ABSTRACT
Balzac draws circles around social groups: the nobility, the clergy, manual workers, poets, artists, scientists, criminals, and so on. He then condenses such groups into one character, so that a hundred different bankers form the Baron de Nucingen and an infinity of usurers form Gobseck. The appreciation of Engels, one can learn from Balzac more than from any historian about the birth of the bourgeoisie in France, but in his characters one also sees distinct expressions of universal truths: good and evil, love in Goriot, gold in Grandet. Power possesses an intimate criminal nature, it is ontologically corrupt in Balzac's descriptions. In Balzac's analysis, power is exercised upon individuals who do not resist or oppose it. Balzac's power does not rule by force alone, it transforms dependence into acceptance. The accumulation of money, in the works, is the common goal mobilizing all groups and individuals, particularly, and paradoxically, those who are devoid of status.
