Le Père Goriot

The titular Père Goriot serves as a cautionary tale of paternal love and The Corruption of Parent-Child Relationships. Goriot’s defining quality is his capacity for love, which he focuses solely on his daughters following the death of his wife. After making his fortune during the French Revolution, he spent vast sums to ensure that his daughters were ready to enter the high society of the postrevolutionary world. They have had the best teachers and tutors to ensure that they do not make the same naïve mistakes that Rastignac makes during his first forays into the world of the elite. Goriot thus expresses his love in financial terms, and the tragedy and irony of his story is that in doing so, he turns his daughters into materialistic, cynical members of the same high society that rejects him. His sons-in-law reject him as an embarrassment, and his daughters visit him only for money. The poorer he makes himself on his daughters’ behalf, the less welcome he is in their homes.

For much of the novel, Goriot is unable to recognize this. He is mocked and castigated by the other boarders in the Maison Vauquer even though he has made (and spent) more money than they could ever imagine. Madame Vauquer reveals her foolishness when she refuses to entertain the idea that a man like Goriot could ever be wealthy, utterly misunderstanding his character. Rastignac is virtually alone in pitying Goriot, and as Rastignac embarks on a relationship with Goriot’s daughter, the two men become close. For Rastignac, Goriot and his suffering symbolize the rot at the heart of Parisian high society. As Delphine and Anastasie live in luxury, Goriot suffers in the smallest rooms in the Maison Vauquer. His suffering is the cost of his daughters’ status, Rastignac comes to believe.

Goriot gets genuine pleasure from helping his daughters, but he only has so much to squander. By the end of the novel, he has sold almost everything he has to cover the debts incurred by his ungrateful daughters and their lovers. He never lives to realize his one personal ambition—a small set of servants’ quarters above an apartment where Rastignac will live as Delphine’s lover. Instead, his daughters’ demands for money that he does not have trigger a series of strokes that are ultimately fatal. As he is dying, he realizes that his daughters are too distracted by their own lives to visit his deathbed. The love he has devoted to them means nothing to them now that he has nothing left to give. Goriot dies a tragic figure whose exploitation reflects the broader ways in which a societal elite subsists on the labors of the poor.

Delphine is the youngest daughter of Goriot. Like her older sister, Anastasie, she has been spoiled by Goriot’s adoration. From a young age, Delphine was told that she would enter high society. She has grown up with the money and manners of the elite, yet she is not as respected as her sister, and their relationship explains much of Delphine’s behavior. The two sisters are petty rivals whose choices of husband have determined whether they are true members of Parisian high society. Anastasie married a French nobleman, while Delphine married a German banker. Delphine’s husband may be wealthier than Anastasie’s, but he lacks the social clout of a true French aristocrat. As such, Delphine resents her sister’s frequent attendance at balls and parties, knowing that her company is not as desirable as her sister’s. Coupled with their selfishness and materialism, the two sisters’ competition renders them unable to recognize their father’s suffering. They are so obsessed with their own status that they treat their father with near contempt. Delphine’s behavior demonstrates how the materialistic lust for wealth and status can never be truly satisfied.

At first, Rastignac plans on using Delphine to enter high society. When he meets Delphine, she already has a lover, whom her husband seems to tolerate. He too is unfaithful, as are many other French aristocrats portrayed in the novel. This infidelity indicts society on multiple levels: It reveals the political and financial motivations that often underpin marriage, it demonstrates the absence of loyalty among the rich and powerful, and it underscores elite hypocrisy, as these affairs are conducted in near-public. Delphine’s receptiveness to an affair with Rastignac hammers these points home. Since he is the cousin of Madame de Beauséant, he can offer Delphine connections of his own, and as a very transactional person, Delphine welcomes the invitations and company that Rastignac provides. However, Rastignac eventually develops real feelings for Delphine, whereas Delphine’s love for Rastignac seems tenuous. She wants to be loved and she wants to be seen to be loved, but she never offers love without receiving something in return.

This is equally true of Delphine’s relationship with Goriot. Delphine does not visit her father on his deathbed, nor does she attend his funeral. After the funeral, however, Rastignac attends dinner with Delphine. This dinner suggests that Rastignac has accepted Delphine’s worldview; the world is a cynical and materialistic place, so Delphine and Rastignac need not pretend to be anything other than as selfish as the society they inhabit.