Imagistic Metamorphosis in Balzac's Eugénie Grandet

A study of the images in Balzac's Eugénie Grandet reveals a gradual metamorphosis in Eugénie. At first, images connoting dehumanization, discipline, and death, coupled with Monsieur Grandet, his house, and his family, monopolize the pages of the book. With the arrival of Cousin Charles, a second set of images, suggesting spontaneity and vitality enters the novel. During Charles's stay Balzac associates Eugénie with the images of life – light and warmth – he already ascribed to Charles. As Eugénie comes alive, so does the garden in the Grandet courtyard. With Charles's departure, however, the life-force in Eugénie recedes. Progressively, Balzac applies to his heroine images of dehumanization he heretofore attributed to Grandet. Ultimately, he describes Eugénie as manifesting the same stultifying attitudes as her father, speaking and acting like him, and associated with his tomblike house. Despite criticism of Balzac's allegedly careless style, it is clear that, in writing Eugénie Grandet, the novelist carefully chooses his images and arranges them in order to suggest the aging Eugénie's unconscious imitation of her father and an ascending-descending movement in the action of the novel. (WTCJr)