Eugénie Grandet

Inhoud

Après des débuts littéraires difficiles, Balzac (1799-1850) obtint le succès dès 1829. En 20 ans, il publia alors une centaine de romans présentant des types humains dessinés avec force. Comme ses personnages reviennent souvent d'un livre à un autre, Balzac créa tout un univers qu'il appela lui-même La Comédie Humaine.
Dans Eugénie Grandet, un roman de 1833, vous faites connaissance avec le père Grandet, un bonhomme très riche et très avare qui habite Saumur avec sa femme, sa fille unique Eugénie et sa fidèle servante Nanon. A qui Grandet donnera-t-il sa fille en mariage? Cette question est la source du combat entre les deux grandes familles bourgeoises de la ville, les Cruchot et les des Grassins...
Dans cette histoire, l'argent occupoe une place importante car la valeur d'une personne est déterminée par la rente de son capital. A cette époque, un franc fgrancais valait 300 francs belges de notre époque. Vous cendrez ainsi mieux la richesse du père Grandet.

Bespreking

A touching tragedy

After some difficult literary debuts, Balzac (1799-1850) finally obtains his first success in 1829. At the age of 20 years he already published more than a hundred books all describing very human characters, portrayed in a prose with an unseen force. Because the same characters appeared often in more than one book, Balzac created a universe of his own, which he himself called "La Comédie Humaine".

In Eugénie Grandet, a novel dating from 1833, one gets acquainted with father Grandet, an extremely wealthy and greedy aristocrat living together with his wife and daughter in Saumur, France. His daughter Eugénie has grown to maturity and her father has no other goal than to see her getting married. But who is suitable enough for his precious daughter? Surely not her adopted nephew Charles Grandet, not? Eugénie has to fight against the tyrannical power of her father, but gets help from their faithful servent, Nanon.

Through this tragedy Balzac reveals one of the most destructive vices of man: greed. Although the author does not recoil from an ever-growing list of moralizing statements, the story stays authentic enough to pull the reader into the story. The comparison with a masterpiece as Wuthering Heights is easily made and not only because it dates from the same period. But to make from Eugénie Grandet a true classic it certainly misses depth.