While Balzac may recycle the topos of the miserly father in Eugénie Grandet, this is not representative of the new role that money is shown to play in nineteenth-century society by the author of the Comédie humaine. This article by Fabrice Wilhelm reveals that, on the contrary, it is in the figure of the prodigal father, incarnated in the figures of the Père Goriot and Baron Hulot, that the originality and explicative power of Balzac’s analyses lie.
