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Honore de Balzac
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Honoré de Balzac
French author
original name Honoré Balssa
born May 20, 1799, Tours, France
died August 18, 1850, Paris
French literary artist who produced a vast number of novels and short
stories collectively called La Comédie humaine (The Human Comedy). He
helped to establish the traditional form of the novel and is generally
considered to be one of the greatest novelists of all time.
Early career
Balzac’s father was a man of southern peasant stock who worked in the
civil service for 43 years under Louis XVI and Napoleon. Honoré’s mother
came from a family of prosperous Parisian cloth merchants. His sister
Laure (later de Surville) was his only childhood friend, and she became
his first biographer.
Balzac was sent to school at the Collège des Oratoriens at Vendôme
from age 8 to 14. At Napoleon’s downfall his family moved from Tours to
Paris, where he went to school for two more years and then spent three
years as a lawyer’s clerk. During this time he already aimed at a
literary career, but as the writer of Cromwell (1819) and other tragic
plays he was utterly unsuccessful. He then began writing novels filled
with mystic and philosophical speculations before turning to the
production of potboilers—gothic, humorous, historical novels—written
under composite pseudonyms. Then he tried a business career as a
publisher, printer, and owner of a typefoundry, but disaster soon
followed. In 1828 he was narrowly saved from bankruptcy and was left
with debts of more than 60,000 francs. From then on his life was to be
one of mounting debts and almost incessant toil. He returned to writing
with a new mastery, and his literary apprenticeship was over.
Two works of 1829 brought Balzac to the brink of success. Les Chouans,
the first novel he felt enough confidence about to have published under
his own name, is a historical novel about the Breton peasants called
Chouans who took part in a royalist insurrection against Revolutionary
France in 1799. The other, La Physiologie du mariage (The Physiology of
Marriage), is a humorous and satirical essay on the subject of marital
infidelity, encompassing both its causes and its cure. The six stories
in his Scènes de la vie privée (1830; “Scenes from Private Life”)
further increased his reputation. These long short stories are for the
most part psychological studies of girls in conflict with parental
authority. The minute attention he gave to describing domestic
background in his works anticipated the spectacularly detailed societal
observations of his later Parisian studies.
From this point forward Balzac spent much of his time in Paris. He
began to frequent some of the best-known Parisian salons of the day and
redoubled his efforts to set himself up as a dazzling figure in society.
To most people he seemed full of exuberant vitality, talkative, jovial
and robustious, egoistic, credulous, and boastful. He adopted for his
own use the armorial bearings of an ancient noble family with which he
had no connection and assumed the honorific particle de. He was avid for
fame, fortune, and love but was above all conscious of his own genius.
He also began to have love affairs with fashionable or aristocratic
women at this time, finally gaining that firsthand understanding of
mature women that is so evident in his novels.
Between 1828 and 1834 Balzac led a tumultuous existence, spending his
earnings in advance as a dandy and man-about-town. A fascinating
raconteur, he was fairly well received in society. But social
ostentation was only a relaxation from phenomenal bouts of work—14 to 16
hours spent writing at his table in his white, quasi-monastic dressing
gown, with his goose-quill pen and his endless cups of black coffee. In
1832 Balzac became friendly with Éveline Hanska, a Polish countess who
was married to an elderly Ukrainian landowner. She, like many other
women, had written to Balzac expressing admiration of his writings. They
met twice in Switzerland in 1833—the second time in Geneva, where they
became lovers—and again in Vienna in 1835. They agreed to marry when her
husband died, and so Balzac continued to conduct his courtship of her by
correspondence; the resulting Lettres à l’étrangère (“Letters to a
Foreigner”), which appeared posthumously (4 vol., 1889–1950), are an
important source of information for the history both of Balzac’s life
and of his work.
To clear his debts and put himself in a position to marry Madame
Hanska now became Balzac’s great incentive. He was at the peak of his
creative power. In the period 1832–35 he produced more than 20 works,
including the novels Le Médecin de campagne (1833; The Country Doctor),
Eugénie Grandet (1833), L’Illustre Gaudissart (1833; The Illustrious
Gaudissart), and Le Père Goriot (1835), one of his masterpieces. Among
the shorter works were Le Colonel Chabert (1832), Le Curé de Tours
(1832; The Vicar of Tours), the trilogy of stories entitled Histoire des
treize (1833–35; History of the Thirteen), and Gobseck (1835). Between
1836 and 1839 he wrote Le Cabinet des antiques (1839), the first two
parts of another masterpiece, Illusions perdues (1837–43; Lost
Illusions), César Birotteau (1837), and La Maison Nucingen (1838; The
Firm of Nucingen). Between 1832 and 1837 he also published three sets of
Contes drolatiques (Droll Stories). These stories, Rabelaisian in theme,
are written with great verve and gusto in an ingenious pastiche of
16th-century language. During the 1830s he also wrote a number of
philosophical novels dealing with mystical, pseudoscientific, and other
exotic themes. Among these are La Peau de chagrin (1831; The Wild Ass’s
Skin), Le Chef-d’oeuvre inconnu (1831; The Unknown Masterpiece), Louis
Lambert (1834), La Recherche de l’absolu (1834; The Quest of the
Absolute), and Séraphîta (1834–35).
In all these varied works Balzac emerged as the supreme observer and
chronicler of contemporary French society. These novels are unsurpassed
for their narrative drive, their large casts of vital, diverse, and
interesting characters, and their obsessive interest in and examination
of virtually all spheres of life: the contrast between provincial and
metropolitan manners and customs; the commercial spheres of banking,
publishing, and industrial enterprise; the worlds of art, literature,
and high culture; politics and partisan intrigue; romantic love in all
its aspects; and the intricate social relations and scandals among the
aristocracy and the haute bourgeoisie.
No theme is more typically Balzacian than that of the ambitious young
provincial fighting for advancement in the competitive world of Paris.
Balzac admired those individuals who were ruthless, astute, and, above
all, successful in thrusting their way up the social and economic scale
at all costs. He was especially attracted by the theme of the individual
in conflict with society: the adventurer, the scoundrel, the
unscrupulous financier, and the criminal. Frequently his villains are
more vigorous and interesting than his virtuous characters. He was both
fascinated and appalled by the French social system of his time, in
which the bourgeois values of material acquisitiveness and gain were
steadily replacing what he viewed as the more stable moral values of the
old-time aristocracy.
These topics provided material largely unknown, or unexplored, by
earlier writers of French fiction. The individual in Balzac’s stories is
continually affected by the pressure of material difficulties and social
ambitions, and he may expend his tremendous vitality in ways Balzac
views as socially destructive and self-destructive. Linked with this
idea of the potentially destructive power of passionate will, emotion,
and thought is Balzac’s peculiar notion of a vital fluid concentrated
inside the person, a store of energy that he may husband or squander as
he desires, thereby lengthening or shortening his vital span. Indeed, a
supremely important feature in Balzac’s characters is that most are
spendthrifts of this vital force, a fact that explains his monomaniacs
who are both victim and embodiment of some ruling passion; avarice, as
in the main character of Gobseck, a usurer gloating over his sense of
power, or the miserly father obsessed with riches in Eugénie Grandet;
excessive paternal affection, as in the idolatrous Learlike father in Le
Père Goriot; feminine vindictiveness, as evidenced in La Cousine Bette
and a half-dozen other novels; the mania of the art collector, as in Le
Cousin Pons; the artist’s desire for perfection, as in Le Chef-d’oeuvre
inconnu; the curiosity of the scientist, as in the fanatical chemist of
La Recherche de l’absolu; or the vaulting and frustrated ambition of the
astonishingly resourceful criminal mastermind Vautrin in Illusions
perdues and Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes. Once such an
obsession has gained a hold, Balzac shows it growing irresistibly in
power and blinding the person concerned to all other considerations. The
typical structure of his novels from the early 1830s onward is
determined by this approach: there is a long period of preparation and
exposition, and then tension mounts swiftly to an inevitable climax, as
in classical tragedy.
La Comédie humaine
The year 1834 marks a climax in Balzac’s career, for by then he had
become totally conscious of his great plan to group his individual
novels so that they would comprehend the whole of contemporary society
in a diverse but unified series of books. There were to be three general
categories of novels: Études analytiques (“Analytic Studies”), dealing
with the principles governing human life and society; Études
philosophiques (“Philosophical Studies”), revealing the causes
determining human action; and Études de moeurs (“Studies of Manners”),
showing the effects of those causes, and themselves to be divided into
six kinds of scènes—private, provincial, Parisian, political, military,
and country life. This entire project resulted in a total of 12 volumes
(1834–37). By 1837 Balzac had written much more, and by 1840 he had hit
upon a Dantesque title for the whole: La Comédie humaine. He negotiated
with a consortium of publishers for an edition under this name, 17
volumes of which appeared between 1842 and 1848, including a famous
foreword written in 1842. In 1845, having new works to include and many
others in project, he began preparing for another complete edition. A
“definitive edition” was published, in 24 volumes, between 1869 and
1876. The total number of novels and novellas comprised in the Comédie
humaine is roughly 90.
Also in 1834 the idea of using “reappearing characters” matured.
Balzac was to establish a pool of characters from which he would
constantly and repeatedly draw, thus adding a sense of solidarity and
coherence to the Comédie humaine. A certain character would reappear—now
in the forefront, now in the background, of different fictions—in such a
way that the reader could gradually form a full picture of him. Balzac’s
use of this device places him among the originators of the modern novel
cycle. In the end, the total number of named characters in the Comédie
humaine is estimated to have reached 2,472, with a further 566 unnamed
characters.
In January 1842 Balzac learned of the death of Wenceslas Hanski. He
now had good expectations of marrying Éveline, but there were many
obstacles, not the least being his inextricable indebtedness. She in
fact held back for many years, and the period of 1842–48 shows Balzac
continuing and even intensifying his literary activity in the frantic
hope of winning her, though he had to contend with increasing ill
health.
Balzac produced many notable works during the early and mid-1840s.
These include the masterpieces Une Ténébreuse Affaire (1841; A Shady
Business), La Rabouilleuse (1841–42; The Black Sheep), Ursule Mirouët
(1841), and one of his greatest works, Splendeurs et misères des
courtisanes (1843–47; A Harlot High and Low). Balzac’s last two
masterpieces were La Cousine Bette (1847; Cousin Bette) and Le Cousin
Pons (1847; Cousin Pons).
In the autumn of 1847 Balzac went to Madame Hanska’s château at
Wierzchownia and remained there until February 1848. He returned again
in October to stay, mortally sick, until the spring of 1850. Then at
last Éveline relented. They were married in March and proceeded to
Paris, where Balzac lingered on miserably for the few months before his
death.
Balzac did not quite realize his tremendous aim of making his novels
comprehend the whole of society at that time. His projected scenes of
military and political life were only partially completed, and there
were certain other gaps, for instance in regard to the new class of
industrial workers. Nevertheless, few novelists have thronged their
pages with men and women drawn from so many different spheres, nor with
characters so widely representative of human passions and frailties,
projected with dynamic and convincing force.
Balzac was notable for his peculiar methods of composition. He often
began with a relatively simple subject and a brief first draft, but
fresh ideas came crowding in during composition until finally the story
expanded far beyond his first intention. The trouble lay in the fact
that Balzac tended to expand and amplify his original story by making
emendations after it had been typeset by the printers. The original
skeleton of a story was thus filled out until it had reached the
proportions of a full-length novel, but only at a ruinous cost of
printer’s bills to its author. Even when the novel was in print he would
frequently introduce new variations on his theme, as successive editions
appeared.
Balzac’s method was almost invariably to reinforce, to emphasize, and
to amplify. There are lengthy digressions in which he aired his
remarkably detailed knowledge of legal procedures, financial
manipulations, or industrial processes, but at its best his style is
remarkably graphic, fast-moving and tersely epigrammatic but richly
studded with sarcasm, wit, and psychological observation. His command of
the French language was probably unrivaled, and he was also an
outstanding master of dialogue. His sardonic humour saves his more
pessimistic stories from being uniformly dark, and he had a real gift
for comedy.
Balzac is regarded as the creator of realism in the novel. He is also
acknowledged as having helped to establish the technique of the
traditional novel, in which consequent and logically determined events
are narrated by an all-seeing observer (the omniscient narrator) and
characters are coherently presented. Balzac had exceptional powers of
observation and a photographic memory, but he also had a sympathetic,
intuitive capacity to understand and describe other people’s attitudes,
feelings, and motivations. He was bent on illustrating the relation
between cause and effect, between social background and character. His
ambition was to “compete with the civil register,” exactly picturing his
contemporaries in their class distinctions and occupations. In this he
succeeded, but he went even further in his efforts to show that the
human spirit has power over men and events—to become, as he has been
called, “the Shakespeare of the novel.”
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Lost Illusions
Honore de Balzac
1799-1850
A kind of westernised Arabian Nights, Lost Illusions is one of
the central works of Balzac's 17-volume Human Comedy (1842-46).
This series of studies of contemporary life, set during the
period of restored monarchy in France, aimed to show how social,
economic, and political factors mold individual and collective
destinies. In the famous "Avant-propos" (Foreword), dated 1842,
which unifies the 90 or so novels, populated by 3,000 characters
(many of them recurring), that comprise the series, Balzac
provocatively described his work as that of a naturalist,
comparing men and women of different social and financial
stations to zoological species.
As self-appointed record-keeper of his epoch, Balzac was
interested in "all of society," but most significantly, the
upheavals related to money. Balzac's fictions draw our attention
to the many contrasts that define different cultural domains:
between the royalists and the liberals in political life, the
aristocracy and the bourgeoisie, the hoarders and the
squanderers, the virtuous and the depraved, Paris and the
provinces. Steeped in the imagery of the theater, the three
parts of Lost Illusions tell the story of the provincial poet
Lucien de Rubempre who languishes in provincial Angouleme in the
company of his alter ego David Sechard, nurturing
hisambitions.Heis initiated into the Parisian literary,
journalistic, and political world, and suffers successive
disillusions. Marcel Proust praised the way in which Balzac's
style aims "to explain," and is marked by its beautiful
"naiveties and vulgarities." Some critics, on the other hand,
while they celebrate Balzac's powers of observation, denigrate
his "clumsy and inelegant style." From the first pages to the
last, tost Illusions provides ample opportunity to share
Proust's admiration for the writer.
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Eugenie Grandet
Honore de Balzac
1799-1850
Like Walter Scott, Balzac wrote novels in part to clear debts
and the pains of debt—capital accumulation and attendant moral
corruption run right through Eugenie Grandet, which later became
part of 8alzac's larger grouping of novels La Comedie Humaine.
Amid robust, moral critique of greed and the poverty of
provincial experience, this novel combines convincingly drawn
human characters with a sociological grasp of deeper changes in
French society.The realist representation of Eugenie's father as
a tyrannical miser shows the workings of avarice not just as an
individual "sin," but as a reflection of the secular nihilism of
financial calculation in nineteenth-century capitalism.
The plot has a classical simplicity and causal circularity,
unfolding a bourgeois tragedy which the narrator declares more
cruel than any endured by the house of Atreus. Eugenie's
father's fixation on monetary gain limits her experience, and
ultimately destroys the family. The novel unveils the full
damage done to Eugenie, though she asserts some moral dignity
through acts of precise generosity. With a grasp of temporal
cycles that prefigures Proust, Balzac dramatizes both the
critical framework of individual actions and the wheels of
generational change.Comic bathos tempers the stark social
realism;the entertainment Balzac wrings from the judgments of
his more or less omniscient narrator is surprising. An ideal
introduction to one of the great realist novelists.
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EUGENIE GRANDET
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Type of work: Novel
Author: Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)
Type of plot: Naturalism
Time of plot: Early nineteenth century
Locale: Saumur, France
First published: 1833 (English translation, 1859)
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Considered one of Balzac's most powerful works, Eugenie Grandet
delineates the character of a miser whose calculating and inhumane
parsimoniousness cripples the lives of his wife and his only child,
Eugenie. The tale is told simply with an abundance of realistic detail
characteristic of French naturalists such as Zola.
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Principal Characters
Eugenie Grandet (oe-zha-пё' gran-da'), the young heiress to a fortune,
who lives in the world but is not of it. Reared without a childhood in
the penurious surroundings of Saumur, a provincial French town, Eugenie,
for a brief period, lives for the love of her cousin, newly orphaned and
a guest in the Grandet home. Strong of character and handsome in
appearance, she pledges herself to young Charles Grandet and remains
true to him throughout her life. As an obedient daughter of parents and
church, she tries to live righteously but defies her father in the
matter of love. Her kind ministrations to both her dying parents, her
lifelong devotion to her one loyal friend, and her constancy of memory
make her one of the most steadfast and pitiable of heroines. Her good
deeds and her loving devotion to the poor whom she serves give her life
tragic beauty.
Monsieur Grandet (тэ-syoe' grari-da'), her father, one of the most
miserly figures in all literature. The author of the family tragedy,
Goodman Grandet, as Balzac satirically calls him, is unyielding in his
niggardliness without seeming to realize his great fault. He appears to
be trying to clear his brother's good name by not allowing him to fall
into bankruptcy, but in reality he profits from the delaying action. His
towering anger at the least "extravagance" finally puts his devoted wife
on her deathbed, and his unrelenting love of gold destroys the loving
confidence of his daughter. Shrewd and grasping in his business deals,
he has no redeeming features. Ironically enough, his fortune is finally
put to good purposes through his daughter, who makes restitution for his
wrongs.
Madame Grandet, his long-suffering wife, whose piety is taxed by the
burden of her husband's stinginess. Accustomed to her hard lot and
strengthened by her religion, Madame Grandet bows under her heavy yoke
of work and harsh treatment until she takes up the cause of her
daughter's right to love and devotes herself to the memory of that love.
Still she prays for reconciliation, and when it comes she dies happy,
without knowing her dowry is the reason for the deathbed forgiveness.
Charles Grandet (snarl), the dandified cousin of the heroine, who loses
his fortune through his father's suicide but who regains a fortune
through unscrupulous dealings financed, ironically, by Eugenie's gift of
money to him. Heroic only in his unselfish grief for his father and
generous only once in bestowing his love, Charles reveals a twisted mind
tutored by a corrupt society. Outwardly prepossessing, inwardly
vacillating, he chooses to disregard the one fine thing that was given
him, a dowry of unselfish love, and bases his life on treachery,
lechery, and adultery.
Nanon (na-non'), the faithful servant who loyally defends the
indefensible in her master because it was he who raised her a full step
in the social order. Large and mannish, Nanon manages the entire Grandet
household with such efficiency as to cause admiration from the master,
himself efficient and desperately saving. Her devotion to him, however,
does not preclude rushing to the defense of his wife and daughter, the
victims of his spite. Finally she marries the gamekeeper and together
they rule the Grandet holdings for their mistress Eugenie.
Monsieur Cruchot (тэ-syoe' kriisho'), a notary and petty government
official who becomes husband in name only to Eugenie. He feels that by
marrying the name and inheriting the fortune his own name will become
illustrious. His untimely death ends the reign of self-seeking misers.
Monsieur de Grassins (тэ-syoe' d3 grasan'), the provincial banker sent
to Paris to act for M. Grandet at the time of his brother's bankruptcy.
Attracted to the exciting life in the capital, he fails to return to
Saumur.
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The Story
In the French town of Saumur, old Grandet was a prominent personality,
and the story of his rise to fortune was known throughout the district.
He was a master cooper who had married the daughter of a prosperous wood
merchant. When the new French Republic offered for sale the church
property in Saumur, Grandet used his savings and his wife's dowry to buy
an old abbey, a fine vineyard, and several farms. Under the Consulate he
became mayor and grew still more wealthy. In 1806, he inherited three
fortunes from his wife's mother, her grandfather, and her grandmother.
By this time he owned the abbey, a hundred acres of vineyard, thirteen
farms, and the house in which he lived. In 1811, he bought the nearby
estate of an impoverished nobleman.
He was known for his miserliness, but he was respected for the same
reason. His manners were simple, his table was meager, but his speech
and gestures were the law of the countryside. His household consisted of
his wife, his daughter, Eugenie, and a servant, Nanon. Old Grandet had
reduced his wife almost to slavery, using her as a screen for his
devious financial dealings. Nanon, who did all the housework, was gaunt
and ugly but of great strength. She was devoted to her master because he
had taken her in after everyone else had refused to hire her because of
her appearance. On each birthday, Eugenie received a gold piece from her
father and a winter and a summer dress from her mother. Each New Year's
Day, Grandet would ask to see the coins and would gloat over their
yellow brightness.
He begrudged his family everything except the bare necessities of life.
Every day he would carefully measure and dole out the food for the
household—a few lumps of sugar, several pieces of butter, and a loaf of
bread. He forbade the lighting of fires in the rooms before the middle
of November. His family, like his tenants, lived under the austere
circumstances he imposed upon them.
The townspeople wondered whom Eugenie would marry. There were two rivals
for her hand. One of them, M. Cruchot, was the son of the local notary.
The other, M. de Grassins, was the son of the local banker. On Eugenie's
birthday, in the year 1819, both called at the Grandet home. During the
evening, there was an unexpected knock at the door, and in came Charles
Grandet, the miser's nephew. Charles's father had amassed a fortune in
Paris, and Charles himself, dressed in the most fashionable Parisian
manner, was an example of Parisian customs and habits for these awkward,
gawking provincials whom he tried to impress with his superior airs.
Eugenie outdid herself in an effort to make the visitor welcome, even
defying her father in the matter of heat, candlelight, and other
luxuries for Charles. Grandet was polite enough to his nephew that
evening, as he read a letter Charles had brought from his father.
Grandet's brother announced in a letter that he had lost his fortune,
and he was about to commit suicide, and that he entrusted Charles to his
brother's care. The young man was quite unaware of what his father had
written, and when informed next day of his father's failure and suicide,
he burst into tears and remained in his room for several days. Finally
he wrote to a friend in Paris and asked him to dispose of his property
and pay his debts. He gave little trinkets to Eugenie, her mother, and
Nanon. Grandet looked at them greedily and said he would have them
appraised. He informed his wife and daughter that he intended to turn
the young man out as soon as his father's affairs were settled.
Charles felt there was a stain on his honor. Grandet felt so too,
especially since he and his late brother had the same family name. In
consultation with the local banker, M. de Grassins, he arranged a plan
whereby he could save the family reputation without, at the same time,
spending a penny. M. de Grassins went to Paris to act for Grandet. He
did not return but lived a life of pleasure in the capital.
Meanwhile, Eugenie fell in love with Charles. Sympathizing with his
penniless state, she decided to give him her hoard of coins so that he
could go to the Indies and make his fortune. The two young people
pledged everlasting love to each other, and Charles left Saumur.
On the following New Year's Day, Grandet asked to see Eugenie's money.
Her mother, who knew her daughter's secret, kept silent. In spite of
Eugenie's denials, Grandet guessed what she had done with the gold. He
ordered her to stay in her room, and he would have nothing to do with
either her or her mother. Rumors began to arise in the town. The notary,
M. Cruchot, told Grandet that if his wife died, there would have to be a
division of property—if Eugenie insisted on it. The village whispered
that Mme. Grandet was dying of a broken heart and the maltreatment of
her husband. Realizing that he might lose a part of his fortune, Grandet
relented and forgave them both. When his wife died, he tricked Eugenie
into signing over her share of the property to him.
Five years passed with no word from Charles to brighten Eugenie's drab
existence. In 1827, when Grandet was eighty-two years old, he was
stricken with paralysis. He died urging Eugenie to take care of his
money.
Eugenie lived with old Nanon, still waiting for Charles to return. One
day a letter came. Charles no longer wished to marry her. Instead, he
hoped to marry the daughter of a titled nobleman and secure by royal
ordinance his father-in-law's title and coat of arms. Eugenie released
Charles, but M. de Grassins hurried to Charles and told him that his
father's creditors had not been satisfied. Until they were, his
fiancee's family would not allow a marriage. Learning of his
predicament, Eugenie herself paid the debt, and Charles was married.
Eugenie continued to live alone. The routine of the house was exactly
what it had been while Grandet lived. Suitors came again. Young de
Grassins was now in disgrace because of the loose life his father was
living in Paris, but M. Cruchot, who had risen to a high post in the
provincial government, continued to press his suit. At last Eugenie
agreed to marry him. providing he did not demand the prerogatives of
marriage, for she would be his wife in name only. They were married only
a short
time before M. Cruchot died. To her own property Eugenie added his.
Nanon herself had married, and she and her husband stayed with Eugenie.
Convinced that Nanon was her only friend, the young widow resigned
herself to a lonely life. She lived as she had always lived in the bare
old house. She had great wealth, but, lacking everything else in life,
she was indifferent to it.
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Critical Evaluation
Eugenie Grandet is part of Honore de Balzac's grand design, La Comedie
Humaine. Some say it is one of the best parts. Rather late in his
prolific writing career, Balzac conceived the idea of arranging his
novels, stories, and studies in a certain order. He described his plan
in Avant-Propos (1842, although he claimed the idea originated in 1833),
where he named the project La Comedie Humaine (The Human Comedy).
Influenced by Georges Louis Leclerc de Buffon, Etienne Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire,
and Jean Lamarck, all naturalists, Balzac sought to apply their
scientific principles—especially the taxonomic system—to literature,
particularly for the purpose of organizing information. Balzac firmly
believed that "social species" could be classified just as "zoological
species" were, and he attempted to classify his fifty-odd previously
written works as well as his future writings to fit such a scheme. To
accommodate his plan, he adopted eight major topic headings: Scenes from
Private Life, Scenes from Provincial Life, Scenes from Parisian Life,
Scenes from Political Life, Scenes from Military Life, Scenes from Rural
Life, Philosophical Studies, and Analytical Studies. The works were
arranged, rearranged, and arranged again, ad infinitum. Eugenie Grandet
was finally a Scene of Provincial Life. As a consequence of this
ambitious organizational plan, Balzac exercised Procrustean
prerogatives, tailoring his earlier output to his new standards. The
results were predictably disastrous, but the literary qualities of the
novels themselves—notably Eugenie Grandet—are irrefutable testimony to
the triumph of art over science.
Balzac realized his goal of presenting typical human species in spite
of, not because of, his "scientific" system of taxonomy. As the
unsurpassed historian of the French middle class during the first half
of the nineteenth century, he incarnated the stereotypes which were
novel then but are well known today: the snob, the provincial, the
prude, the miser, the lecher, and a great many others. He did so on the
strength of his artistic skill and not by virtue of scientific analysis,
for Balzac was not a systematic philosopher or a scientist but an
artist. He wrote fine novels—even though they are often marred by his
insen-sitivity to language and his proclivity for excessive
details—which outlined the essential characteristics of the nineteenth
century French middle class more clearly than anyone else has ever done.
Matching Juvenal and Martial, Balzac satirized avarice, ambition, lust,
vanity, and hypocrisy. Greed, however, was his bete noire and Monsieur
Grandet his archetype. The author himself was something of a prototype.
Money is a pervasive theme in Balzac's novels, where its evil effects
are resoundingly deplored. The figure of the greedy miser furnishes
Balzac with one of his best characters, Grandet. Ironically, the novel
reflects Balzac's own preoccupation with money and his desire to earn
vast sums of it. Like many of his characters, he wanted wealth and
social position. Early in his career, he was poor and constantly in
debt; but even after his novels began earning him sizable sums, he was
still constantly in debt because he lived an extravagant life-style well
beyond his means. He never did learn how to manage money. When he was
writing, he lived like a monk, working furiously for long hours with
virtually no time out even for eating. When the novel was completed,
however, Balzac devoted that same energy to nonstop revelry. His feasts
were legendary, his capacity for fine foods gargantuan—one hundred
oysters as an hors d'oeuvre, for example. His drinking and other
debauches were no less excessive. He would agree with Monsieur Grandet
that money is power and power is all that matters; therefore, money is
the only important factor in life.
Balzac, however, wanted money for what it would buy, and Grandet wanted
money for its own sake. Balzac cultivated the Dionysian life-style with
the same single-minded dedication with which Grandet cultivated
abstemiousness. Therein lies the difference between author and
character. The former enjoyed a grand style; the latter took pleasure
from self-denial. Yet Grandet dominates the novel just as he dominates
his family. To be sure, the novel is entitled Eugenie Grandet, and it
depicts the sterility of provincial life. Balzac's neat categories
notwithstanding, Grandet dominates the story. He is the overwhelming
force that determines the destiny of his wife—who is ultimately killed
by his penny-pinching vindictiveness—and his daughter—who is emotionally
warped by his miserly indoctrination. The novel is thus as much about
Grandet as it is about Eugenie.
Monsieur Grandet is what literary critics call an undeveloped or a
"flat" character. He undergoes no change in the course of the novel.
From start to finish, he is venal and miserly. He experiences no
enlightenment. In fact, Eugenie is the only character who undergoes
change as she moves from innocence to experience. The others remain as
they were at the beginning. More important, the emotional power which
Grandet exercises as his prerogative kills his wife and permanently
damages Eugenie. Although Eugenie knows nothing of Grandet's
machinations in accumulating his fortune, she is nevertheless shaped by
her father's influence. Grandet thus exerts his
wishes even beyond the grave, since his training of Eugenie—implicit or
explicit—is reflected in her behavior long after he is dead. She adopts
his parsimonious living habits, although she is publicly charitable.
Seemingly without effort, she increases her fortune rather than depletes
it. Her father taught her well. In this way, Gran-det rivals Eugenie as
the novel's protagonist.
Eugenie would not be what she is without having grown up with such a
father. The cause-effect matrix of this interpersonal relationship
illustrates one of Balzac's major premises (which was to become a tenet
of late nineteenth century literary naturalism): that the combined
effects of genetics and environment cannot be surmounted. This
phenomenon is labeled "determinism"—more precisely, "mechanistic
determinism," to distinguish it from its religious counterpart of
predestination. Eugenie is born into a given social environment with a
given genetic makeup. She is unable to change those factors, yet they
are the twin determinants of her fate. The novel traces her development
up to the time when she accepts that fate which was foreordained at the
outset: She is very, very rich and very, very unhappy. The inescapable
forces of determinism thus work through to their inevitable conclusion.
Eugenie Grandet is an unusually moving novel, for the reader can hardly
fail to sympathize with Eugenie while despising her father. It comes as
something as a shock, then, to realize that Eugenie bore her father no
malice. Even her vengeance of Charles's betrayal is so subtle that it is
untainted; Charles is oblivious to subtlety, and the reader does not
begrudge Eugenie her one, lone exercise of financial power. Balzac's
incredible prestidigitation is at work here, manipulating the readers so
that they accept the novel's point of view without imposing extraneous
judgments. Truly, Eugenie Grandet is a tribute to the novelist's craft
and art.
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Le Pere Goriot
Honore de Balzac
1799-1850
This is the story of a wealthy businessman who bequeaths a
fortune to his two ungrateful daughters. Living alone in a
shabby boarding house so that he can continue to give what
little he has to his avaricious offspring, he also befriends an
ambitious young man named Rastignac who exploits their
association to further his own social aspirations. As intrigue,
betrayal, and even murder become implicated in the daughters'
rise into high society, various villains ensure that the
narrative is enlivened by some sensational plot twists.
Essentially, though, it is Goriot's unreciprocated love for his
daughters that is the central tragedy around which Balzac
chronicles the broader social malaise.
Constituting one of the works in Balzac's epic series, La
Comedie Humaine, Le Pere Goriot essentially transposes
Shakespeare's King Lear to 1820s Paris. Against Goriot's
selfless devotion to his family the novel explores in myriad
ways how it is no longer filial bonds or ideals of community
that sustains the social edifice, but a corrupt
pseudo-aristocracy that is based on aggressive individualism and
greed.
Although some may become impatient with the overly sinuous plot
structure, it is Balzac's eye for detail and his gift for
psychological realism that continue to inspire admiration.The
sheer breadth of his artistic vision locates him firmly within
the nineteenth-century tradition, but his narrative technique
and attention to character still make Balzac a hugely important
figure in modern fiction.
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PERE GORIOT
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Type of work: Novel
Author: Honore de Balzac (1799-1850)
Type of work: Naturalism
Time of plot: с 1819
Locale: Paris
First published: Le Pere Goriot, 1835 (English translation, 1899)
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A gallery of fascinating characters, each with his own intriguing
history, is assembled in Mme. Vauquer's boarding-house. Among them is
Father Goriot. Gradually, he squanders away his ample retirement funds
to pay the bills of his two ungrateful and profligate daughters.
Finally, he is buried in a pauper's grave, and his children do not even
attend the funeral. Other stories and characters interweave within this
larger frame. Most effective is the history of Eugene de Rastignac, a
poor law student who is subtly transformed from a naive provincial into
a Parisian gentleman.
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Principal Characters
Father Goriot (go-губ'), a lonely old lodger at the pension of Madame
Vauquer in Paris. Known to the other boarders as Old Goriot, he is a
retired manufacturer of vermicelli who sold his prosperous business in
order to provide handsome dowries for his two daughters. During his
first year at the Maison Vauquer, he occupied the best rooms in the
house; in the second year he asked for less expensive quarters on the
floor above, and at the end of the third year he moved into a cheap,
dingy room on the third story. Because two fashionably dressed young
women have visited him from time to time in the past, the old man has
become an object of curiosity and suspicion; the belief is that he has
ruined himself by keeping two mistresses. Actually Old Goriot is a man
in whom parental love has become an obsession, a love unappreciated and
misused by his two selfish, heartless daughters, who make constant
demands on his meager resources. After a life of hard work, careful
saving, and fond indulgence of his children, he has outlived his
usefulness and is now in his dotage. Happy in the friendship of Eugene
de Rastignac, the law student who becomes the lover of one of the
daughters, he uses the last of his money to provide an apartment for the
young man, a place where Old Goriot will also have his own room. But
before the change can be made the daughters drive their father to
desperation by fresh demands for money to pay their bills. He dies
attended only by Eugene and Bianchon, a poor medical student, and in his
last moments he speaks lovingly of the daughters who have ruined him and
made him the victim of their ingratitude. The daughters send their empty
carriages to follow his coffin to the grave.
Countess Anastasie de Restaud (a-nastaze' дэ res-to'), the more
fashionable of Old Goriot's daughters, constantly in need of money to
indulge her extravagant tastes and to provide for her lover. Meeting her
at a ball given by his distant relative, Madame de Beauseant. Eugene de
Rastignac immediately falls in love with Anastasie. When he calls on her
he finds Old Goriot just leaving. His mention of his fellow lodger
causes Anastasie and her husband to treat the young law student with
great coldness, and he realizes that he is no longer welcome in their
house. Later Madame de Beauseant explains the mystery, saying that
Anastasie is ashamed of her humble origins and her tradesman father.
Baroness Delphine de Nucingen (del-fen' da nu-san-zhan'), Old Goriot's
second daughter, the wife of a German banker. Like her sister Anastasie,
she married for position and money, but her place in society is not as
exalted as that of the Countess de Restaud, who has been received at
court. As a result, the sisters are not on speaking terms. Madame de
Beauseant, amused by Eugene de Rastignac's youthful ardor, suggests that
he introduce her to the Baroness de Nucingen in order to win Delphine's
gratitude and a place for himself in Parisian society. Delphine accepts
the young man as her lover. Though self-centered and snobbish, she is
less demanding than her sister; she has asked for less, given more of
herself, and brought more happiness to her father. When Old Goriot is
dying, she goes to the Maison Vauquer at Eugene's insistence, but she
arrives too late to receive her father's blessing.
Eugene de Rastignac (oezhen' da ras-tenyak'), an impoverished law
student, the son of a landed provincial family. As ambitious as he is
handsome, he is determined to conquer Paris. At first his lack of
sophistication makes him almost irresistible to his relative, Madame de
Beauseant, and Delphine de Nucingen, whose lover he becomes. He learns
cynicism without losing his warm feelings; he never wavers in his regard
for Old Goriot, and while he does not attend seriously to the law
studies for which his family is making a great sacrifice, he manages to
get on in fashionable society, where friendships and influence are
important. The revelation of the ways of the world that he gains through
the patronage of Madame de Beauseant, his love affair with Delphine, and
his regard for Old Goriot, as well as the shabby activities in which he
engages in order to maintain himself in the world of fashion, make him
all the more ambitious and eager to succeed.
Madame Vauquer (vo-ka'), the sly, shabby, penurious owner of the Maison
Vauquer, the perfect embodiment of the atmosphere that prevails in the
pension. When Old Goriot first moves into her boardinghouse, she
considers him as a possible suitor, but after he fails to respond to her
coy attentions she makes him an object of gossip and ridicule.
Monsieur Vautrin (vo-tran'), a man who claims to be a former tradesman
living at the Maison Vauquer. Reserved, sharp-tongued, secretive, he
observes everything that goes on about him and is aware of Old Goriot's
efforts to provide money for his daughters. Knowing that Eugene de
Rastignac desperately needs money in order to maintain himself in
society, he suggests that the young man court Victorine Taillefer,
another lodger, an appealing young girl whose father has disinherited
her in favor of her brother. Vautrin says that he will arrange to have
the brother killed in a duel, a death that will make Victorine an
heiress. He gives Eugene two weeks to consider his proposition. Eugene
considers Vautrin a devil, but in the end, driven to desperation by his
mistress, he begins to court Victorine. True to Vautrin's word,
Victorine's brother is fatally wounded in a duel. Vautrin's scheme fails
when he is arrested and revealed as a notorious criminal, Jacques
Collin, nicknamed Trompe-la-Mort. Though his identity has been betrayed
within the pension, he swears that he will return and continue his climb
to good fortune by the same unscrupulous means used by those who call
themselves respectable.
Victorine Taillefer (vek-toren'pr ta-yafeV), a young girl cast off by
her harsh father, who has decided to make his son his only heir. She
lives with Madame Couture at the Maison Vauquer.
Madame Couture (kootiir'), the widow of a public official and a lodger
at the Maison Vauquer. A kindhearted woman, she fills the place of a
mother in the lonely life of Victorine Taillefer.
Monsieur Poiret (pwa-ra'), a lodger at the Maison Vauquer. Gondureau, a
detective, confides in him that he suspects that Monsieur Vautrin is in
reality the famous criminal, Trompe-la-Mort.
Mademoiselle Michonneau (me-sho-no'), an elderly spinster living at the
Maison Vauquer. Disliking Monsieur Vautrin, her fellow boarder, she
agrees to put a drug in his coffee. While Vautrin is asleep, she
discovers the brand of a criminal on his shoulder. Acting on this
information, the police appear and arrest Vautrin.
Gondureau (gon-dii-ro'), the detective who is trying to track down
Jacques Collin, called Trompe-la-Mort, a criminal who lives at the
Maison Vauquer under the name of Vautrin. Gondureau arranges with
Monsieur Poiret and Mademoiselle Michonneau to have Vautrin drugged in
order to learn whether he bears a criminal brand on his shoulder.
Count Maxime de Trailles (mak-sem' da гга'уэ). an arrogant but
impecunious young nobleman, the lover of Anastasie de Restaud. For his
sake she helps to impoverish her father.
Madame de Beauseant (da bo-sa-yan'), a relative of Eugene de Rastignac.
Aristocratic and high-minded, she is the ideal of inherited culture and
good manners—kind. reserved, warmhearted, beautiful. Though saddened by
the loss of her lover, she treats Eugene with great kindness, receives
Delphine de Nucingen for his sake, and introduces the young man into
fashionable Parisian society.
Bianchon (byan-shon'). a poor medical student living at the Maison
Vauquer. Like Eugene de Rastignac. he befriends Old Goriot and attends
him when the old man is dying. Bianchon extends friendship easily and
allows warm human feelings to influence his relations with other people.
Sylvie (sel-ve'). the plump cook at the Maison Vauquer.
Christophe (kres-tof'), Madame Vauquer's man of all work.
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The Story
There were many conjectures at Madame Vauquer's boardinghouse about the
mysterious Monsieur Goriot. He had taken the choice rooms on the first
floor when he first retired from his vermicelli business, and for a time
his landlady had eyed him as a prospective husband. When, at the end of
his second year at the Maison Vauquer, he had asked to move to a cheap
room on the second floor, he was credited with being an unsuccessful
speculator, a miser, and a moneylender. The mysterious young women who
flitted up to his rooms from time to time were said to be his
mistresses, although he protested that they were only his two daughters.
The other boarders called him Father Goriot.
At the end of the third year, Goriot moved to a still cheaper room on
the third floor. By that time, he was often the butt of jokes at the
boardinghouse table, and his daughters rarely visited him.
One evening the impoverished law student, Eugene de Rastignac, came home
late from the ball his wealthy cousin, Madame de Beauseant, had given.
Peeking through the mysterious Goriot's keyhole, he saw him molding some
silver plate into ingots. The next day he heard his fellow boarder,
Monsieur Vautrin, say that early in the morning he had seen Father
Goriot selling a piece of silver to an old moneylender. What Vautrin did
not know was that the money thus obtained was intended for Goriot's
daughter, Countess Anastasie de Restaud, whom Eugene had met at the
dance the night before.
That afternoon Eugene paid his respects to the countess. Father Goriot
was leaving the drawing room when he arrived. The countess, her lover,
and her husband received Eugene graciously because of his connections
with Madame de Beauseant, but when he mentioned they had the
acquaintance of Father Goriot in common, he was quickly shown to the
door, the count leaving word with his servant that he was not to be at
home if Monsieur de Rastignac called again.
After his rebuff, Eugene went to call on Madame de Beauseant, to ask her
aid in unraveling the mystery. She quickly understood what had happened
and explained that de Restaud's house would be barred to him because
both of Goriot's daughters, having been given sizable dowries, were
gradually severing all connection with their father and therefore would
not tolerate anyone who had knowledge of Goriot's shabby circumstances.
She suggested that Eugene send word through Goriot to his other
daughter, Delphine de Nucingen, that Madame de Beauseant would receive
her. She knew that Delphine would welcome the invitation and would be
grateful to Eugene and become his sponsor.
Vautrin had another suggestion for the young man. Under Madame Vauquer's
roof lived Victorine Taillefer, who had been disinherited by her wealthy
father in favor of her brother. Eugene had already found favor in her
eyes, and Vautrin suggested that for two hundred thousand francs he
would have the brother murdered, so that Eugene might marry the heiress.
He was to have two weeks in which to consider the offer.
Eugene escorted Madame de Beauseant to the theater next evening. There
he was presented to Delphine de Nucingen, who received him graciously.
The next day he received an invitation to dine with the de Nucingens and
to go to the theater. Before dinner he and Delphine drove to a gambling
house where, at her request, he gambled and won six thousand francs. She
explained that her husband would give her no money, and she needed it to
pay a debt she owed to an old lover.
Before long Eugene learned that it cost money to keep the company of his
new friends. Unable to press his own family for funds, he would not
stoop to impose on Delphine. Finally, as Vautrin had foreseen, he was
forced to take his fellow boarder's offer. The tempter had just finished
explaining the duel between Victorine's brother and his confederate
which was to take place the following morning when Father Goriot came in
with the news that he and Delphine had taken an apartment for Eugene.
Eugene wavered once more at the thought of the crime which was about to
be committed in his name. He attempted to send a warning to the victim
through Father Goriot, but Vautrin, suspicious of his accomplice,
thwarted the plan. Vautrin managed to drug their wine at supper so that
both slept soundly that night.
At breakfast, Eugene's fears were realized. A messenger burst in with
the news that Victorine's brother had been fatally wounded in a duel.
After the girl hurried off to see him, another singular event occurred.
After drinking his coffee, Vautrin fell to the ground as if he had
suffered a stroke. When he was carried to his room and undressed, it was
ascertained by marks on his back that he was the famous criminal, Trompe-la-Mort.
One of the boarders, an old maid, had been acting as an agent for the
police; she had drugged Vautrin's coffee so that his criminal brand
could be exposed. Shortly afterward the police appeared to claim their
victim.
Eugene and Father Goriot were preparing to move to their new quarters,
for Goriot was to have a room over the young man's apartment. Delphine
arrived to interrupt Goriot's packing. She was in distress. Father
Goriot had arranged with his lawyer to force de Nucingen to make a
settlement so that Delphine would have an independent income on which to
draw, and she brought the news that her money had been so tied up by
investments it would be impossible for her husband to withdraw any of it
without bringing about his own ruin.
Hardly had Delphine told her father of her predicament when Anastasie de
Restaud drove up. She had sold the de Restaud diamonds to help her lover
pay off his debts, and she had been discovered by her husband. De
Restaud had bought them back, but as punishment he demanded control of
her dowry.
Eugene could not help overhearing the conversation through the thin
partition between the rooms; when Anastasie said that she still needed
twelve thousand francs for her lover, he forged one of Vautrin's drafts
for that amount and took it to Father Goriot's room. Anastasie's
reaction was to berate him for eavesdropping.
The financial difficulties of his daughters and the hatred and jealousy
they had shown proved too much for Father Goriot. At the dinner table,
he looked as if he were about to have a stroke of apoplexy, and when
Eugene returned from an afternoon spent with his mistress, Delphine, the
old man was in bed, too ill to be moved to his new home. He had gone out
that morning to sell his last few possessions, so that Anastasie might
pay her dressmaker for an evening gown.
In spite of their father's serious condition, both daughters attended
Madame de Beauseant's ball that evening, and Eugene was too much under
his mistress' influence to refuse to accompany her. The next day, Goriot
was worse. Eugene tried to summon his daughters. Delphine was still abed
and refused to be hurried over her morning toilet. Anastasie arrived at
his bedside only after Father Goriot had lapsed into a coma and no
longer recognized her.
Father Goriot was buried in a pauper's grave the next day, Eugene tried
to borrow burial money at each daughter's house, but each sent word that
they were in deep grief over their loss and could not be seen. He and a
poor medical student from the boardinghouse were the only mourners at
the funeral. Anastasie and Delphine sent
their empty carriages to follow the coffin. It was their final tribute
to an indulgent father.
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Critical Evaluation
Honore de Balzac's writing career spanned thirty years, from the
decisive point in 1819 when he elected to abandon the study of law until
his untimely death in 1850. His work up until 1829 consisted of novels,
stories, and sketches on a variety of philosophical and social themes.
They are, on the whole, undistinguished; Balzac later averred that the
decade from 1819 until he began work on The Chouans in 1829 constituted
his apprenticeship in the art of fiction. Certainly, the works of the
last twenty years of his life show the benefits of that long period of
development, both in stylistic and tonal precision and in general weight
and narrative direction.
Many critics contend that the generative idea for The Human Comedy came
to Balzac as he was writing Father Goriot, because in the manuscript the
name of the young student is Massiac until in the scene of the afternoon
call at Madame de Beauseant's house "Massiac" is abruptly scratched out
and "Rastignac" inserted. The character Eugene de Rastignac had appeared
in a minor role in The Wild Ass's Skin (1831), and the assumption is
that the decision to reintroduce him at an earlier stage of his life in
Father Goriot betokens a flash of creative light that revealed to the
author a cycle of interconnected novels depicting every aspect of
society and having numerous characters in common—The Human Comedy. That
the idea came to him quite so suddenly is doubtful, since, as Henry Reed
has pointed out, he had already decided to ring in Madames de Langeais
and de Beauseant and the moneylender Gobseck, all of whom appear in
previous works. It is certain, however, that Father Goriot is the first
work in which the device of repetition occurs and in which the uncertain
fates of two main characters, Eugene and Vautrin, point so obviously to
other stories.
The novel began as a short story about parental obsession and filial
ingratitude. Its title is most often translated into English as Father
Goriot, losing the significance of the definite article. Its inclusion
is not grammatically necessary in French, but the sense is more truly
rendered as Goriot the Father. The point is that the condition of
fatherhood absorbs the whole life and personality of old Goriot. At one
time both a husband and a businessman, he has lost or given up these
roles; he lives only in the paternal relation, existing at other times,
in the boarders' neat phrase, as "an anthropomorphous mollusc." He
seems, at first, horribly victimized, so betrayed and ill-repaid by his
harpy daughters that his situation excites the silent sympathy of even
such hard gems of the haute monde as the Duchesse de Langeais and Madame
de Beauseant. His gratitude to his offspring for their least notice,
slightingly and ungraciously bestowed as it may be, and his joyful
self-sacrifice and boundless self-delusion fill the reader with pity.
Was there ever, Balzac seems to ask, a parent so ill-used?
He is the author of his own distress. Balzac leaves no doubt that Goriot
reared the two girls in such a way as to ensure that they would be
stupid, vain, idle, and grasping women. "The upbringing he gave his
daughters was of course preposterous." As he lies dying, his outburst of
impotent rage reminds one of Lear; their situations are similar in that
each in the folly of his heart wreaks his own ruin. Lear's abasement
leads to self-recognition and moral rebirth, but Goriot clings to his
delusion to the end, clings to it with a mad tenacity, demanding of
unfeeling reality that it conform to his dream of the rewards due
faithful parenthood. In fact, he is properly rewarded, for he has been a
bad father, the worst of fathers. Parenthood being both privilege and
trust, Goriot has enjoyed the first and betrayed the last, as he himself
recognizes in a brief interval of lucidity: "The finest nature, the best
soul on earth would have succumbed to the corruption of such weakness on
a father's part." Indulging himself in the warmth of their goodwill, he
has failed in his duty to their moral sense; they are, as adults, mirror
images of his own monumental selfishness, made, as it were, of the very
stuff of it: "It was I who made them, they belong to me."
To this "obscure but dreadful Parisian tragedy" is added the separate
tales of Rastignac and Vautrin, each quite self-contained and yet bound
to the other two by the most subtle bonds. One of these links is the
recurrent reference to parenthood, good and bad. At every turn, some
facet of the parent-child relation is held up for the reader's notice:
the wretchedness of the cast-off child Victorine Taillefer, for example,
so like Goriot's wretchedness; Madame de Langeais' disquisition on
sons-in-law, later echoed by Goriot; the parental tone taken with Eugene
both by Madame de Beauseant ("Why you poor simple child!" and in a
different way by Vautrin ("You're a good little lad . . .") in giving
him wicked worldly advice in contrast to the good but dull counsel of
his own mother; the filial relationship that develops between Eugene and
Goriot; even Vautrin's enormously ironic nicknames for his landlady
("Mamma Vauquer") and the police ("Father Cop").
Another element linking the haute monde, the Maison Vauquer, and the
underworld is the fact that they are all partners in crime. Goriot. for
example, made his original fortune in criminal collusion with members of
the de Langeais family. Vautrin neatly arranges the death of
Mademoiselle Taillefer's brother for the benefit of the half-willing
Rastignac. The Baron de Nucingen invests Delphine's dowry in an illegal
building scheme. Vautrin, Goriot, and Anastasie all resort to "Papa
Gobseck" the moneylender. The reader hears a precept uttered by Madame
de Beauseant ("in Paris, success is everything, it's the key to power")
enunciated a few pages later by Vau-trin ("Succeed! . . . succeed at all
costs"). The reader is clearly meant to see that whatever differences
exist among the various levels of society, they are differences not of
kind but of degree. Corruption is universal.
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