[Note:
I read this novel in March/April 2013 and posted a review on my Asia Sentinel
blog on April 12, 2013. I’ve just dug out the review from my files and am
posting it here with some minor changes.]
What
is a miser? The dictionary says it means either one of two types of persons:
(1) one who lives very meagerly in order to hoard money; or (2) a greedy or
avaricious person. I’ve lately read Honore de Balzac’s famous novel Eugenie Grandet and am impressed with
the author’s perspicacious insight into the traits of misers.
This
is an excerpt from the novel that illustrates Balzac’s perception:-
A miser’s life is a constant exercise of
every human faculty in the service of his own personality. He considers only
two feelings, vanity and self-interest; but as the achievement of his interest
supplies to some extent a concrete and tangible tribute to his vanity, as it is
a constant attestation of his real superiority, his vanity and the study of his
advantage are two aspects of one passion – egotism. That is perhaps the reason
for the amazing curiosity excited by misers skillfully presented upon the
stage. Everyone has some link with these persons, who revolt all human feelings
and yet epitomize them. Where is the man without ambition? And what ambition
can be attained in our society without money?.......
Like all misers he had a constant need
to pit his wits against those of other men, to mulct them of their crowns by
fair legal means. To get the better of others, was that not exercising power,
giving oneself with each new victim the right to despise those weaklings of the
earth who were unable to save themselves from being devoured? Oh! Has anyone
properly understood the meaning of the lamb lying peacefully at God’s feet -
that most touching symbol of all the victims of this world - and of their
future, the symbol of which is suffering and weakness glorified? The miser lets
the lamb grow fat, then he pens, kills, cooks, eats and despises it. Misers
thrive on money and contempt.
In
the novel, Felix Grandet is depicted as the stingy, egotistic and mean-spirited
money hoarder in suburban France, against a money-grubbing social backdrop with
the rise of the bourgeoisie. He rations everyday food for his weak-minded wife,
his only daughter Eugenie and his loyal house servant, and purposely keeps his
house in shabby disrepair, while making immense fortunes secretively. He almost
seems to derive sadistic pleasure in ruling his domestic household with an iron
fist.
The
only two persons who have knowledge of his true worth are his lawyer and his
banker. Knowing that these two are trying to get their respective nephew/son to
win the hand of Eugenie, he plays one against the other to extract the greatest
monetary advantage. He employs devious means to cheat and fleece his deceased
brother’s creditors and insists on Eugenie breaking romantic ties with his own nephew
Charles, who is left penniless by his deceased father’s bankruptcy. Charles is
forced to go off to the Indies to find his fortune and Eugenie gives him all
her gold coins that her father has given her over the years, to the miser’s
furious dismay.
When
Charles comes back to France a rich man, having made his fortune from dealing
in slaves, he forsakes Eugenie for a wealthy aristocrat, mistaken that the
former is now poor.
Eugenie,
by nature a kind-hearted country girl, faces the music after having her heart
broken by Charles and discovering her father’s base deeds. She becomes disgusted
with the wealthy class as she learns about its hypocrisy and shallowness. Upon
inheriting both her father’s and her husband’s fortunes (the husband being the
lawyer’s nephew, who dies shortly after their loveless marriage), she chooses
to live a modest and philanthropic life on her own terms.
The
novel makes one ponder on whether there is an effective cure for avarice and
excessive materialism in our society of today.
No comments:
Post a Comment