”All human power is a compound of time and patience. Powerful beings will and wait. The life of a miser is the constant exercise of human power put to the service of self. It rests on two sentiments only,—self-love and self-interest; but self-interest being to a certain extent compact and intelligent self-love, the visible sign of real superiority, it follows that self-love and self-interest are two parts of the same whole,—egotism. From this arises, perhaps, the excessive curiosity shown in the habits of a miser's life whenever they are put before the world. Every nature holds by a thread to those beings who challenge all human sentiments by concentrating all in one passion. Where is the man without desire? And what social desire can be satisfied without money?”

➜There are not enough words in the world that could describe how much I love reading literature written in the movement of Realism. Especially French literature, the attention to detail and human psychology that I found in Balzac, Flaubert, and Stendhal will forever be an object of my admiration.

” Flattery never emanates from noble souls; it is the gift of little minds, who thus still further belittle themselves to worm their way into the vital being of the persons around whom they crawl. Flattery means self-interest.”

➜”Eugenie Grandet” is part of Balzac’s Tales from the provincial life, a subpart of his life’s work ”La Comédie humaine”. It’s a tale of one miser, Felix Grandet, and his daughter Eugenie Grandet; more specifically, how the place and people we come from shape us, how much society impacts the quality of life, and how tragic it is when a person cannot adapt to fit in a blighted society who values materialism and status above morality and love.

” The hand of this woman stanches the secret wounds in many families. She goes on her way to heaven attended by a train of benefactions. The grandeur of her soul redeems the narrowness of her education and the petty habits of her early life.”

**

“Such is the history of Eugenie Grandet, who is in the world but not of it; who, created to be supremely a wife and mother, has neither husband nor children nor family.”

➜Diving into the psychology of a miser that parallels Dickens’s Ebenezer Scrooge, Balzac paints the tragic impact greed had on the life of his daughter who never cared about worldly possessions.
Unlike his other work like Pere Goriot, where almost every character is morally corrupt in some way, the reader can’t help but sympathize with Eugenie because of the purity of her soul, thoughts, and actions, we all feel the impact of her story.

“…And yet that noble heart, beating only with tenderest emotions, has been, from first to last, subjected to the calculations of human selfishness; money has cast its frigid influence upon that hallowed life and taught distrust of feelings to a woman who is all feeling.”

**

“She drew back within herself, loving, and believing herself beloved. For seven years her passion had invaded everything. Her treasuries were not the millions whose revenues were rolling up; they were Charles's dressing-case, the portraits hanging above her bed, the jewels recovered from her father and proudly spread upon a bed of wool in a drawer of the oaken cabinet, the thimble of her aunt, used for a while by her mother, which she wore religiously as she worked at a piece of embroidery,—a Penelope's web, begun for the sole purpose of putting upon her finger that gold so rich in memories.”

➜Balzac’s portrayal of 19th century France during the Bourbon Restoration is a pessimistic one, the world where the only source of happiness for people like Eugenie is agape, religion, ignorance, and ultimately death.

"Their feelings, bruised, though they did not know it, but ever-living, were the secret spring of their existence, and made them curious exceptions in the midst of these other people whose lives were purely material. Frightful condition of the human race! there is no one of its joys that does not come from some species of ignorance."

**

"Struggling at birth against the gloom of mourning, their love was only the more in harmony with the provincial plainness of that gray and ruined house. As they exchanged a few words beside the well in the silent court, or lingered in the garden for the sunset hour, sitting on a mossy seat saying to each other the infinite nothings of love, or mused in the silent calm which reigned between the house and the ramparts like that beneath the arches of a church, Charles comprehended the sanctity of love."

➜Truly, the scenes that leave the strongest impact on the reader are those veiled by the shadow of ignorance and death.
“Eugenie Grandet” is one of the prime examples of brilliance from one of the central figures in 19th-century literature, one who not only managed to bring the people of his time to life on paper centuries after they are all gone but who managed to perpetuate his knowledge of human psychology in which he was far ahead of his time.
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This is a 4,5/5 for me, damn that ending..review to come.