own father despises her and the man she loves only wants her money. She doesn’t give in to them and in the end has her triumph—a triumph that has nothing to do with happiness, but it’s about dignity and self-respect. 

In other words, it is specifically about 2 individuals—Dr Sloper and Morris Townsend. 

This is Balzac’s vision: 

“She has the noblest qualities of sorrow, the saintliness of one who has never soiled her soul by contact with the world…” (Ch.14) 

His view, as we hear from the narrator over and over again throughout the novel, is that society is full of corruptions and calculations, everyone is scheming, dishonest, and full of flattery, and the only noble people are those who have no contact with the world and don’t understand its calculations and customs, such as Eugénie, her mother, or Nanon.   

In the end, having lost her illusions, Eugénie turns off a part of herself, rejects the world as a whole, and becomes a miser with her feelings. Everyone is dishonest, everyone is calculating, the only one who cares about her is Nanon. 

I don’t accept that vision of life. 

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. 

Eugénie Grandet: descriptions, character introduction

1/ This is my first Balzac. Tom at Wuthering Expectations calls it his favourite one.

The translation is by Katharine Prescott Wormeley. 

Look at the description of Monsieur Grandet, the father: 

“Physically, Grandet was a man five feet high, thick-set, square-built, with calves twelve inches in circumference, knotted knee-joints, and broad shoulders; his face was round, tanned, and pitted by the small-pox; his chin was straight, his lips had no curves, his teeth were white; his eyes had that calm, devouring expression which people attribute to the basilisk; his forehead, full of transverse wrinkles, was not without certain significant protuberances; his yellow-grayish hair was said to be silver and gold by certain young people who did not realize the impropriety of making a jest about Monsieur Grandet. His nose, thick at the end, bore a veined wen, which the common people said, not without reason, was full of malice. The whole countenance showed a dangerous cunning, an integrity without warmth, the egotism of a man long used to concentrate every feeling upon the enjoyments of avarice and upon the only human being who was anything whatever to him,—his daughter and sole heiress, Eugenie.” (Ch.1) 

Very clear. Straight to the point. One comparison (the basilisk). Very different from descriptions in Flaubert, say. 

Eugénie Grandet begins with a long, detailed description of the street and its houses before the narrator mentions the phrase “the house of Monsieur Grandet”, and adds: 

“It is impossible to understand the force of this provincial expression—the house of Monsieur Grandet—without giving the biography of Monsieur Grandet himself.” (ibid.) 

Balzac then writes about Monsieur Grandet—the biography and the man. Then chapter 2 describes the house, in detail. An abundance of detail. 

Why so much description? some readers might ask. He means to contrast the lives of the neighbours, many of whom depend heavily on the weather for their living, with the comfort and wealth of Monsieur Grandet. The house is an extension of the man. 

What do I see? I see the luxury, but also notice “cold, silent, pallid dwelling”, “some resemblance to the gateway of a jail”, “red with rust”, “yellow with age”, a figure that is now effaced, “sickly herbage”, “dirty shelves”, “tapestry representing the fables of La Fontaine; it was necessary, however, to know that writer well to guess at the subjects, for the faded colors and the figures, blurred by much darning, were difficult to distinguish”, etc. (Ch.2)  

That’s interesting. 

2/ The sketch of Monsieur Grandet is striking. What a miser. I want to know more. But I’m not so sure about the sketch of his servant Nanon, often called La Grande Nanon because of her stature and strength. Several times the narrator evokes a dog—she is blindly loyal like a dog and Monsieur Grandet loves her like one loves a dog. Look: 

“In the famous year of 1811, when the grapes were gathered with unheard-of difficulty, Grandet resolved to give Nanon his old watch,—the first present he had made her during twenty years of service. Though he turned over to her his old shoes (which fitted her), it is impossible to consider that quarterly benefit as a gift, for the shoes were always thoroughly worn-out. Necessity had made the poor girl so niggardly that Grandet had grown to love her as we love a dog, and Nanon had let him fasten a spiked collar round her throat, whose spikes no longer pricked her.” (ibid.) 

I mean, what? Perhaps I have certain expectations because of Cao Xueqin’s depiction of servants in Hong lou meng, but I have always disliked the simple, blindly loyal and forever grateful servant trope. 

“Though she received only sixty francs a year in wages, she was supposed to be one of the richest serving-women in Saumur. […] Every servant in the town, seeing that the poor sexagenarian was sure of bread for her old age, was jealous of her, and never thought of the hard slavery through which it had been won.” (ibid.) 

These lines are, I think, enough. But Balzac goes further:  

“To the poor peasant who in her youth had earned nothing but harsh treatment, to the pauper girl picked up by charity, Grandet’s ambiguous laugh was like a sunbeam. Moreover, Nanon’s simple heart and narrow head could hold only one feeling and one idea. For thirty-five years she had never ceased to see herself standing before the wood-yard of Monsieur Grandet, ragged and barefooted, and to hear him say: “What do you want, young one?” Her gratitude was ever new. Sometimes Grandet, reflecting that the poor creature had never heard a flattering word […] Grandet, struck with pity, would say as he looked at her, “Poor Nanon!” […] Such compassion arising in the heart of the miser, and accepted gratefully by the old spinster, had something inconceivably horrible about it. This cruel pity, recalling, as it did, a thousand pleasures to the heart of the old cooper, was for Nanon the sum total of happiness.” (ibid.) 

Even if I accept Nanon the way I accept (and like) the caricatures in the world of Dickens (who feel utterly real in their world), personally I don’t like the “had something inconceivably horrible about it” part. 

However, it’s too early to say. Maybe she’ll change and do something interesting. 

3/ So what do we have? A very, very rich man—richest man in town (Saumur). A daughter, who would be an heiress. That makes me think of Washington Square, though this seems to be a very different book—the father here is nothing like Dr Austin Sloper, except for the wealth and the coldness. 

In chapter 2, our Eugénie turns 23 in 1819. 

I calculate that her mother is now 49 and her father is 70. That is rather old, no? Especially in 1819. Too old to continue amassing so much money without spending—what’s the point when you can’t bring money with you when you die? 

The miserliness of Monsieur Grandet makes me think of Ebenezer Scrooge—I see you’re wondering, Eugénie Grandet was published 10 years before A Christmas Carol. 

As Balzac introduces Madame Grandet and continues sketching the Monsieur, I’m starting to think that each character would be defined by a single trait: Monsieur Grandet economises in everything, even movement; Nanon the servant is loyal like a dog; Madame Grandet gives her husband a fortune but barely gets anything out of it but doesn’t ask because of her “foolish secret pride” and “nobility of soul” (Ch.2), etc. 

The one I expect to become more interesting is Eugénie. 

4/ Let’s look at the scene of Eugénie’s birthday—the des Grassins and the Crouchots are here, competing for Eugénie: 

“…this laughter, accompanied by the whirr of Nanon’s spinning-wheel, sincere only upon the lips of Eugenie or her mother; this triviality mingled with important interests; this young girl, who, like certain birds made victims of the price put upon them, was now lured and trapped by proofs of friendship of which she was the dupe,—all these things contributed to make the scene a melancholy comedy. Is it not, moreover, a drama of all times and all places, though here brought down to its simplest expression? The figure of Grandet, playing his own game with the false friendship of the two families and getting enormous profits from it, dominates the scene and throws light upon it. The modern god,—the only god in whom faith is preserved,—money, is here, in all its power, manifested in a single countenance.” (ibid.) 

This is the obsession with money in Balzac’s novels that people have told me about. I can’t help thinking, though, is it not too clear, too obvious what Balzac thinks about his characters and how he views things?

My guess is that the novel will be less about the titular character than about her father, and less about who she will marry than about the father’s pointless obsession with money. Let’s see.