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fictionfan 's review for:
Père Goriot
by Honoré de Balzac
The Ugly Sisters…
Eugène de Rastignac has taken a room in Madame Vauquer’s boarding house in a run-down area of Paris. Among the many other lodgers, there is one old man, known to all as Père Goriot. When he had arrived several years earlier, he had apparently been relatively wealthy, and Mme Vauquer had seen him as a potential husband. But he has grown gradually poorer, and she has come to treat him with petty spite, in which she is joined by the other lodgers. Père Goriot is blissfully unconcerned by their contempt however. He has one obsession in life and it leaves no room for other concerns – his two daughters, Goneril and Regan . . . oops, I mean, Delphine and Anastasie. These two delightful young women have both managed to snaffle rich husbands, mainly because of the money their father lavished on getting them into a higher stratum of society than his own. And they have repaid him by disowning him as too low class to be invited to their glittering homes and social occasions. But they haven’t cut themselves off from him completely – they still pop by any time they need money to pay their gambling debts or the blackmail that comes as a side-effect of their streams of lovers. Hence Goriot’s increasing poverty, but his idolatry of his daughters remains undiminished.
Eugène is a law student, but he doesn’t see the practice of law as the quickest or surest way of getting rich, which is his sole aspiration in life. Rather, he’s looking for a way to inveigle himself into high society by finding himself a wealthy patroness. So when he discovers that Goriot has two wealthy, bored, discontented daughters, he sees an opening for himself. But Vautrin, another of the lodgers and the villain of the piece (though frankly not much worse than all the rest of them), has another plan to make Eugène rich, for a cut, of course – a plan that involves crime. And while Eugène is a little horrified at first, he doesn’t totally dismiss the idea…
There is so much cynicism in this book that there’s really very little room for anything else. There are a couple of semi-decent human beings among the lodgers, but they are consigned to minor roles. Goriot would be sympathetic if only he weren’t quite so fawningly obsessed by his revolting daughters, whom I soon began to refer to as the Ugly Sisters – a reference to their souls rather than their faces. The way he talks about their beauty is more like the ravings of a young man in love than a father, and made me feel quite creeped out at points. And his encouragement of them to involve themselves in adulterous relationships is odd, to say the least. Still, at least he is more concerned about their welfare than his own, which is a welcome relief from the unrelenting self-absorption of all the other main characters. Eugène occasionally shows signs that there is a better man inside him trying to get out, but one feels the attempt will be futile. Like the Ugly Sisters, Eugène is funded by a doting parent and has no compunction about driving her and his siblings deeper into poverty so that he can skip his lessons and attempt to become a gigolo.
You’ll have gathered that I found the characters ranged from unpleasant to obnoxious. I pretty soon realised that I was hoping for a tragic ending for them all. However, while I felt there weren’t enough decent people to provide a balance, I also felt that individually each of the characters was well-drawn and believable. Paris becomes a character in her own right, and Balzac seems to suggest that the corruption and greed of the characters is a reflection of this great city at a time of political and social upheaval – the book is set in 1819, four years after Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo. Balzac shows the vast differences in wealth and class, all happening in a small geographical zone. There are only a few streets separating the boarding house from the houses of the aristocracy, and it is a time when people’s fortunes have been made or destroyed on the basis of whether they backed the winning side in the social unrest. Even now, the characters can’t be sure how long the current stability will last, so there’s a feeling of eat, drink and be merry about the amorality of the rich, for tomorrow the winning side may be the losing side.
There are long parts filled with description, or with characters making lengthy and unrealistic speeches to each other explaining their moral stance on life, and I found these often became excruciatingly dull. But when Balzac actually remembers that he’s supposed to be telling a story rather than giving a social sciences lecture, he does it very well. The second half becomes quite action-packed (relatively speaking), as all these amoral people plot to gain advantage at the expense of each other. It’s quite fun at points, with some elements of farce, but overall it is a bleak and depressing view of humanity. There is indeed tragedy at the end, though not for everyone, and while I’d spent the early part of the book wishing plagues and pestilence upon them all, in fact I ended up quite moved by… nope, can’t tell you – spoiler! I wouldn’t say Balzac shows signs of becoming a favourite author on the basis of this one, but I enjoyed it enough to want to read more.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com
Eugène de Rastignac has taken a room in Madame Vauquer’s boarding house in a run-down area of Paris. Among the many other lodgers, there is one old man, known to all as Père Goriot. When he had arrived several years earlier, he had apparently been relatively wealthy, and Mme Vauquer had seen him as a potential husband. But he has grown gradually poorer, and she has come to treat him with petty spite, in which she is joined by the other lodgers. Père Goriot is blissfully unconcerned by their contempt however. He has one obsession in life and it leaves no room for other concerns – his two daughters, Goneril and Regan . . . oops, I mean, Delphine and Anastasie. These two delightful young women have both managed to snaffle rich husbands, mainly because of the money their father lavished on getting them into a higher stratum of society than his own. And they have repaid him by disowning him as too low class to be invited to their glittering homes and social occasions. But they haven’t cut themselves off from him completely – they still pop by any time they need money to pay their gambling debts or the blackmail that comes as a side-effect of their streams of lovers. Hence Goriot’s increasing poverty, but his idolatry of his daughters remains undiminished.
Eugène is a law student, but he doesn’t see the practice of law as the quickest or surest way of getting rich, which is his sole aspiration in life. Rather, he’s looking for a way to inveigle himself into high society by finding himself a wealthy patroness. So when he discovers that Goriot has two wealthy, bored, discontented daughters, he sees an opening for himself. But Vautrin, another of the lodgers and the villain of the piece (though frankly not much worse than all the rest of them), has another plan to make Eugène rich, for a cut, of course – a plan that involves crime. And while Eugène is a little horrified at first, he doesn’t totally dismiss the idea…
There is so much cynicism in this book that there’s really very little room for anything else. There are a couple of semi-decent human beings among the lodgers, but they are consigned to minor roles. Goriot would be sympathetic if only he weren’t quite so fawningly obsessed by his revolting daughters, whom I soon began to refer to as the Ugly Sisters – a reference to their souls rather than their faces. The way he talks about their beauty is more like the ravings of a young man in love than a father, and made me feel quite creeped out at points. And his encouragement of them to involve themselves in adulterous relationships is odd, to say the least. Still, at least he is more concerned about their welfare than his own, which is a welcome relief from the unrelenting self-absorption of all the other main characters. Eugène occasionally shows signs that there is a better man inside him trying to get out, but one feels the attempt will be futile. Like the Ugly Sisters, Eugène is funded by a doting parent and has no compunction about driving her and his siblings deeper into poverty so that he can skip his lessons and attempt to become a gigolo.
You’ll have gathered that I found the characters ranged from unpleasant to obnoxious. I pretty soon realised that I was hoping for a tragic ending for them all. However, while I felt there weren’t enough decent people to provide a balance, I also felt that individually each of the characters was well-drawn and believable. Paris becomes a character in her own right, and Balzac seems to suggest that the corruption and greed of the characters is a reflection of this great city at a time of political and social upheaval – the book is set in 1819, four years after Napoleon’s defeat at Waterloo. Balzac shows the vast differences in wealth and class, all happening in a small geographical zone. There are only a few streets separating the boarding house from the houses of the aristocracy, and it is a time when people’s fortunes have been made or destroyed on the basis of whether they backed the winning side in the social unrest. Even now, the characters can’t be sure how long the current stability will last, so there’s a feeling of eat, drink and be merry about the amorality of the rich, for tomorrow the winning side may be the losing side.
There are long parts filled with description, or with characters making lengthy and unrealistic speeches to each other explaining their moral stance on life, and I found these often became excruciatingly dull. But when Balzac actually remembers that he’s supposed to be telling a story rather than giving a social sciences lecture, he does it very well. The second half becomes quite action-packed (relatively speaking), as all these amoral people plot to gain advantage at the expense of each other. It’s quite fun at points, with some elements of farce, but overall it is a bleak and depressing view of humanity. There is indeed tragedy at the end, though not for everyone, and while I’d spent the early part of the book wishing plagues and pestilence upon them all, in fact I ended up quite moved by… nope, can’t tell you – spoiler! I wouldn’t say Balzac shows signs of becoming a favourite author on the basis of this one, but I enjoyed it enough to want to read more.
www.fictionfanblog.wordpress.com