Eugénie Grandet

Félix Grandet

Once a plain master cooper, Grandet parlayed his wife's dowry and a shrewd Revolutionary land grab into a fortune the whole town whispers about but never sees. In his gloomy house on the steep street, he rations candles, bread, and affection with the same iron thrift, keeping even his wife and daughter in anxious dependence. His avarice is the engine of the early story: every visitor, suitor, and family crisis must first pass through his ledger.

Eugénie Grandet

Raised in a silent, candle-counted house in Saumur, Eugénie knows little of the world beyond her mother's prayers and Nanon's kitchen. When her Parisian cousin Charles arrives, her untested generosity and her father's frozen parsimony collide, and she begins to discover what her own heart is worth. Her quiet awakening gives the novel its moral center, measuring the cost of devotion against the arithmetic of greed.

Charles Grandet

Charles arrives at his uncle's door trailing elegance, letters, and a fashionable indifference to the dull town around him. The collapse of his father's affairs strips him of everything except charm and ambition, forcing him to reckon with relatives who count every sou. His presence in the Grandet house turns Eugénie's sheltered life inside out and sets the story's central question: what is love worth when money is the only language anyone trusts?

Mme. Grandet

In the Grandet household she moves softly, dressed in threadbare patience, her health and her opinions alike kept small by her husband's rule. Her devotion to Eugénie is the one luxury she permits herself, and it makes her quietly complicit in the small deceits that keep the house bearable. Frail and fading, she embodies the human cost of Grandet's hoarding and sharpens the reader's sense of what Eugénie stands to lose.

Nanon

Taken in half-starved and worked like an ox, Nanon has become the one person in the house Grandet trusts, because she asks for nothing and gives everything. Her plain strength and simple faith make her both comic relief and the household's conscience, quietly devoted to Eugénie and Mme. Grandet. She is the measure of what Grandet values: not beauty or wit, but a body that costs almost nothing to keep.

Mme. des Grassins

In a town where everyone watches everyone, Mme. des Grassins is the most watchful of all, hosting the rival evening parties that orbit around Eugénie's inheritance. She promotes her son Adolphe as the obvious match, matching wits with the Cruchot faction over the girl's future and Grandet's gold. Her scheming gives the early chapters their social comedy and shows how thoroughly money has colonized even the town's affections.