The Grandet household, oppressed by the exacting miserliness of Grandet himself, is jerked violently out of routine by the sudden arrival of Eugenie's cousin Charles, recently orphaned and penniless. Eugenie's emotional awakening, stimulated by her love for her cousin, brings her into direct conflict with her father, whose cunning and financial success are matched against her determination to rebel.

Eugenie's moving story is set against the backdrop of provincial oppression, the vicissitudes of the wine trade, and the workings of the financial system in the aftermath of the French Revolution. It is both a poignant portrayal of private life and a vigorous fictional document of its age.

Eugénie's father Felix is a former cooper who has become wealthy through both business ventures and inheritance. However, he is very miserly. Felix's nephew Charles Grandet arrives from Paris unexpectedly at their home. Charles does not realize that his father has gone bankrupt. His father's ruin and suicide are soon published in the newspaper, and Felix considers Charles to be a burden, and plans to send him off overseas to make his own fortune. However, Eugénie and Charles fall in love with each other. She gives him some of her own money to help with his trading ventures. Later Felix is angered when he discovers that Eugénie has given her money to Charles. This leads to his wife falling ill, and his daughter being confined to her room. Eventually they are reconciled, and Felix reluctantly agrees that Eugénie can marry Charles. In 1827 Charles returns to France. By now both of Eugénie's parents have died. However Charles is no longer in love with Eugénie. He becomes engaged to the daughter of an impoverished aristocratic family, in order to make himself respectable. He writes to Eugénie to break off their engagement. Eugénie then decides to become engaged to Cruchot des Bonfons. Bonfons de Cruchot marries Eugénie hopeful of becoming fabulously wealthy. However, he dies young, and at the end of the book Eugénie is a very wealthy widow. At the end of the novel, by the standards of the time she should be unhappy, childless and unmarried, but she is instead quite content with her lot because he has learned of the hypocrisy and shallowness of the bourgeois.

Honoré de Balzac (20 May 1799 —18 August 1850) was a French novelist and playwright. He is generally regarded as a founding-father of realism in European fiction. His large output of works, collectively entitled The Human Comedy (La Comidie Humaine), consists of 95 finished works (stories, novels and essays) and 48 unfinished works, which presents a panorama of French life in the years after the 1815 fall of Napoleon. His masterpieces: Eugenie Grandet and Father Goriot.