SOURCE: "Four Novels: Eugénie Grandet," in The Novel in France: Mme de La Fayette, Laclos, Constant, Stendhal, Balzac, Flaubert, Proust, New Directions, 1950, pp. 235-39.

Turnell has written extensively on French literature of the last three centuries. In the following excerpt, he cites Andre Gide's criticisms of Eugénie Grandet in his own short critique of that novel.

'It does not seem to me to be one of the best of Balzac's novels or to deserve the extraordinary favour it has enjoyed,' remarks Gide of Eugénie Grandet. 'The style is extremely mediocre; the characters could scarcely be more summary; the dialogue is conventional and often inacceptable. . . . Alone the story of old Grandet's speculations seems to me to be masterly; but that is perhaps because I am not competent in such matters.'

Eugénie Grandet was completed a year before Balzac began Le Père Goriot...