Essays on literary works - 2024

“Love and Loneliness in the Fate of Eugénie Grandet” (Based on the novel by H. de Balzac)

(Or: Why Balzac's Sad Girl Still Slaps in the Age of Ghosting)

So. Eugénie Grandet. Let’s just say it: if Balzac were alive today, he’d be that sharp-eyed Twitter user clocking your generational trauma from one sad selfie and an overuse of the 😭 emoji. And Eugénie? She’s the original main character of emotional repression—an early prototype for every chronically online girl who keeps falling for the guy who’ll never text back. Except worse. Because Charles doesn’t just leave her on read—he leaves her with a heart-shaped hole and a pile of gold coins.

Let’s rewind. This book isn’t just about a girl. It’s about a whole economic ecosystem of dysfunction, squeezed into the narrow, creaky walls of a provincial French town called Saumur (aka the town equivalent of a taxidermy museum—zero vibes, no serotonin, just echoes and dust). Balzac sets this thing up like a horror film: the atmosphere? Stale bread. The father? Mr. Krabs meets the Zodiac Killer. The love interest? A drip. And Eugénie? A teenage girl with a soul so vast it could swallow capitalism whole—except it won’t, because she’s already swallowed by it.

Let’s break it open.

Love in a House That Smells Like Coins

First thing’s first: love doesn’t stand a chance in this story. The whole architecture of Eugénie Grandet is rigged against it—like Balzac deliberately booby-trapped every possible tender moment with the smell of old copper and a sadistic father peering from the shadows.

Eugénie falls in love with Charles, her cousin (yeah, it’s 19th-century France, let’s not dwell). He’s shiny—he’s got perfume, silky shirts, and big city heartbreak in his eyes. He’s also soft in the way that provincial life is not. So when he cries over his father’s bankruptcy and conveniently collapses into her virginal arms, Eugénie does what every girl with a romanticized death wish does—she imprints like a baby duck.

And it’s not her fault. She’s been locked in a house with a father whose love language is asset management and a mother who’s basically a sad houseplant. Love feels like myth, like lightning, like a jailbreak. She hands Charles her savings (yes—her gold, like literal pirate treasure), and he takes it. Promises? Made. Letters? Rare. Ghosting? Immaculate.

Fast-forward: Charles goes off to India to “make his fortune,” and Eugénie just… waits. Like an 1800s version of refreshing the inbox. For years. Like—girl. Get up. But no, because she’s in it. Capital-R Romantic Love. And Romantic Love in this book is not sexy. It’s a coffin with flowers on it.

Daddy Grandet: The Original Financial Dominator

Let’s talk about Mr. Grandet. Because this guy? A demon in human form. Picture a man so obsessed with hoarding wealth that he builds emotional walls taller than the actual ones in his decaying mansion. You could psychoanalyze him, sure—childhood scarcity, fear of debt, patriarchy, yada yada—but honestly? He’s just mean. Not abusive in the dramatic, throw-things-and-shout way. No. He’s the worst kind: calm, calculated, ice-blooded miserliness disguised as discipline.

Eugénie doesn’t stand a chance. He doesn’t hit her; he makes her feel wrong for wanting anything. The result? She internalizes lack like it’s a moral code. She learns that to love is to give everything and expect nothing. She learns that money = power = silence. And so she becomes a ghost inside her own life, haunting the halls of her inheritance.

Also—let’s be real—Balzac hates Grandet with a passion that’s almost comedic. Like every time this man appears, the prose curdles. Rooms get darker. Air thins. Candles flicker. Balzac doesn’t just villainize him; he makes him the embodiment of how capitalism strangles joy.

Honestly? Mr. Grandet would’ve thrived on LinkedIn. "Self-made entrepreneur, fiscal ascetic, expert in generational wealth stagnation." 🤢

Eugénie, The Freezer Burned Girlboss

Here’s the twist: Eugénie survives. But it’s not a girlboss moment. It’s bleak. Like, "dies inside but keeps moving" kind of bleak.

She ends up rich (thanks to Daddy's death and that sweet sweet coin pile), unmarried (Charles marries rich elsewhere, because of course), and saintly (the town loves her—she’s generous, kind, “pure”). She’s the benevolent local relic. The symbol of virtue. The living statue. And that’s the tragedy: her loneliness is made sacred. Society rewards her for her pain—puts a halo on her grief and says, “Look, girls! You too can win… by losing.”

The ending is emotionally unhinged if you actually feel it. Eugénie, this woman with fire and passion and a deep capacity for love, lives out her days performing sainthood in an empty house filled with memory and money. The guy she gave her heart (and her savings) to? He sends back a thank-you note and a marriage announcement. Classic.

This isn’t just heartbreak. It’s a slow-burn obliteration of self. It’s like watching a candle melt into gold.

The Charles Problem: Red Flags, but in Lace

Charles is the kind of guy who’d curate a moody Instagram, post cryptic lines from Lord Byron, and sell NFTs before ghosting you to “find himself” in South Asia. He’s also textbook emotionally unavailable. He shows up, breaks down, gets saved, dips. And Eugénie? She doesn’t just fall for him—she subsumes herself into his future.

Charles becomes her entire plot arc. And once he’s gone, she has nothing but memory and myth. It’s textbook toxic romance, and yet we get it. Because every generation has its Charles: the aesthetic sad boy, the beautiful user, the fragile man who folds at the first sign of responsibility.

But Balzac doesn’t hate Charles. He doesn’t even punish him. He shrugs. Because Charles isn’t the real villain. The system is. The social order. The economic calculus of marriage. The brutal arithmetic that turns love into leverage.

Charles sells out. Eugénie holds on. Neither wins.

Love, But Make It Late Capitalism

And this is where Eugénie Grandet gets weirdly modern.

Like, Balzac wrote this in 1833, but it reads like a subtweet of our current dating economy. Emotional labor? Check. Women subsidizing men's glow-up eras? Check. The idea that wealth is a substitute for intimacy? Triple check. It’s all here, wrapped in candlelight and corsets.

We love to meme about emotional unavailability, but this novel feels like a slow scroll through #SadTok. There’s something creepily familiar about watching Eugénie try to become “enough” for someone who was never going to stay. About watching her turn her pain into virtue because that’s the only currency she’s allowed.

The emotional violence is quiet, but it cuts. Like a passive-aggressive Venmo request from your situationship. Like a therapist’s pause before asking, “And how did that make you feel?”

So Why Do We Still Read This Thing?

Because we’re all still Eugénie. Or we’ve dated one. Or ghosted one. Or become Mr. Grandet at some low, bitter point in our lives.

Balzac didn’t write a love story. He wrote an autopsy of it. He dissects the soft, glowing idealism of romantic connection and shows how the world—family, patriarchy, money—chokes it. Eugénie’s love isn’t stupid. It’s brave. Tragic. Real. It just happens in a world where the people who feel most deeply are the ones least equipped to survive.

And yeah, it’s messy. The prose? Dense. The pacing? Glacial. But the emotional payoff? Unfiltered devastation. It's literary slowcore. It hits different.

No, Eugénie doesn’t get her man. No, she doesn’t ride off into the sunset. She becomes a living mausoleum of her own unspent affection.

But you’ll think about her. Days later. Like a song stuck in your throat. Like a ghost who won’t leave your room.

Maybe love was never meant to win in Saumur. Maybe it was just meant to echo.