ABSTRACT
It was Balzac's lasting misfortune not to have found favour with the most eminent of all nineteenth-century French critics, Sainte-Beuve. Sainte-Beuve had actually taken Balzac's side against Victor Hugo when, in 1830, the latter attacked La Femme de trente ans. Sainte-Beuve's critical method was based on a profound belief in the need to study the relationship of the work to the personality of its creator. Eugenie Grandet, Sainte-Beuve conceded, was 'almost a masterpiece' and throughout his career as a critic, he was ready to recognize Balzac's ability to give incomparable relief in his descriptions to both people and objects. Yet his essentially classical aesthetic could not countenance the exaggerated and vulgar effects that were, for him, so integral a part of Balzac's way of writing. He was unable to resist being ironic at Balzac's expense, dismissing his success, for example, as due to an unashamed appeal to the dubious curiosity of a naive female readership in the provinces.
