Essay “The destructive power of money (Based on the stories of O. Balzac “Gobsek” and “Eugene Grande”)

Honore de Balzac created a huge number of works. The author frankly loved to observe human nature and relationships, the morals and customs of his era. Most of the author's works are included in his grandiose epic "The Human Comedy", deeply and comprehensively representing Balzac's attitude to what he saw and reflected on.
Eugenia Grande is the most arrogant bride in French Sumor. A novel written in 1833 bears her name, which describes the fate of a girl living in a society in which everything is subordinated to the power of money. Wealth is the main value and meaning of life for most people around Evgenia. The heroine's father rose from commoners to bourgeois and became one of the most influential people in Saumur. His main life principle was saving and increasing his capital. It was to this that everything in the existence of Mr. Grandet and his family was subordinated.
In fact, the young heroine never felt that she was the daughter of a very rich man. From her earliest years, Evgenia worked tirelessly. Her house had the harshest, poorest conditions. Let us remember that when Charles Grandet first appeared at his uncle’s house, he thought that the affairs of this family were bad - the furnishings and food in the house were so poor.
The father gave Evgenia small gifts, consoling himself that they would form his daughter’s dowry. The issue of Evgenia’s marriage was, of course, also decided by her father. Both mother and daughter Grande were accustomed to obeying him in everything, unquestioningly fulfilling all his demands.
The son of the banker de Grassin and the nephew of the notary Cruchot are the two main contenders for the position of the main character. In my opinion, Evgenia did not feel sympathy for either one or the other. But in a society where the primary value is money, as well as a man’s word, feelings are not taken into account. It seems to me that even the heroine herself took this for granted, because a marriage with both Grassin and Cruchon could bring considerable benefits to the family capital, and this, in Grande’s opinion, was the most important.
But Balzac shows us that life according to purely materialistic principles leads to tragedy. And it is punished very harshly. At one point, Charles Grande appears in Eugenia’s life. This still very young man arrives in Saumur with his father’s suicide letter and turns the main character’s whole life upside down.
Before Charles appeared, the heroine did not experience love feelings for anyone. At twenty-three years old, this quiet girl lived a monotonous, quiet and measured life. Her constant companion and interlocutor was her mother - and nothing more. Charles at first awakened a still vague, unclear feeling in the girl. Out of sympathy for her cousin, she even resorted to unheard-of insolence - she asked the maid to light a fireplace in the guest’s room.
Over time, feelings flare up between the young people. Young and romantically inclined Charles and Eugenia swear eternal love to each other, enjoy each other's company, and make plans for the future.
For the sake of her lover, Evgenia was ready to do anything. She gives Charles her savings, made up of gifts from her father. The girl knows that her father will be furious when he discovers this, but she risks it for the sake of her loved one.
Meanwhile, Charles leaves for the East Indies in search of happiness and wealth. Evgenia remains to wait for him. Hopes, dreams and memories brighten up the harsh life of a girl in her father's house. And life there becomes harder and harder - Grande’s father, having discovered his daughter’s “delinquency,” becomes furious. With his malice and stinginess, he drives his wife to her deathbed and, almost to suicide, Evgenia. Only the death of his wife makes old Grande come to his senses a little.
Evgenia is left alone with her father, with loneliness and longing for her beloved, with the cruel world of money and profit. There is no news from Charles, and the heroine’s life flows sluggishly and monotonously. The father, anticipating his imminent death, begins to introduce Evgenia into all matters, simultaneously instilling in her his philosophy of stinginess. As a result, Grande wins - he makes his daughter into his likeness, a lonely, secluded creature engaged in accumulating family capital.
The onset of such a sad fate for Eugenia is also facilitated by the fact that Charles, having returned to France, turned into a completely different person. He matured and began to play by the rules of the “world of money.” He subordinated his life to acquiring wealth, so he was going to marry a rich heiress. The hero didn’t even remember about Eugene now. He considers himself free from all obligations by sending his cousin a check for a certain amount.
This event became a strong blow for Evgenia, who had lived all these years with her feelings for Charles. In desperation, she decides to marry the unloved Cruchot. However, even after Charles’s betrayal, the girl does not turn into a vengeful, embittered woman - the heroine helps her cousin pay off his debts. It was then that Charles learns that Eugenia is the owner of seventeen million. But it's' too late. The heroine becomes Madame Cruchot, who vowed before the altar to love and honor her unloved husband. This is what Eugenia did for many years, until Mr. Cruchot died.
At the end of the novel, we learn that the heroine lives the same life that her father lived. And that perhaps she will marry again - the baron is courting the rich bride.
Evgenia has turned into a person who fits well into the society of money. This cost her considerable effort, because the soul of the noble and sensitive heroine was completely different, striving to live according to different ideals. Having gone through pain, suffering and humiliation, Evgenia became callous, closed herself off, and adapted. What else could she do?
A cruel and cold-blooded society cripples people, deprives them of happiness, kills their soul, turning them into gray, merciless shadows. The fate of Eugenia Grande, her love and loneliness is a clear confirmation of this. This is the main message of Honore Balzac's work.

prices Despite the difficult international situation, our country is growing, building and strengthening. Vadyukhin P.V., economist at Glavobuvsbyt: Undoubtedly, with a decrease in prices, measures can be taken to reduce wages due to the existing allowance for bread or by increasing subscriptions to a government loan.
Savitskaya M.A., artist: Following a reduction, there is always an immediate reduction in prices and wages for all workers and employees. Therefore, the decrease does not play any role. Salnikov P.I., student: Although a new decrease has occurred, the population still eats surrogates and concentrates, since there is no meat, eggs in stores, and if anything appears anywhere, then in There are huge queues in stores.

Using the following responses to the decline in retail prices in 1952, give your assessment of this event.

Private, collective, state, object, property, municipality, transfer, hands, or.

owner, property.

Population, hereditary, group, rights, established, duties, state.

17th century, the beginning, the struggle for, armed, economic, power, problems, political, aggravated when, Russia, long, and flared up.

can be used twice. It is allowed to add prepositions and change words by case.
1) Population, system, contained, management, governor, who, account.
2) Years, historical, event source, written, which, events, are recorded.

it is allowed to add prepositions and

change words by case.

A) Rent, or, peasant, lordly, economic, feudal, obliged, tools

labor, field, economic, type, which, was, others, process, perform, work.

B) St. George’s Day, which, the owner, paid, the peasant, after, his, payment,

care, week, autumn, and, week.

B) The Grand Duke, his, official, award, which, type,

administration, contained, current, local population, princely, account, period of service.

D) Nobility, merit, but not, order, highest, position, service, ancestors,

purpose, state, personal, compliance.

Name the encrypted historical terms.

The problem of money, gold and the all-consuming power that it acquires in the life of capitalist society, determining all human relationships, the destinies of individual people, and the formation of social characters.

Old Grande is a modern genius of profit, a millionaire who has turned speculation into art. Grande renounced all the joys of life, dried up the soul of his daughter, deprived all his loved ones of happiness, but made millions.

The theme is the decomposition of family and personality, the decline of morality, the insult of all intimate human feelings and relationships under the power of money. It was precisely because of her father’s wealth that the unfortunate Evgenia was perceived by those around her as a way of making substantial capital. Between the Cruchotins and the Grassenists, two opposition camps of the inhabitants of Saumur, there was a constant struggle for Eugenie’s hand. Of course, old Grandet understood that the frequent visits to his house by the Grassins and Cruchots were not at all sincere expressions of respect for the old cooper, and therefore he often said to himself: “They are here for my money. They come here to be bored for the sake of my daughter. Ha ha! Neither one nor the other will get my daughter, and all these gentlemen are just hooks on my fishing rod!”

The fate of Eugenia Grande is the most sorrowful story told by Balzac in his novel. The unfortunate girl, languishing in prison for many years in the house of her miserly father, becomes attached with all her soul to her cousin Charles. She understands his grief, understands that no one in the world needs him and that his closest person now, his uncle, will not help him for the same reason that Evgenia has to be content with bad food and miserable clothes all her life. And she, pure in heart, gives him all her savings, courageously enduring her father’s terrible wrath. She has been waiting for his return for many years... And Charles forgets his savior, under the rule of public sentiment he becomes the same Felix Grande - an immoral accumulator of wealth. He prefers the titled ugly woman, Mademoiselle D'Aubrion, to Eugenia, because he is now guided by purely selfish interests. Thus, Evgenia’s faith in love, faith in beauty, faith in unshakable happiness and peace was cut short.

Evgenia lives with her heart. Material values ​​are nothing for her compared to feelings. Feelings constitute the true content of her life; for her, they contain the beauty and meaning of existence. The inner perfection of her nature is also revealed in her external appearance. For Evgenia and her mother, whose only joy throughout their lives were those rare days when their father allowed the stove to be lit, and who saw only their dilapidated house and everyday knitting, money had absolutely no meaning.

Therefore, while everyone around was ready to acquire gold at any cost, for Evgenia, the 17 million she inherited after her father’s death turned out to be a heavy burden. Gold will not be able to reward her for the emptiness that formed in her heart with the loss of Charles. And she doesn't need money. She doesn’t know how to deal with them at all, because if she needed them, it was only to help Charles, thereby helping herself and her happiness. But, unfortunately, the only treasure that exists for her in life - family affection and love - was inhumanly trampled, and she lost this only hope in the prime of her life. At some point, Evgenia realized the incorrigible misfortune of her life: for her father, she had always been only the heir to his gold; Charles preferred a wealthier woman to her, disregarding all the sacred feelings of love, affection and moral duty; the people of Saumur looked and continue to look at her only as a rich bride. And the only ones who loved her not for her millions, but for real - her mother and maid Naneta - were too weak and powerless where old Grande reigned supreme with his pockets tightly stuffed with gold. She lost her mother, and now she has already buried her father, who even in the very last minutes of his life stretched out his hands to gold.

Under such conditions, a deep alienation inevitably arose between Evgenia and the world around her. But it is unlikely that she herself was clearly aware of what exactly was the cause of her misfortunes. Of course, it’s easy to name the reason - the unbridled domination of money and monetary relations that stood at the head of bourgeois society, which crushed the fragile Evgenia. She is deprived of happiness and prosperity, despite the fact that she is infinitely rich.

And her tragedy is that the lives of people like her turned out to be absolutely useless and useless to anyone. Her capacity for deep affection was not responded to.

Having lost all hope for love and happiness, Evgenia suddenly changes and marries Chairman de Bonfon, who was just waiting for this moment of luck. But even this selfish man died very soon after their wedding. Evgenia was left alone again with even greater wealth, inherited from her late husband. This was probably a kind of evil fate for the unfortunate girl, who became a widow at thirty-six years old. She never gave birth to a child, that hopeless passion that Evgenia lived with all these years.

And yet, in the end, we learn that “money was destined to impart its cold coloring to this heavenly life and instill in a woman who was all feeling, distrust of feelings.” It turns out that in the end, Evgenia became almost the same as her father. She has a lot of money, but she lives poorly. She lives this way because she is used to living this way, and another life no longer lends itself to her understanding. Eugenia Grande is a symbol of human tragedy, expressed in crying into a pillow. She has come to terms with her condition, and she can no longer even imagine a better life. The only thing she wanted was happiness and love. But not finding this, she came to complete stagnation. And the monetary relations that reigned in society at that time played a significant role here. If they had not been so strong, Charles most likely would not have succumbed to their influence and retained his devoted feelings for Eugenie, and then the plot of the novel would have developed more romantically. But it would no longer be Balzac.

In creating The Human Comedy, Balzac set himself a task that was still unknown in literature at that time. He strove for truthfulness and a merciless show of contemporary France, a show of the real, actual life of his contemporaries.

One of the many themes heard in his works is the theme of the destructive power of money over people, the gradual degradation of the soul under the influence of gold.

This is especially clearly reflected in two famous works by Balzac - “Gobsek” and “Eugene Grande”.

Balzac's works have not lost their popularity in our time. They are popular both among young readers and among older people, who draw from his works the art of understanding the human soul, seeking to understand historical events. And for these people, Balzac's books are a real storehouse of life experience.

The theme of the novel is the evil power of money, which destroys the truly human in a person. The action takes place in a provincial French town. The most significant image of the novel is the miser, hoarder, and old merchant Grande.

Introducing the reader to his “hero,” Balzac first of all describes the environment in which Grande lives and acts: a street in the provincial town of Saumur, the life and customs of its inhabitants. This is followed by a short but detailed biography of the hero, giving exact dates, and the writer immediately highlights the main thing in Grande’s life and personality - his career as a hoarder. The necessary data are meager numbers - the designation of monetary amounts, indicators of the gradual increase of capital.

The forty-year-old cooper Grande married the daughter of a wealthy timber merchant and used his wife's dowry and his own cash - two thousand louis d'or - to buy vineyards. From this moment the story of his steady enrichment begins. In 1806, writes Balzac, “he farmed one hundred vineyards, which in good years brought him from seven hundred to eight hundred barrels of wine. He had an old abbey, where, for the sake of frugality, he plastered the windows, vaults and stained glass windows, which preserved them; and also - one hundred and twenty-seven arpans of meadows, where three thousand poplars, planted in 1793, grew and increased in size. Finally, the house where he lived belonged to him.” Before us is an accurate business inventory of property, and in passing the essential details that characterize Grande are emphasized: his frugality, the skillful use of his capital. In 1817, “smart people said: “Papa Grande? Papa Grande has 6-7 million faithful.”

In describing the miser's lifestyle and appearance, the author reveals remarkable skill in sketching and accurately expressing realistic detail: “He never made any noise and seemed to economize on everything, even on movement.” “The gloves, as strong as those worn by gendarmes, served him for twenty months, and in order not to get dirty, he put them on the brim of his hat, always in the same place, with a practiced movement.” . Every feature here is significant; This is not only a description, but at the same time a characteristic. Having outlined the hero, Balzac moves on to his house and household. The depiction of material conditions serves the writer to characterize the characters. Outside of these things, the inhabitants of the bourgeois world do not exist; things are a shell on which the appearance of the owner is imprinted.

After a thorough exposition, the action of the novel unfolds. It is extremely simple, no outstanding events, no complications in the storyline. A nephew, a young Parisian dandy, Charles Grandet, arrives at the gloomy house of an old miser; his father, the brother of “father” Grande, went bankrupt and committed suicide. The young man lives for some time with his inhospitable uncle, who is not willing to give up a centime to help him. Grande's daughter, Eugenie, who deeply fell in love with her Parisian cousin, gives him all her personal savings - brand new shiny Louis Dores, gifts that her father gave her every year on her birthday. This is the point of highest tension in the novel. The most powerful and dramatic experiences of the characters are connected precisely with this moment (the daughter’s fears, the father’s indignation and rage, the mother’s suffering). Charles leaves for India, vowing his love to Eugenia. He enriches himself in a foreign land, becomes a hardened businessman and forgets his meek and faithful provincial cousin, dreaming of a more brilliant marriage with an aristocrat (which he accomplishes upon returning to Paris). Father Grande, meanwhile, with the help of subtly thought-out and carried out monetary transactions, skillfully using circumstances, profits both from the ruin of his brother and from other profitable speculations.

Striving only for possession, for money, he ruins the lives of his loved ones: he brings his unrequited, enslaved and depersonalized wife to the grave, torments and tyrannies his daughter Evgenia and finds pleasure only in the contemplation of gold. Having brought his fortune to seventeen million, the miser dies. When the priest, who came to give communion to the dying man, brought a gilded crucifix to his lips, “he made a terrible movement to grab it.” His last parting words to his daughter are unusually eloquent: “Take care of everything! You will give me the answer there!” - he said, thereby proving that Christianity should be the religion of misers."

Balzac traces the birth and development of the passion for accumulation and shows the destructiveness of its action. Grande is a strong personality, but his inner strength, all his unique talents - insight, accuracy of calculation, the ability to apply to circumstances and “ride” them, amazing endurance, iron will - are aimed at achieving one base egoistic goal - personal enrichment. As for Gobsek, money for him becomes an end in itself, the only pleasure, the beginning and end of existence. We see how this disastrous passion grows, turning into monomania, we see how it absorbs all other feelings and attachments. Balzac appears here as a realist psychologist. He shows the real circumstances in which the passion for accumulation is formed, the environment in which it develops; he generalizes in the image of Grande the tendencies typical of a certain historical period in the development of the French bourgeoisie. At the same time, the writer achieves broader generalizations in this novel, revealing the destructiveness of the passion for accumulation, which remains dominant in bourgeois society at subsequent stages of its development.

In the pernicious atmosphere of the pursuit of money, high feelings and the best opportunities inherent in a person perish. The tragedy of such a death is captured in the images of representatives of the younger generation - Eugenia and Charles Grande. Evgenia is a victim of a society where the passion for acquisition reigns. It deprived her of everything dear to her, destroyed her cherished dreams, crushed and burned out her only and best feeling, and drowned the living impulses of her soul in the “icy water of selfish calculation.”

Balzac, in contrast to the romantics, does not introduce any melodrama into the story of the love and life of his heroine. Outwardly, she does not undergo catastrophes; The writer does not allow any romantic effects. Nothing changes in Evgenia’s lifestyle after Charles’s arrival, nor during the long years of waiting, nor after the death of her hopes and the death of her father. No screams, no violent scenes, no suicide attempts. But beneath this deceptively calm surface, in the deep recesses of her soul, a cruel tragedy is playing out. The “best shield of desires” withers, internal strength dries up, life is broken and suspended. Society, in the person of the people closest and dearest to her - her father and lover - killed and strangled the living in her. Evgenia is dead while alive. After the collapse of her hopes, she lives like an automaton, this is only an external existence, movement but inertia.

In developing the image of Charles Grandet, Balzac reveals the effect of the same laws of the bourgeois world that destroyed Eugenia’s life, although the fate of this hero develops completely differently. If Evgenia is a passive victim, then Charles actively adapts to the wolfish laws of bourgeois society and himself becomes a money-grubbing predator. He “became callous and greedy.” And it is characteristic that his qualities as a money-grubber and bourgeois businessman are being “polished” in the United States of America. This is an important detail; it is also emphasized in the biographies of some other Balzac characters, bearers of the most negative traits.

Each of the characters in the novel, even minor ones, is distinguished by their life-like truthfulness. And the unrequited sufferer - Grandet's wife, and the faithful servant Nanette the giant, and representatives of the bourgeois families entering the Grandet's house - Cruchot and Grasses - all of them are tools in the hands of the despotic miser - old man Grande, his money rules over their destinies.

There is no positive hero - in the true sense of the word - in the novel. However, the bearers of the best spiritual qualities here too are ordinary people, people of labor. Although Nanette is enslaved and depersonalized by the miser Grande, the true inner riches lie within her. She is loyal, hardworking, firm, selfless and selfless, but all these virtues belong to old man Grande. “Nanette allowed herself to be put on a collar studded with nails that no longer pricked her.”

The circle of characters is limited, but nevertheless the life of a provincial town, the mutual relations and activities of its inhabitants are reflected with completeness and depth. At the same time, the novel reveals the connection between the province and Paris, which the tentacles of Father Grandet reach. Thus, the small town of Saumur, presented in all its originality and typicality, is, as it were, one of the cells of the big bourgeois world.

On the pages of the novel "Eugenia Grande" a picture of provincial French society of the 19th century unfolds before us. At the center of the novel is the difficult and great fate of a woman who knew how to feel, love, suffer, and devote her life without reserve - Eugenia Grande.

The love of money turns out to be stronger than the natural love of people for each other. Money kills everything human in people.

1. Balzac, O. Gobsek. Eugenia Grande / O. Balzac; lane from fr. – Lvov: Kamenyar, 1984. – P. 11-16.

2. Griftsov, B.A. How Balzac worked / B.A. Griftsova. – M.: Sov. writer, 1937. – 154 p.

3. Muravyova, N.I. O. Balzac: a manual for secondary school teachers / N.I. Muravyova. – M.: Education, 1952. – P. 62-66.

4. Muravyova, N.I. Honore Balzac: an essay on creativity / N.I. Muravyova. – 2nd ed. – M.: Education, 1958. – P. 85-93.

Honoré de Balzac's novel Eugenie Grandet was first published in 1833. It was included in “Scenes from Provincial Life” in the cycle of essays “The Human Comedy”. Artistic problems The work consists in developing two mutually antagonistic themes - love for money (the materialistic component of existence) and love for man (the spiritual paradigm of our existence).

Speaking about contemporary society, Balzac emphasizes its mercantile essence. The life of most people, according to the writer, "limited by purely material interests". One of the main characters of the novel, Mr. Grande is "the personification of the power of money". Using the example of his character and life story, Balzac shows where the love of money can lead a person. On the one hand, we see a careful and economical attitude to things, on the other, an unreasonable limitation of ourselves and our family in the most necessary things.

Mr Grande spends money only on what he cannot get for free: consecrated bread, clothes for his wife and daughter, payment for their chairs in the church, lighting, salaries for his only maid Nanente, tinning pots, taxes, repairs of buildings and expenses for his enterprises. Sharecropping farmers supply Grande with capons, chickens, eggs, butter and wheat, while tenant gardeners supply vegetables. The family has its own fruits, but the best of them go not to the home table, but to the market. Game does not appear on Grande's menu until he buys forest land.

What Papa Grande values ​​in money is not power, not the opportunities it gives, but money itself. He likes everything connected with them - earnings, increase, investment of capital in one or another enterprise, accumulation, movement, admiration (as in the case of gold coins, which he gives to his daughter Evgenia for every birthday) and even the very awareness of the existence of money.

Mr. Grande sees money in people, and people in money: “Chervontsy live and move about like people: they leave, come, sweat, multiply”. In a conversation with Charles, the hero feels compassion not for the fact that his nephew lost his father (Grande does not see anything terrible in this, since “According to the law of nature, fathers die before their children”), but to the fact that he lost his fortune. For Father Grande, ruin is the most severe misfortune that can befall a person on earth.

The hero does not think about the future life in the same way that most of the merchants and aristocrats around him do not think. Balzac explains the spiritual callousness of the 19th century by a change in social mores, which exchanged the future life for the present life, full of earthly joys and pleasures. On the threshold of death, Father Grandet reaches out not to Christ crucified on the cross, but to his gilding. Instead of blessing, the hero encourages his only daughter to take care of the gold, because she will have to give him later “report in the next world!”.

Evgeniy Grande could be called the complete opposite of her father, if not for one “but”: the girl inherited from him the main character trait - inner stubbornness. The French writer periodically emphasizes the commonality in the behavior of father and daughter: the first invests gold in profit, the second in feelings; the cunning of the characters is determined by their main, inner passion - Grande’s stinginess and Eugenie’s love; an old miser is ready to sacrifice his daughter’s love for the sake of extra gold plates, Evgenia is ready to give her life for a travel bag given to her for safekeeping by her loved one.

Father Grande intuitively feels his similarity with his daughter, but his advanced age and the passion for gold rooted in his heart do not allow him to see Eugenia’s true nature, while the latter is well aware of what her father is.

A girl doesn't think about money until she needs it. As soon as love bursts into Evgenia’s life, her consciousness also awakens: in the quarter of an hour that has passed since her cousin’s arrival, “she had more thoughts than since the day she was born”.

The girl is attracted to everything about Charles: his sophisticated beauty, his fashionable clothes, and his manners, which are unusual for the province. The misfortune that happened to him kindles in Evgenia a natural feeling of compassion for her neighbor.

The formation of love in the heart of the main character is depicted by Balzac psychologically subtly and carefully: at the beginning, Evgenia unconsciously strives to please her cousin (cleans his room) and wants to please him externally (gets up early in the morning to dress beautifully and comb her hair), then she rebels against the household rules established by her father way of life (“steals” pears from the kitchen and prepares Charles the simplest breakfast – by ordinary standards, but ruinous, according to his father’s ideas) and at the same time carefully hides his thoughts and feelings from those around him.

The noble, Christian character inherited from her mother gives Evgenia’s simple and ordinary features an amazing charm. Illuminating her face "the inner charm of a calm conscience" makes the girl look like Madonna. The main character of the novel happily helps her lover with money and waits for seven long years for his return from the East Indies. Having learned about Charles's betrayal, Evgenia reveals herself, like all noble natures - she pays her cousin's debts, lets him go to another, and she turns her gaze to the sky and continues to live, loving and suffering, waiting for the natural outcome - death.

Against the backdrop of the confrontation between the materialistic and the spiritual, the minor characters of the novel look somewhat formulaic: the Cruchot and de Grassin families - the crushing “Papa Grandet”, Madame Grandet - the classic image of a God-fearing woman, unquestioningly submissive to her husband. Charles Grandet, a young man with a noble heart, quickly learns unprincipled public morality, which not only changes, but corrupts his character. And only Evgenia remains herself - pure, kind, all-forgiving and endlessly loving.

• "Eugenie Grande", a summary of Balzac's novel