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cartoonmicah 's review for:
Pere Goriot
by Honoré de Balzac
When one wades in among the European classics of a certain period, one quickly becomes accustom to the verbosity of the age. When one wades in among the French novelists of the same epoch, one quickly becomes accustom to the introspective monologues and emotional diatribes exercised nearly universally. While Balzac does list toward these twin vortexes, he does not get caught up as do so many of his contemporaries. Père Goriot maintains a thoroughly engaging and even-paced plot filled with interesting characters and moral dilemmas.
Eugene Rastignac is a the son of a middle class country family fallen upon hard times, the heir apparent sent with all the family saving to establish himself in the big city and find a career that will guarantee some sort of stable income. As a student of law, he finds a place for himself in the household of Madame Vauquer, a rooming house just barely maintaining itself above the poverty line for the elderly and students and those who have fallen on hard times. Madame Vauquer has 18 for most meals, but only 5 live in guests. Across the hall from Eugene lives the docile old hermit, Monsieur Goriot. He is the butt of every mealtime joke and the one about whom rumors swirl. Who are the beautiful young girls who pay him short visits on rare occasion? Are they daughters or mistresses? If this man is truly the once fabulously wealthy grain merchant they say he is, why can he barely afford a spot of bread at table? When Eugene decides to throw himself into the fray of high society, he quickly finds out every detail of the life of old father Goriot, a story in which he soon plays a significant role.
There are occasionally long speeches that run for pages, but Père Goriot is actually a very fast paced novel full of romances and social intrigues and even the occasional scuffle or skirmish. There is a long list of well-developed characters who display both full-bodied believability and a Dickensian embodiment of a single ideal. At the heart of the novel, young Eugene is coming of age, understanding social politics and seeing the destructive ends that come to those who play the game and those who indulge in sentiment. There is no clear path and no true hero, but the moral dilemmas presented here are thoroughly realistic.
Understanding the Balzac wrote literally dozens of vaguely interlocking novels where character step in and out of one another’s life stories makes this novel all the more fascinating to me. To know that this is a prequel to other Rastignac episodes and part of a longer life history of the criminal Vautrin left me eager to read more Balzac in the near future.
Eugene Rastignac is a the son of a middle class country family fallen upon hard times, the heir apparent sent with all the family saving to establish himself in the big city and find a career that will guarantee some sort of stable income. As a student of law, he finds a place for himself in the household of Madame Vauquer, a rooming house just barely maintaining itself above the poverty line for the elderly and students and those who have fallen on hard times. Madame Vauquer has 18 for most meals, but only 5 live in guests. Across the hall from Eugene lives the docile old hermit, Monsieur Goriot. He is the butt of every mealtime joke and the one about whom rumors swirl. Who are the beautiful young girls who pay him short visits on rare occasion? Are they daughters or mistresses? If this man is truly the once fabulously wealthy grain merchant they say he is, why can he barely afford a spot of bread at table? When Eugene decides to throw himself into the fray of high society, he quickly finds out every detail of the life of old father Goriot, a story in which he soon plays a significant role.
There are occasionally long speeches that run for pages, but Père Goriot is actually a very fast paced novel full of romances and social intrigues and even the occasional scuffle or skirmish. There is a long list of well-developed characters who display both full-bodied believability and a Dickensian embodiment of a single ideal. At the heart of the novel, young Eugene is coming of age, understanding social politics and seeing the destructive ends that come to those who play the game and those who indulge in sentiment. There is no clear path and no true hero, but the moral dilemmas presented here are thoroughly realistic.
Understanding the Balzac wrote literally dozens of vaguely interlocking novels where character step in and out of one another’s life stories makes this novel all the more fascinating to me. To know that this is a prequel to other Rastignac episodes and part of a longer life history of the criminal Vautrin left me eager to read more Balzac in the near future.