Arranged Marriage: Eugénie having reached an age at which, according to the customs of the day, it was high time for her to get married, there is competition for her hand by those who seek to benefit from the match.He only ends the punishment when he thinks he can have a financial advantage from being in his daughter's good books, and his persistence in ostracizing her until then causes his wife's death. When Eugénie gives away the collection of gold coins that he had gradually gifted her to her impoverished cousin Charles and refuses to reveal the secret of who she gave it to, he takes both the loss of the gold, which in his mind is still his property, and Eugénie's refusal to confide in him, personally, furiously berates her, declaring at one point that Eugénie 'has no father', and forces her to stay in her room as long as she insists on hiding from him who she gave the coins to. Abusive Parents: Father Grandet is stingy and despotic toward his kind-hearted wife, daughter and housekeeper and has absolutely no tolerance for any defiance on their part.Eventually, supposing that she would not be suited for the worldly lifestyle that he wants to lead and wishing to get ahead in society, he contracts a marriage with the plain daughter of a nobleman. Absence Makes the Heart Go Yonder: Once Charles goes out into the world and begins to amass wealth, his passion for Eugénie evaporates.As such, it may be read as a proto-feminist work. It also has a lot to say about the oppression of women through patriarchy and religious indoctrination.

This tightly-written classic of French literature offers a picture of how stinginess can be acquired and passed through generations. Unaware of how much wealth Father Grandet really has, mother and daughter lead a peaceful and uneventful life until one day in 1819, on Eugénie’s 23rd birthday, Father Grandet’s nephew Charles, whose bankrupt father has just committed suicide, pays them a visit that threatens to throw a spanner into the works of the old miser’s wealth-hoarding machinery. At the same time, Father Grandet is a miser of epic proportions, neglecting the old house in which he lives with his wife, daughter Eugénie and housekeeper Nanon, and living for nothing but for acquiring wealth and instilling it as a value in Eugénie.

The titular character is the daughter of Félix Grandet, a wine merchant who through business, acquisition of land, inheritance, and shrewd investments, has become fabulously wealthy. Published in 1833/4, it is set in the small town of Saumur in Western France. At Cousin Charles' departure, there was calm before the storm.One of the best-known novels of the French prose writer Honoré de Balzac, Eugénie Grandet is a classic study of avarice and its effect on family life, as well as of the manners of the provincial bourgeoisie.

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