Le Père Goriot

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1835

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Part 1

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Part 3

Part 4

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

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Symbols & Motifs

Maison Vauquer

The Maison Vauquer is a run-down boarding house owned and operated by Madame Vauquer. The building is in a state of disrepair, and the opening pages of the novel explain just how broken, ugly, and unlivable the boarding house truly is; Goriot’s room, for instance, has mold on the walls and broken furniture.

The ugly appearance of the boarding house functions partly as a symbolic extension of the moral rot of the owner, Madame Vauquer. She is obsessed with money and status, and she takes out her frustrations on the poorest boarders in her house. She treats Goriot with utter contempt, for example, because she disapproves of his apparent lack of wealth. The irony of this obsession with appearances is that Madame Vauquer has neither wealth nor status and in fact lives in a dilapidated house in which many rooms are unfit for human habitation. Her cruelty and hypocrisy manifest in the house she runs.

Within the boarding house, the inhabitants are segregated based on their monthly rent. Those with the most money live in the better-decorated, larger rooms on the lower floors. Each ascending level is cheaper and less furnished, creating a visual stratification that mirrors, in inverted form, the French class system. Goriot, as he squanders his money on his daughters, ascends through these strata, earning increasing contempt from Madame Vauquer as his resources diminish. At the very top of the house live Christophe and Sylvie, the two poorest people, and the servants employed to work in the boarding house. They are the representatives of the working class in a house full of impoverished people who nevertheless have middle- or upper-class pretensions. The layout of the house thus develops the theme of Wealth and Social Class in Restoration France.

With so many different levels of society brought together within it, the Maison Vauquer also symbolizes the melting pot nature of Paris. The inhabitants of the Maison Vauquer are from very different backgrounds. Victorine is a wealthy woman who has been disowned by her father, Rastignac is a student from the provinces with grand ambitions, and Vautrin is a criminal living under a false name. They are all drawn to the opportunities that Paris offers, and they are all struggling to achieve their ambitions, united in this one way despite their differences. The dinner table of the Maison Vauquer shows how a makeshift community has emerged from the very different boarders who sit and eat together. They talk, they joke, and they break bread with one another, though they might never have glanced at one another on the street. The Maison Vauquer symbolizes how a metropolis like Paris unites seemingly disparate people.

Carriages

Set in Paris in the early 19th century, Père Goriot portrays streets filled with horse-drawn carriages that function as symbols of wealth and status. The carriages come in many shapes and sizes; the richest and most powerful characters have the largest, most ornate carriages. Even among the rich, the size and appearance of the carriage (e.g., decoration like gold inlay) serve to advertise wealth and status. Carriages also require horses and drivers, entailing further expense: The horses must be stabled and cared for, while the drivers must be paid for their work. The maintenance of a carriage is costly, so those who can afford one demonstrate their wealth whenever they travel through the streets onboard the carriage. Moreover, 19th-century cities were often filthy, so carriages were not a mere luxury statement but a practical asset: The rich and powerful could travel between one another’s houses, visiting balls and operas, without ever having to step foot on the muddy streets. For those who can afford it, carriages provide a clear symbolic delineation, physically distinguishing the rich from the poor via a mode of transport.

When he arrives in Paris, Rastignac expects to walk everywhere. He is a poor student who relies on his parents to support him as he pursues his ambitions of becoming a powerful figure in French society. From his first forays into French high society, however, he feels the symbolic absence of a carriage as a clear barrier to his ambitions. When he first visits Anastasie, for example, he arrives on foot. He approaches the house with mud on his shoes, and the footman judges his means of transport and is reluctant to show him inside, assuming he cannot be a person of importance. The lack of a carriage symbolizes Rastignac’s diminished status and his relative poverty, while his muddy shoes and his pedestrian arrival symbolize his naivete. He did not think ahead, he was unaware of how arriving on foot would appear, and he is immediately judged, which bodes poorly for his ambitions of entering society. From this point on, Rastignac makes sure to take a carriage, even when he cannot necessarily afford it—a symbolic demonstration of his willingness to buy his way into high society.

At the end of the novel, Rastignac is forced to arrange a pauper’s funeral for Goriot, which neither Delphine nor Anastasie attends. Instead, two carriages appear in the distance. Each is emblazoned with the respective daughter’s coat of arms but, importantly, both carriages are empty. The ornate, expensive carriages perform a meaningless gesture, denying the daughters’ love for their father right until the end. Like the daughters (and society), the empty carriages are vapid displays of extreme wealth unmoored from human emotion—symbols of The Hypocrisy of 19th-Century French Society. Their appearance spurs Rastignac to launch his war against all they represent.

Manners

The novel portrays 19th-century French high society as governed by a complex system of social etiquette. For middle- and working-class people, entrance into the upper classes depends on knowledge of these manners, which constitute a key motif in the novel. When Goriot makes his fortune, for example, he plans for his daughters to enter high society. Since he is from a modest background, he uses his wealth to purchase teachers to instruct his daughters in how to comport themselves in high society. For a man like Goriot, the system of social etiquette is like a language that he cannot understand. He may be incredibly wealthy, but his ignorance of the manners of French high society means that he will always be alienated from the other rich and powerful people of Paris. Money alone is not enough to gain access to elite society, with the social etiquette system acting as a way for the upper classes to police their boundaries.

The novel portrays the complexities of social etiquette at dinners and balls. These events, hosted by the rich and powerful, are complicated performances of the knowledge of social etiquette, in which each attendee demonstrates to the others that they are permitted to be present. These ritualized demonstrations of ingroup behavior are lavish and complex. The result creates an implicit juxtaposition with the meals at the boarding house. Each evening, the poorer people gather around the dinner table at the Maison Vauquer. Their gatherings lack the system of social etiquette seen at the wealthy parties; they laugh, joke, and mock each other. The manners of the rich as compared to those at the poorer table evoke the gulf that separates the rich and the poor. Even something as simple as a meal is utterly different, as though the rich and poor inhabit two different worlds rather than the same society.

Over the course of the novel, Rastignac grows increasingly familiar with the rules of social etiquette. His first visit to Anastasie’s house is marked by the terrible faux pas of mentioning her father. He embarrasses himself and is, in effect, banned from ever visiting the house again. Later, as he explains what happened, his cousin and her friend laugh at him. From this point on, Rastignac recruits his cousin to teach him how to behave, and he studies everything he can about his potential hosts and friends to ensure that he does not make the same mistake again. Gradually, he becomes better acquainted with how to behave in high society, and by the end of the novel, he completely understands the rules of social etiquette. This growing familiarity with the manners of French high society symbolizes his broader integration into the world of the rich and powerful.