The Human Comedy

A daughter inherits her father's miserliness, which stifles her relationship with her cousin, making love an unsatisfying experience. As with Balzac's other work, his characters in Eugenie Grandet are fully and realistically portrayed. Balzac began to conceive his great work The Human Comedy whilst writing this novel, and the characters herein are reworked in his comedy.

Lucien Chardon, an aspiring young author, leaves his small provincial hometown and attempts to succeed in Parisian literary circles of the early nineteenth century.