Father Goriot (1819-1820)

A rich man gives everything to his daughters and dies a miserable death once they have forsaken him kind of like King Lear does. This is the most famous of all Balzac's novels.

The novel opens with a depiction of everyday life in the boarding house Vauquer. Most of the main characters live there. Most of the action in the novel will eminate from there. The boarding house is run down and smells bad. The proprietress is stingy and mean hearted. Besides Eugene Rastignac, Balzac's most famous recurring character, who we see get his start in life in this novel, several other of Balzac's most well-known recurring characters are live at the boarding house. Included among the boarders are the arch criminal Vautrin in disguise, the doctor Horace Bianchon, and Goriot, an old man who has prematurely given everything he owns to his daughters so they could marry into high society. Goriot, once a rich manufacturer of pasta, has been reduced by the needs of his spoilt daughters to utter poverty.

The young Rastignac has been sent by his parents to study law in Paris and is dependent upon them for support. Rastignac, like almost every ambitious young man in Balzac, comes to realize that in Paris a glorious career and wealth are more likely to follow from success among the women of high society than hard work at a profession. Rastignac embarks on a campaign to gain entrance into high society. His aristocratic name opens some doors for him. His poor family back home in the country provide him with some more of their hard-earned money after he pleads with them.

Visiting the first Goriot daughter Rastignac finds her mixed up in a relationship with the infamous dandy, rake, and recurring character Maxime de Trailles. Her husband lurks around impotently in the background. (see the short story "Gobseck" for the denouement of this relationship) Rastignac then heads to one of his distant relations, Madame Beausant, one of the Grand Dames of Parisian society. He manages to make some headway there and get invited to some important high society parties.

Delphine de Nucingen, the wife of the rich banker Nucingen, and the daughter of Rastignac's fellow boarder Goriot, has just been abandoned by her lover de Marsay. Rastignac takes advantage of the situation and cultivates a relationship with her, hoping to use this well-placed woman as a stepping stone to wealth and power. He becomes a sort of baby-sitter for her, taking care of all the irksome tasks that her husband finds unpleasant, like accompanying her to parties and the theatre as well as listening to her problems. Delphine's father Goriot likes Rastignac much more than her stingy banker husband Nucingen, furnishes the two of them with an apartment, love-nest.

The arch criminal in disguise, Vautrin, offers to help Rastignac in his conquest of society. (sort of the same way he later helps Lucien de Rubempre in "Lost Illusions"). Rastignac, detecting something a little unsavory in Vautrin declines the offer. Vautrin goes so far as to offer some unsolicited to Rastignac. He has the brother of Victorine Taillefer, who also lives at their boarding house, shot and killed in a duel, leaving the family inheritance to his sister whom Vautrin plans to marry to Rastignac providing him with a small fortune. Towards the end of the novel, Vautrin is apprehended by the police at the boarding house. Stripped of his disguise, his read hair, tattoos, and unseemly criminal body is revealed to the reader's horror.

As Delphine's father Goriot lays on his death bed, Rastignac pleads with her to go to him instead of the party at the house of Mme. Beausant to which she has been invited, to be her first big entrance into high society. Delphine goes to the party, her father dies, and Rastignac is one of a handful of people to attend Goriot's funeral. His daughters aren't there. From the famous Pere Lachaise cemetery, Rastignac utters his famous challenge to Parisian society and then goes home to eat breakfast with Madame Nucingen who will ultimately be the key element in his long road to wealth and power. Rastignac will end up being a rich (see "The House of Nucingen") cabinet minister who many years later marries Delphine's own daughter. As Felicien Marceau bluntly puts it in his book on Balzac's recurring characters: "Rastignac makes his way as a gig*lo." (Marceau, 47)

(Long, Le Pere Goriot, frgrt.txt)