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Pere Goriot
Summary
One of renowned French author Honore de Balzac’s finest works, Pere Goriot provides a fascinating glimpse into Parisian life of the early 19th century. The rich character studies and themes of class, personal ambition, and materiality make this insightful novel as compelling today as when it was first published.
At the shabby boarding house in the rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve, petty Madame Vauquer and her tenants wonder at the plight of the aging resident Goriot. Once a well-heeled merchant, Goriot was — at first — afforded special treatment from the Madame. But now something is clearly amiss in his financial affairs, and his increasingly tawdry appearance makes him a subject of ridicule in the household. Some think he lost in the markets, others see him as a lecherous patron of prostitutes, but one thing is clear: his selflessness and complete devotion to his two daughters.
As the tragedy of old Goriot is revealed, the shallow values of a society come into scrutiny.
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Reviews
This review has been crossposted from my blog Review from The Cosy Dragon Please head there for more in-depth reviews by me.
'Pere Goriot', or Old Father Goriot, is a realist text which is difficult initially to understand and read. There are a number of characters, including Goriot himself and the irredeemable Rastignac, who focalize the novel. This novel is translated from French. If you want an in-depth experience of 'real' Paris, this will be good for you.
The first 100 or so pages of the novel are impossible to get into. It is all just setting the scene for the 'action'. If you persevere, you will find some more satisfying plot developments, but nothing that really shouts at you to read on. In the end, I found myself reading just to see what would happen to poor old Goriot, who got the death I expected.
If you do suddenly find yourself attached to any of the characters, this novel is part of a set 'The Human Comedy'. Balzac made it his mission to catalog the entirety of Parisian society, and most of this is contained within his published works. Balzac died before he completed it, but this is a project that I feel he probably never would have been satisfied with .
This novel is a great example of realism! There is a heavy focus on detailed settings, as if you are really walking the streets of Paris. A number of the characters seem like placeholders, while others are fully fleshed out. I don't think anyone feels real emotion for the characters, for everything is already set out for them. They seem to not try escape their sorry lot, and Rastignac in particular is quite a repugnant person.
This is not something I would enjoy reading for pleasure. As a text in a literature degree, it was a good one to study though, as it was filled with details that I could use for analysis. My version has a set of essays in the second half of the book, which was interesting and useful reading. It is good to know some historical background before setting out into the book.
Keep in mind that this is translated from French, so each translator may potentially put a different spin on things. Also, if you're going to buy it online, make sure to get the English version!
'Pere Goriot', or Old Father Goriot, is a realist text which is difficult initially to understand and read. There are a number of characters, including Goriot himself and the irredeemable Rastignac, who focalize the novel. This novel is translated from French. If you want an in-depth experience of 'real' Paris, this will be good for you.
The first 100 or so pages of the novel are impossible to get into. It is all just setting the scene for the 'action'. If you persevere, you will find some more satisfying plot developments, but nothing that really shouts at you to read on. In the end, I found myself reading just to see what would happen to poor old Goriot, who got the death I expected.
If you do suddenly find yourself attached to any of the characters, this novel is part of a set 'The Human Comedy'. Balzac made it his mission to catalog the entirety of Parisian society, and most of this is contained within his published works. Balzac died before he completed it, but this is a project that I feel he probably never would have been satisfied with .
This novel is a great example of realism! There is a heavy focus on detailed settings, as if you are really walking the streets of Paris. A number of the characters seem like placeholders, while others are fully fleshed out. I don't think anyone feels real emotion for the characters, for everything is already set out for them. They seem to not try escape their sorry lot, and Rastignac in particular is quite a repugnant person.
This is not something I would enjoy reading for pleasure. As a text in a literature degree, it was a good one to study though, as it was filled with details that I could use for analysis. My version has a set of essays in the second half of the book, which was interesting and useful reading. It is good to know some historical background before setting out into the book.
Keep in mind that this is translated from French, so each translator may potentially put a different spin on things. Also, if you're going to buy it online, make sure to get the English version!
I ENJOYED THE "TOUR OF FRANCE" AS WELL AS THE PEOPLE AND STYLE IT WAS WRITTEN IN.
I had Old Goriot recommended as a place to start with Honore de Balzac, and it worked well. It's set in post-Napoleonic Paris, and at various times made me think both of King Lear and Charles Dickens. There is a strong cynical view of upper vs. lower classes in it. Old Goriot had become wealthy via his vermicelli (!) business, and was able to set up his two daughters in marriages to aristocratic gentlemen. To help finance them, he lives modestly in a boarding house. The book begins with what for me was a dense and lengthy foundation-setting involving the boarding house's inhabitants, but once that was done the novel became much more engaging.The other central character is law student Eugene Ratsignac, a largely pure-hearted young man who wants to make his way in Parisian society. He has little money, which normally would make such advancement impossible, but he has an aristocratic family connection that gets him some initial footing on that social ladder. A cousin is willing to help him, and soon he makes a powerful romantic ally.Old Goriot lives for the happiness of his daughters, and they take every advantage of his generosity with little demonstration of paternal affection. Their husbands don't want him around, and he lives for brief glimpses of his daughters. Eugene comes to appreciate Goriot's sacrifice, and the nobility of his soul.Turns out that Dickens was indeed influenced by Balzac, and there's even a Magwitch-type character in Old Goriot, the ex-convict Vauterin, except his aims are self-benefit rather than recompense. Vauterin tests Eugene's honesty, and Goriot's treatment by his daughters and their husbands, among other things, opens Eugene's eyes to the often vicious nature of Parisian high society. In this book and others Balzac apparently broke from a more romantic tradition and provided a realism that readers hadn't seen before. Old Goriot provides a vivid and unflattering picture of Paris in that era, as two more noble spirits try to negotiate their way through it.
Just about the only thing I remembered from last time I read this, in my teens, was that Goriot was in the vermicelli business. It's odd how that sort of unimportant detail sticks in your mind!In a way, this is the standard French novel plot, i.e. young man from the provinces comes to Paris and meets sophisticated older woman, but with two very particular twists: Goriot, the retired businessman who has sacrificed everything to launch his daughters into society and now finds himself treated like King Lear, and the elusive Vautrin, a self-made man of a different sort altogether. The very compact story makes a nice change from the long-windedness of 19th century English novelists with three volumes to fill, and so does Balzac's healthy cynicism: a story doesn't necessarily have to end with everyone neatly married off, and it's perfectly possible for someone to attend a sentimental deathbed scene without becoming a reformed character as a result.
This book snuck up on me. I thought it was going to be one kind of classic, but upon finishing realised it was a different kind - a genuine classic. Hiding beneath Balzac's congenial, almost garrulous tone there is a sharp and unsentimental eye. By the book's conclusion I could well see a writer that would go on to inspire a whole generation from Zola, to Dickens, to Flaubert and Dostoevsky. The book opens on Madame Vacquer's boardinghouse - accommodation for those bobbing just above the tideline of poverty. Its motley inhabitants are drawn together by little more than propinquity; some on the way up, others on the way down, and others in a grim holding pattern until old age or disease take them. Eugene Rastignac, a bucolic just-nobleman is on the way up, drawn to Paris for his legal studies, and soon to be awed by an introduction to the city's dizziest heights. One the way down is the eponymous Goriot. Once a wealthy trader, plump from exploitation during the revolution, every day seems to leave him poorer. But what could the ridiculous Goriot have in common with the young, up-and-coming Rastignac? The answer to this question forms the book's core. And whilst, superficially, it seems a familiar tale from the nineteenth century, it is in fact one of the first, and one with true insight. Balzac is not content to use the ups-and-downs of those with a precarious hold on security merely to propel a narrative, as so many of his disciples were wont to do; he's trying to say something.He does take his sweet time getting there, however. The first fifty pages or so left me distinctly underwhelmed. It's easy to see why W. Somerset Maugham was such an admirer of Balzac: Much like Maugham, he likes to pepper his narrative with little asides and ruminations on society, clothing, any notion that takes his fancy, really. And, like Maugham, these asides only sometimes justify the narrative break required to furnish them.Balzac's foremost talent is his observational skill. The characters are rendered almost effortlessly. Recognisable types, to be sure, but types that expand almost on demand to contain complexities, contradictions, shades of grey. Indeed, in a lot of ways Pere Goriot is a Bildungsroman whose first concern is the expansion of Rastignac. But his development - like most portrayals in the book - is neither smooth, nor predictable, nor simplistic. Whilst Balzac can embrace the cliche when he wants - as with the grasping comedy of Madame Vacquer - he eschews it for his main characters, giving us protagonists with a healthly dose of ambiguity. We identify with them, because of their flaws in addition to their virtues. To me, it gave the book an emotional heft that a dozen other 19th century novels with very similar plots lack. It also highlights Balzac's larger game, which is to turn a critical eye on French society's most venal hypocrisies. It's a harsh eye at times, but not jaundiced. Balzac isn't interested in agitprop or simple class escapism. He means to entertain, most assuredly - and the book grows progressively entertaining as typified by its chaotic dinner scenes - but not without provocation. In conclusion, I enjoyed Pere Goriot, a lot. I'm unsure how much of this can be attributed the novel's slow start and my subsequent expectations - discovering its merits was like biting into a plain pastry only to realise the centre is filled with delicious jam. However, even those expecting jam could not be disappointed with something so sweet yet at the same time tart, and all in such a small package - barely 250 pages. This accessible, intelligent novel really is a must for anyone with an interest in 19th century literature, preceding as it does so much of it, and so well.
This was my first Balzac novel, although I've read several of his short stories, and I found it insightful, sad and funny, if a bit over-written in parts. The book shows us the story of Eugene Rastinac, a young member of the rural French gentry who comes to the big city, determined to make his way in the society of early 19th Century Paris (and/or study law). His story intersects with that of the title character, an old retiree who, King Lear-like, has made the mistake of giving his fortune to his two daughters in the expectation that they will care for him in his old age. Rastinac and Goriot meet in the run-down rats nest of a rooming house they both live in, an abode described so well that a reader can almost smell the dust and feel the decay.Henry Reed, the translater of the Signet Classic edition I read, tells us in his Afterword that Balzac was in the habit of going back and amending his works, sometimes even after they'd been published. Those amendments usually consisted of additional text, and not always, as Reed tells it, to the ultimate benefit of the work. Still, while some French publishers offer shorter versions, Reed has here translated the entire text of Balzac's final edition. And, really, it's not that hard to tell where the padding has occurred, as his characters speeches sometimes seem overlong, especially towards the end.Nevertheless, Pere Goriot is keen social satire, the characterizations are quite good, and the observations are often both memorable and funny. For example very early on, we are told that Madame Vaquer, the keeper of the rooming house, had originally entertained designs of marriage on Goriot during his first days as a lodger, but that those hopes had quickly been dashed. Her reaction is described, in part, thusly:"Inevitably, she went farther in hostility than she had ever gone in friendship. It was her expectations, not her love, that had been disappointed. If the human heart sometimes finds moments of pause as it ascends the slopes of affection, it rarely halts on the way down."The hypocricy, and the heart, of human society at all its levels is investigated well, here. And the book is lots of fun.
My first Balzac novel and I have to say he's far better than Flaubert at that this stage (having read Madame Bovary and Three Tales). Balzac may be extremely descriptive but he infuses everyone and everything with real heart - something I felt sorely lacking from Flaubert, who seems so mechanical in his prose. Perhaps Balzac goes a little too far here - the melodrama is a somewhat overdone - but I found this an invigorating novel with some of Stendhal's sly, satirical humour.Maupassant would go on to do a lot better but this is still decent stuff.
No one does the French like Balzac!
A very powerful book. It was appalling and painful to watch unfold. I found the whole rooming house "lifestyle" very intriguing and wondered what percentage of the paris population lived in rooming houses in the 1830's. How many situations in todays world put so many different people in the same room to interact with each other? I'm not sure that Goirot, if given the ability to go back and start over, would have had the strength to truly do the things that would have created loving, genuine, and decent daughters. The book was very relevant to the issues of today; the constant pressures of financial appearance; wanting to raise decent and loving children; aging and the fear of being alone; the struggle of doing what is easy vs. doing what is right. I highly recommend this book.
The story starts out by meeting Madame Vauquer, a poor but, more or less, respectable woman who runs the boarding house where we meet most of the characters in this novel. The boarding house is a horrible, dirty, little, place but reputable enough. It is here we meet Eugene Rastignac and the rest of the story pretty much follows him. A poor law student from the country, Eugene has seen enough of Paris to want more, more than a poor law student can achieve without assistance. He comes up with a plan to get a rich mistress who will help him to succeed in society. But as no Parisian woman would have him as he is, he writes home and borrows money from his family and asks an Aunt, who used to frequent Parisian society, for an introduction to anyone she thinks might aid him in this social climb. The family comes through with the money and a letter to a distant cousin Madame la Vicomtesse de Beauseant. The introduction to Madame de Beauseant is important for Eugene. He is invited to ball is accepted there and meets a beautiful woman, Madame la Comtess de Restaud. She is beautiful, rich and will serve his purpose quite well. On his first call to the Madame de Restaud he blunders unforgivably. He sees a fellow boarder leaving their house and questions if they happen to know "Old Goriot." As it turns out "Old Goriot" is Madame's father. This embarrasses everyone and as Eugene leaves Monsieur de Restaud tells the doorman not to let him in again.From there Eugene goes to Madame de Beauseants and applies to her for help. How can he have a rich mistress if he has poor country habits? He asks her to teach him how to behave in society. She does this and helps him to find another potential mistress. Madame de Nucingen "Old Goriot's" other daughter. This works out well as Madame de Nucingen's last beau has just left her. Eugene takes to seeing Madame de Nucingen very frequently and when he comes home he tells Goriot all about it. By this time Eugene has come to admire and respect Goriot. He finds out exactly what kind of women this mans daughters are and why he, Goriot, is in such poverty at Madame Vanquers. He gave them everything they ever wanted as children he has continued this in their adulthood. He ruins himself with his maniacal desire to pay their debts. Eugene remains more or less good at heart through this debacle. But instead of changing his mind he continues in his scheme. I very much enjoyed this novel. The human natures described here are both appalling and engrossing. A great read and a quick one (275 pages.) Completely worthwhile.
This classic piece was my introduction to Balzac. This canny Frenchman is a close and knowing observer of human nature. The hopes, desperation, greed, and cynicism so rampant every day in our world, are fully on display here.The tale is told through the viewpoint of Rastignac, a 21 year-old law student and newcomer to Paris. Rastignac's ambition are the common ones, to be rich, fashionable, and carefree, and wishes to take a mistress. These ambitions shift over the course of the story. He becomes enamored of Pere Goriot, understanding what a virtuous man he is. Balzac shows is the destructiveness of 19th-century Paris society: Goriot's two worldly daughters waste his means over time and leave him impoverished. Goriot himself, however, is as much a supporter of worldly amibitions as anyone, but it bankrupts him and at length, at least indirectly, kills him.Here is post-Napoleon Paris, described closely if not lovingly by Balzac. This author's fame as a canny observer of human nature and human folly is richly deserved. If you haven't yet taken up Balzac, this is an outstanding place to start. Go for it!
1194. Pere Goirot, by Honore de Balzac (read 5 Nov 1972) The good experience I had with the preceding Balzac novel led me to look forward greatly to reading this, but I was surprised by how stupid the story was. It tells of an old man who loves his two daughters so much that he pauperizes himself --not for their good, but for their bad! He helps their boyfriends (both married), buys them jewels, etc. It is just the most moronic story. Eugene Rastignac is a student of 22 who is also an obnoxious person, whining money out of his poor family so he can buy stupid luxuries and impress stupid women. I cannot say anything good aboout the book except that it was easy to read. But the story, the characters, everything made me contemptuous. I decided to read no more Balzac--and I have not. [In August 2008 I did read Cousin Bette. and again decided I need read no more Balzac.]
This was my first foray into Balzac and it certainly won't be my last. It is, in a way, less a story of old Goriot himself (an old man, almost destitute, living in a run-down boarding house on the seedier side of Paris, visited occasionally by two beautiful young women who he claims are his daughters) as it is of Eugene Rastignac, the young student who shares the boarding house with Goriot and a host of richly drawn supporting characters. Balzac creates a masterful description, evocative and vibrant, bringing the high society and low underbelly of Paris alive for the reader. He is ascerbic and satirical in his portrayal of life at both ends of the social scale and makes astute observations about the human condition in general through his well-realised cast of characters and the moral dilemmas they face. Often this is executed with sharp humour, relevant in its application to certain elements of modern-day human interaction. It is an easy read and the style is both contemporary and accessible to the modern-day reader despite the age of the work. It is a great book, a portrait of human failings, of self-interest, of consuming passions and of the cynicism of romantic attachments. I would highly recommend it.
"Pere Goriot" was a good book about the dangers of wealth. The old man is a once-wealthy tradesman with two beautiful but unhappily married daughters. Their frivolous spending habits cause Pere Goriot, who dearly loves his daughters, to give up his fortune and sell all of his valuables in order to pay their debts. The book also chronicles the struggles of Eugene Rastignac, who desires the life of the rich and famous Parisians that surround him. The book was a fast read--although it could have been more absorbing--and it taught a good lesson. Quite funny in parts!
There's a lot to love about this book. The writing is evocative and often humourous.However, there is a lot of extra padding that could have been trimmed. Sometimes the characters go on repeating themselves for pages at a time. The romance is overdone--but considering when it was written, is not so bad.I liked Balzac's black humor, showcased in frequent asides about Paris, money, family, society, etc. I liked how money incessantly influenced his characters' actions.The story is far-fetched in parts, but that did not detract from my enjoyment too much.
Sometimes slow. Sometimes confusing. But definitely interesting. I couldn't recall the name so that is not so good. But I searched for Death Dodger and found the book.
Balzac, a French author, was the father of the literary genre "realism". As he says in the opening pages "..this drama is not fictional, it's not a novel: All is true--so true you will be able to recognize everything that goes into it in your own life". Of course, it is fiction, "Pere Goriot" is one of over 90 novels Balzec wrote in a frantic 20-year writing career that detail aspects of social and private life in France in the 1820s and 1830s, part of an integrated work called "The Human Comedy". "Pere Goriot" is considered representative of Balzac at the height of his abilities and is one of his most widely read novels.Having never (consciously) read a "realist" novel, I knew what to expect after the first 20 pages were devoted to describing every last detail of a Parisian bording house. Far from boring, it was like a history or anthropology book come alive in full color, sound and taste. Balzacs powers of observation are so penetrating, not just of objects but of the human heart and mind, that it is no wonder historians have used his work as a basis for understanding France during that time period. Oscar Wilde said of Balzac "The Nineteenth-Century, as we know it, is largely an invention of Balzac's".There are a number of translations available, I started with the free Gutenburg translation from the 19th century and gave up one-quarter through as too many passages were undecipherable. The Raffel translation (Norton Critical Edition), critically acclaimed, is pure magic; re-reading the same sections brought forth an entirely new book, it was amazing to see the difference translators have on the novel.
Een klassieke Balzac, mooie vertelling, zij het lichtelijk melodramatisch.?
Een klassieke Balzac, mooie vertelling, zij het lichtelijk melodramatisch.
I knew that I wanted to read Balzac, but where to start?I knew that his great work, La Comedie Humaine, was a vast collection of loosely linked novels that he wrote to portray each and every level of French society. I knew that with more than forty books this wasn’t a series I was going to read in its entirety; and so, because I had copies of several books, I gave each one of them careful consideration before I decided which looked the most interesting.My choice was ‘Le Père Goriot’, a book from the middle of Balzac’s writing career, and a book which is said by many to be his greatest work.My decision may have been influenced by the fact that the story is set in a boarding house – I have always loved boarding house novels – and the story begins with wonderfully precisie description of the Maison Vaquer, a poor but respectable establishment, and its inhabitants.Only once the scene is properly set, can the story can begin.At first I was very aware of the narrator. He was articulate, he was engaging, but I was a little concerned that he was interrupting the story he has to tell to reinforce points. They were good points, but I wanted them to come from the story and the characters. In time they did, and in time the narrator faded into the background; he was doing is job so well that I forgot he was there.The newest resident of the boarding house was Eugene de Rastignac who had recently arrived from the country, carrying all of the hopes of his family, to study law. His plan had been to throw himself into work and study, but it wasn’t long before he saw that he needed to make connections and be well placed in society if he was to succeed; and it was his great good luck to was blessed with a cousin who was well placed to introduce him to some of ‘the right people’.He was amiable, he had a natural charm, and he was well liked at the Maison Vaquer.Father Goriot was less well liked. When he had first arrived at the boarding house he had taken one of the best rooms, he had furnished it with lovely things, and his landlady had set her cap at him. When he didn’t respond, when those lovely things began to disappear and Father Goriot moved to one of her cheapest rooms, she treated him with disdain. Still he didn’t respond, and the other boarders considered him to be a rather foolish – maybe rather simple – old man.Eugene didn’t pay much attention to the situation, until the day he saw something that piqued his interestHis cousin had introduced Rastignac to the beautiful Comtesse de Restaud, and he was smitten. He visited her home, and, while he was waiting for her to appear, he looked out of the window and saw her with Goriot at the back of the house. His visit went well until he mentioned that he knew the old man. As soon as the words were out of his mouth his visit was summarily ended; the next time he visited the Comtesse was ‘not at home’, and it was conveyed to him that she would never be ‘at home’ to him again.He couldn’t understand what had happened, and he turned to his cousin for advice. She explained a little; she told him that Goriot was the Comtesse’s father …Goriot had been a wealthy tradesman, and very blissfully happy with his beloved wife and their two lovely two daughters. When his wife died, he gave all of the love he had to his daughters; and he used almost all of his fortune to provide them with sizable dowries, so that they might marry rich and powerful men.They did just that, and he hoped that he might live with one or the other of them, and that the three of them would always be close. His hopes were dashed, because those rich and powerful men had no time for a humble tradesman. They would not welcome him into their homes, they would not even acknowledge him in public, and their wives followed suit.That was why Goriot moved into the Maison Vaquer, living off the little capital that he had kept for himself. His capital quickly diminished, because even though his daughters wanted him to keep his distance, they came to him whenever that had a bill to pay that their husband would not like, or that they would rather he did not know about.They took his love for granted, he could refuse them nothing, and so he was only one step away from destitution.When his cousin suggested that Eugene should woo Madame Delphine de Nucingen, Goriot’s other daughter, he saw many possibilities. It would it serve as revenge against her sister- the two sisters were bitterly competitive – it could be his stepping stone into society – and it could give him a chance to help the old man he had come to like very much.He followed her suggestion.Father Goriot was delighted that his young friend was moving in the same circles as his daughters, that he was able to bring him news of them. He was delighted with the smallest crumb; he thought nothing of himself, all of his care and concern was for them.Eugene could do nothing more for the old man. His daughters continued to take his love for granted, and it seemed that love had made them utterly selfish.His coming of age, his rise through society was set against Goriot’s fall.The story would end with his funeral; with only Eugene, the house boy who had always liked the old man who was kind to him, and two empty carriages sent by his sons-in-law in attendance.It took a little while for the story to get its hooks into me, but once it did I was caught, completely and utterly, to the very last page.The characters were complex and intriguing; and I couldn’t help responding to them. Nothing was black and white, but I saw so many shades of grey. I could understand why it was said that Goriot was a foolish old man – and I have to say that he was a fool for the best of reasons, that the world would be a better place if there were more fools like him.The story sets the world of the rich and powerful against the world of work and poverty very effectively. It was distinctive, it was uncontrived, and it illuminated similarities and differences. There was corruption and wrongdoing in both worlds, but the underlying causes were different. Some were keeping up appearances and expected much, while others were concerned with survival and advancement …It was told though a wonderful combination of descriptive passages and dialogues that made the characters, the era they lived in and the city that was home to them live and breathe.The boarding house and the salons were so well evoked that I might have been there.The old man’s downfall broke my heart, but the young man’s progress gave me hope for the future.
Isa Goriot oli edukas nuudlikaupmees, kes elas luksuses. Ärist lahkus ta tütarde abikaasade surve tõttu. Elas pansionis ja kolis aina kõrgemale korrusele (jäi vaesemaks). Tema üle heideti nalja ja ei austatud. Ta täitis tütarde soovid ja tegi neile kõik ette-taha ära. Tahtis, et neil läheks kõik hästi. Isaarmastus läks liiale. Kogu kiindumus, mis tal naise vastu oli, suunas ta oma tütardele. Lõpuks jäi haigeks ja suri.
The plot of Old Goriot weaves together opposite ends of the Parisian social scale – the ballrooms and salons of the aristocracy, and a shabby but apparently respectable boarding house in a poor quarter of town. It is in this dreary and worn and wonderfully described old house that a variety of unlikely personalities are thrown together, including the two main characters Old Goriot and Eugene Rastingac. Along with the other residents these provide the excellent mix of humour, tragedy, comic mundanity, intrigue, and wealth of insights onto human psychology that make Balzac's novels so entertaining. We also see the vacuous world of materialism, greed, pleasure seeking, fashion, and social climbing, into which some of these characters variously dip their toes or plunge. As in many of Balzac's works, the story is driven in part by a character with a specific obsessive personality trait - in this case Old Father Goriot who is fixed on providing for his selfish daughters. Monsieur Rastignac however is an altogether more interesting and torn character in that he represents some of the better aspects of human nature, while having enough self interest that he can be led into shady schemes by those who are more cynical and less honourable than he. The fight between his sense of what is right, and the desire for personal advancement play out in this complicated character throughout the novel. Old Goriot is none the less a troubled being, though in his case this is due to his psychological complex over being a good father to his two heartless daughters. While I won't give the story away, there are several heart-wrenching scenes, and an ending that fits the story.Taken all together, this is the best of Balzac's full length novels that I have read so far, and definitely more interesting and complete than either Eugene Grandet or the Village Rector for example.
I read this for one of the courses I took with Bill Fredlund at his Institute. I remember more of his lecture about fake aristocrats and self invention in post Napoleonic France than I do of the novel, but I remember thinking I would read more Balzac and his Human Comedy. This remains the only Balzac I had read to date.
Balzac gives readers a nuanced and meticulous moral drama portraying the French high society and its destructive power. His eye for detail is unparalleled ad his characters are full and multidimensional. A master prose stylist that reveals to us the horrors the of Parisian life in realistic yet tragic ways. A succinct read that belies layers of intricacy andl eds itself to study and analysis regarding ideas of family, class, and society.
One of the difficulties of this book is that Balzac expects you to understand the society he is describing. He wastes no space explaining civil law or recent history and the such, but only references them as needed to further the story. I would need a well-annotated edition to really understand it all, and the Barnes & Noble Classics editions are by no means well-annotated.
In a reputable, albeit shabby, boarding house in Paris there lives the usual mix of humanity frequent such places. In Madame Vauquer's establishment, the most ridiculed of her tenants is Pere Goriot, who seems generally absent-minded unless someone mentions his daughters. But with a man so willing to surrender everything he has for children, there are circumstances that arise which can only lead to tragedy.With a tendency to pluck the heights of melodrama, Pere Goriot was an intriguing reading experience. I found it fascinating for its social commentary on the norms of the upper classes in Paris in the 19th century, with its utter lack of scandal around lovers and mistresses. While I was never particularly attached to the characters themselves, I was pulled in sufficiently by the plot to want to find out what happened to them. I do recommend the translation of this edition as it reflects the language of the period while remaining accessible for modern readers.
One of Balzac's books in La Comedie Humaine, a sprawling collection of interlinked novels meant to portray France at all levels of society. Pere Goriot is lauded as Balzac's finest novel, and central to the Comedie series. In the story, Eugene de Rastignac is a young law student, living at an impoverished but respectable boarding house. The novel details his introduction to the elite of Parisian society, his awakening ambition, and the start of his career. Intertwined with his story is the tragic history of Father Goriot, a man excluded from the same society Eugene seeks, even though Goriot sacrificed everything to introduce his daughters to the coveted world. Goriot and Rastignac are both boarders at the Maison Vaquer. Rastignac is young and charming, and well liked. Goriot, on the other hand, is despised and mocked, through no fault of his own. The boarders have chosen him as the weak member of the house, encouraged by the landlady's disdain after Goriot turned her down, and the old man does nothing to defend himself. He is a mystery, and Eugene will be the one to uncover it. A distant cousin, Madame de Beauseant, happens to be one of the queens of Parisian society, and she invites Eugene de Rastignac to a dance at her house. Once there, Rastignac is smitten with the beautiful Comtesse de Restaud, and even pays her a visit at her home soon after. While waiting for her, he sees Goriot sharing a quiet moment with the lovely lady in a back corner of the house. At first, Eugene's visit is going well, although he is miffed to discover the Comtesse already has a lover, but when he mentions Goriot's name he is summarily pushed from the house. Baffled, he turns to his influential cousin for advice and support. She informs him that Mr. Goriot is the father of the Comtesse de Restaud, and further promises Eugene her assistance in breaking into the enchanting world he is just beginning to taste. Through her help, Eugene learns about the back story of the Comtesse and Pere Goriot. Goriot was a wealthy tradesman, a vermicelli maker, and very in love with his wife and two daughters. When the former died, he transferred all his affections to his offspring, and loves them with an idolatrous zeal. He split the majority of his fortune in half to present them with sizable dowries that would tempt rich and powerful men, and allowed them to marry whoever they chose. His dreams of living with their new families were soon dashed. The girls followed their husband's examples, and were embarrassed to acknowledge their father in public. So he moved in to the Maison Vaquer, living off the smaller but respectable amount of money he kept for himself. However, even though his girls wanted him to keep his distance, it didn't stop them from coming to him for more money, usually in connection with their lovers. Eventually, they drained the small resources he had.Eugene equips himself with this knowledge, and begins his campaign. His cousin suggested he should woo Madame Delphine de Nucingen, Goriot's other daughter, sister to the Comtesse de Restaud. Not only would it serve as revenge, since the two sisters are bitterly competitive with each other, it could be his stepping stone into society. Eugene follows her suggestion, despite a tempting offer from the Machiavellian Vautrin, and his fortunes begin to rise to his expectations. Sadly, even Eugene's empathy and connection to their father is not enough to move the daughters' out of their selfish preoccupations, and Goriot literally exhausts himself to death to please them. Only Eugene goes to his funeral. I found this French novel extremely readable, especially as I was expecting a challenging time reading an old French classic. The introduction lingers on a minute description of the Maison Vaquer, before finally bringing its descriptive powers to the lodgers of the house and kicking off the plot. The beginning had me worried, as it was tedious, but once the story settled down with its characters, I was lost in the novel and read it far more quickly than I anticipated. The characters are fascinating, the novel deftly contrasts the glittering world of the rich and powerful with the drab world of hard work and poverty, and illuminates their surprising links and similarities. Balzac reveals the corruption that runs under the surface in both spheres of society, and also demonstrates how much more appalling it is for those upper classes that maintain an illusion of virtue and honor. Descriptive passages are devoted to the scenes of sumptuous life and the opening details of the impoverished Maison Vaquer, or physical descriptions, also related to societal status. The rest of the novel is comprised of dialogue and internal thoughts or feelings. The story flowed smoothly, and was engaging.After reading this novel, I am certainly open to reading more in his Comedie Humaine series of books. The characters were complicated and compelling. Goriot's decline was truly sad, yet Eugene's rise offsets some of the bitterness. I was upset that Rastignac lost his lingering youthful idealism at the close of the novel, and yet his ambition became a battle, almost an act of vengeance for Goriot, which made it more palatable. The whole book is a series of contrasts, of balances, which is aesthetically pleasing. I know that Balzac is known for his use of recurring characters, and de Rastignac along with several others in this novel are among his most used. I will look for other books to feature these intriguing people when I choose my next Balzac book, because I am interested to see what happens to them. They are all complicated and flawed people, and that makes for good reading.
It's interesting that Père Goriot has the name that it does, as that character is neither the main one in the text nor the character whose actions most drive the plot. Nevertheless Goriot is the emotional heart of this novel, which does several things but ultimately its most successful accomplishment is depicting the selfless love of a father and the selfishness of children both brought to harmful extremes.
The book merges a critique of French high society with the story of King Lear- but minus Cordelia, and with a Lear that has his pride replaced by the desire to indulge his children. On the front of social critique I found the novel lacking, as I'm afraid Proust has ruined such exercises for me. Proust lived in this same social labyrinth and theater, and his serious depictions of it are both more involved and more moving. In Search of Lost Time also allows the reader to view just how absurd the system was, as the absurdity is not exactly hidden from view. In contrast the satirization of the absurdities of the Paris social ladder that Balzac presents here seems rather simple and boring.
Luckily the parts of the novel that reimagined King Lear worked better, though Balzac changes the moral ambiguity of one of Shakespeare's greatest plays into more of a tear-jerker. It's not hard, really, to make a story like this emotionally powerful- you write a kind, good character and then have mean, evil characters keep hurting that kind one over and over again until the kind one is utterly broken. That's inherently sad. Balzac, though, does not just go for the easy emotional impact but also points to such boundless kindness without consideration behind it being a potential source of evil itself. Goriot earns the title of this book by being the most poignant character of the novel, and the one I'm most likely to remember.
Beyond Goriot, though, the stories of most of the other characters were less striking. There's an effective passage where the main character Rastignac writes his family for money, taking every scrap they can scrounge so that he can take some chances in the social scene that, even if successful, could result in no payout. Instead of maintaining this tension and having the pressure suspended over Rastignac, the novel resolves this point with little fanfare a few pages later, and indeed the novel makes clear at about the midway point that Rastignac's schemes will come to at least some level of fruition. This drained much of the narrative tension from that character's arc. Nevertheless I suppose the book has the reputation that it has for Goriot, not for one of the other two dozen odd characters.
I wonder if Dickens read Père Goriot, as there were some significant similarities between this work and Great Expectations.
The book merges a critique of French high society with the story of King Lear- but minus Cordelia, and with a Lear that has his pride replaced by the desire to indulge his children. On the front of social critique I found the novel lacking, as I'm afraid Proust has ruined such exercises for me. Proust lived in this same social labyrinth and theater, and his serious depictions of it are both more involved and more moving. In Search of Lost Time also allows the reader to view just how absurd the system was, as the absurdity is not exactly hidden from view. In contrast the satirization of the absurdities of the Paris social ladder that Balzac presents here seems rather simple and boring.
Luckily the parts of the novel that reimagined King Lear worked better, though Balzac changes the moral ambiguity of one of Shakespeare's greatest plays into more of a tear-jerker. It's not hard, really, to make a story like this emotionally powerful- you write a kind, good character and then have mean, evil characters keep hurting that kind one over and over again until the kind one is utterly broken. That's inherently sad. Balzac, though, does not just go for the easy emotional impact but also points to such boundless kindness without consideration behind it being a potential source of evil itself. Goriot earns the title of this book by being the most poignant character of the novel, and the one I'm most likely to remember.
Beyond Goriot, though, the stories of most of the other characters were less striking. There's an effective passage where the main character Rastignac writes his family for money, taking every scrap they can scrounge so that he can take some chances in the social scene that, even if successful, could result in no payout. Instead of maintaining this tension and having the pressure suspended over Rastignac, the novel resolves this point with little fanfare a few pages later, and indeed the novel makes clear at about the midway point that Rastignac's schemes will come to at least some level of fruition. This drained much of the narrative tension from that character's arc. Nevertheless I suppose the book has the reputation that it has for Goriot, not for one of the other two dozen odd characters.
I wonder if Dickens read Père Goriot, as there were some significant similarities between this work and Great Expectations.
A powerful character study of the driving force behind humanity: money. The almighty dollar defines and influences society and holds court over its moral choices. Balzac deftly illustrates the extent to which people will go to procure wealth, or at least the illusion of wealth, in 19th century Parisian society. A young man learns this painful truth as he is initiated into the adult world. “Golden chains are the heaviest of all fetters...Henceforth there is war between us.” This timeless message is repeated throughout Balzac’s work.
Cheering for a father of daughters to read this book--or any father. The daughters only write to ask for funds, as they make their way up the social ladder well above where they can even acknowledge their father.Who but Balzac writes of a proud French General, "simple as a child," or of "professeur," essentially a prep school teacher, at "Collège de France, payé pour tenir a la hauteur de ses auditeurs " (56). He writes of youth, and its "contagion des sentiments."The wonderful, patheti ending features a French funeral--for which , see Dickens' satire in theUncommercial Traveller. Pere Goriot's death is unattended by his daughters, his funeral...well, no spoilers on that. Goriot gets some grand monologs, for sure.