# A Daughter of Eve — Character guide

> Key figures in A Daughter of Eve by Honoré de Balzac.

- [Raoul Nathan](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_daughter_of_eve_se/characters/raoul_nathan.md): Raoul Nathan moves through Parisian salons and newspaper offices as a man whose talent has outrun his fortune, keeping the actress Florine as his mistress while pursuing the married Marie de Vandenesse. His pride is a li
- [Florine](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_daughter_of_eve_se/characters/florine.md): Florine shares her daily life and her new boudoir with Raoul Nathan, believing in his political future and defending his friends with cheerful loyalty. Too ignorant of the press's machinery to doubt its promises, she emb
- [Marie de Vandenesse](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_daughter_of_eve_se/characters/marie_de_vandenesse.md): Marie-Angélique de Granville passes from strict Catholic upbringing into a marriage Félix designs as a masterwork of education and indulgence. Charming, spontaneous, and schooled in every social grace, she becomes one of
- [Comte Félix de Vandenesse](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_daughter_of_eve_se/characters/comte_felix_de_vandenesse.md): Félix de Vandenesse reads Marie's upbringing as the mirror of his own blighted youth and marries her with indulgence and trust as his anchors, deliberately uniting paternal and conjugal affection. He educates her in soci
- [Eugénie](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_daughter_of_eve_se/characters/eugenie.md): Eugénie moves through the opera and the family circle as Marie's trusted ally, devising the discreet pretexts by which money reaches the old German musician Schmucke. Quick to laugh and quicker to see through men's perfo
- [Schmucke](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_daughter_of_eve_se/characters/schmucke.md): Schmucke lives in the little Rue de Nevers on the Quai Conti, a German musician in distress whose plight the Countess and her sister conspire to relieve under cover of strictest secrecy. His name serves as a screen for m
- [Émile Blondet](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_daughter_of_eve_se/characters/emile_blondet.md): Blondet moves through the salons and opera boxes of Paris as a man whose conversation is currency, welcome everywhere because he knows everyone's secrets and can turn them into copy. His cynicism is polished rather than 
- [Du Tillet](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_daughter_of_eve_se/characters/du_tillet.md): Du Tillet is a financier whose wealth buys him a seat at the table but never quite the ease of those born to it, and he knows it. He treats his wife Eugénie with a contempt that is both marital and social, dragging her b
- [Lady Dudley](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_daughter_of_eve_se/characters/lady_dudley.md): Lady Dudley is the woman who formed Félix, the passion of his earlier life whose memory lingers in every room he enters, and her return to Parisian society is a quiet earthquake beneath the Vandenesse marriage. She is no
- [Rastignac](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_daughter_of_eve_se/characters/rastignac.md): Rastignac is the socialite whose ease in every milieu makes him both useful and opaque, a man who knows the Countess's box at the opera and the banker's private calculations with equal familiarity. He is the friend every
- [Delphine de Nucingen](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_daughter_of_eve_se/characters/delphine_de_nucingen.md): Delphine de Nucingen moves through the same opera boxes and dinner tables as Marie and Eugénie, a woman whose marriage to a wealthy banker has given her position but not necessarily happiness. When Eugénie du Tillet need
- [de Marsay](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_daughter_of_eve_se/characters/de_marsay.md): A powerful statesman and former dandy, a figure of authority.
- [Octave de Camps](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_daughter_of_eve_se/characters/octave_de_camps.md): A friend of Marie, a respectable married woman.
- [Marie-Angélique](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_daughter_of_eve_se/characters/marie_angelique.md): A young woman, daughter of the Comtesse de Granville.
- [Comtesse de Montcornet](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_daughter_of_eve_se/characters/comtesse_de_montcornet.md): A society hostess, friend to Marie.

HTML index: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/a_daughter_of_eve_se/characters