# Mme. Grandet — Eugénie Grandet character guide

> Mme. Grandet in Eugénie Grandet by Honoré de Balzac.

**Role:** supporting

**Also known as:** Mme., Grandet, the Mme, old Grandet

**First appearance:** 0001-eug-nie-grandet

## Snapshot

A timid, pious woman who has learned to shrink herself to fit her husband's economy, she loves her daughter with a fear-tinged tenderness.

## Who they are

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.

## In the story

### [Eugénie Grandet](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/eugenie_grandet_se/chapters/eug-nie-grandet)

Dies in October 1822 after a long illness; her death is peaceful and Christian; she worries about Eugénie's future.

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/eugenie_grandet_se/characters/madame_grandet
- Book: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/eugenie_grandet_se
- All characters: https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/eugenie_grandet_se/characters