moral purity?

I stand firm that Eugenie is morally blameless in Balzac's novel of which she lends her name to the title. If we take the story at face value, as Balzac presents it to us, her intentions are pure, and she lives the life of a secular nun, surrounded by jealous, phony, imperfect humans.

Okay, so Eugenie is great, but the question is this: where do we go from there?

I don't really know the answer to this, and maybe that's what makes this book (and Balzac?) so bleak: is it better to live the good life like Eugenie and do nothing, really, or to live the bad life, like Charles, and simply become caught up in petty, meaningless Parisian society.

I'm really not sure.

And it makes me think of something that I've often thought about: is it better to live in the city or the country? The feeling I have is that, sure, things would be better in the country (no smog, no traffic, slower pace, better quality of life, more space, people are nicer), but I just can't bring myself to move there.

I think this something a lot of people, specifically intellectuals, artists, and writers have struggled with.

They seem to say (and I would agree) that the city is "corrupt"; that is, it is more base than the country. But it's hard to leave, and this brings us back to our old friend Balzac: it may be better to live dynamically, even if the struggle is only a rat race in the end, than to be bored. This is an extremely dubious argument, and I must admit, I'm both guilty of using it and weary of it myself.