My book club was one of the many casualties of the pandemic and the lockdown—at least temporarily. When the confinement began in March, and everyone was told to avoid contact with others, our meetings—which occur in the homes of the particular member who is hosting that month—went on pause, as it were. They restarted in September 2020, and the following month it was my turn to host, which also meant I had to choose the book. A close and knowledgeable friend recommended Balzac’s Father Goriot, and I purchased and read a hard copy written in the original French. Since we are not meeting indoors for now, I suggested we meet on the heated patio of Fran’s restaurant on Yonge and College in Toronto. Two other members seemed interested in participating, but only one showed up. Despite just two of us being present, the meeting proceeded, and it was enjoyable, in part because it was an opportunity to catch up with a fellow-member and friend I have not seen since before the lockdown, and because we both generally enjoyed Father Goriot. We had a very profound and analytical discussion about its contents, and in this blogpost, I’ll recount my own interpretation.
The setting of the text is Paris in 1819, a turbulent period of social and political change. Napoleon’s armies had recently been defeated on the fields of Waterloo, ending French designs for an imperial republic across Europe. Subsequently, the Bourbon monarchy was restored, and Louis 18th was on the throne. On the surface, the pre-revolutionary status quo reigned supreme. Beneath appearances, Balzac wants to say in Father Goriot, was a very different, and mostly sombre, reality: a morally degraded aristocracy that had lost all sense of nobless oblige, and a rising bourgeoisie which was corrupted by money and greed. Only the peasant class which lives in the countryside, far away from Paris’s decadence and decline, preserves some traces of decency and moral purity, readers will learn in Father Goriot.
This unsparing sociological analysis of the aristocracy and the ascendent merchant class is represented by the main characters in the book, Eugene, Father Goriot, and the latter’s two daughters. Eugene, like many from le province, comes to Paris to study and try to build a professional life that would allow him to live decently while supporting his dependents. He lodges in the same hotel as Goriot, a rundown abode in one of Paris’s poorest neighborhoods, which, importantly, is a short walk away from the aristocracy’s obscenely wealthy part of town. In Paris, he has a distant cousin, Madame Beasant, who is a member of the nobility and hence the ruling class. She introduces him to this world, and he becomes seduced by the pomp and circumstance displayed in her home. Madame Beasant happens to be a social butterfly, and organizes balls in her luxurious mansion which frequently assemble the city’s aristocratic elite. Eugene attends, and, like a child who believes he has seen Father Noel, is utterly entranced by what he observes. His main objective in life becomes to enter, and become a part of, this world, which at the time was possible for someone in Eugene’s position only via marriage.
His target for this endeavour is Delphine, who also happens to be the daughter of Father Goriot. The latter is a successful capitalist with humble origins, and he, too, was seduced by the aristocracy. Goriot’s aim was for his beloved daughters to enter the country’s elite, which required marrying members of the nobility. Goriot’s wealth allows him to orchestrate this outcome, but the financial sacrifice was such that very little was left for himself, which was one of the reasons for his lodging in the run down hotel. The text reveals that this ultimately creates misery for him and his daughters. They are both in loveless, openly unfaithful marriages. Even worse is that they no longer make an effort to have contact with their father, in part because their husbands of noble lineage—Goriot’s sons in law—are condescending towards him, and ashamed to have social and familial ties with a mere and vulgar merchant. This creates unspeakable anguish for Father Goriot, who loves his daughters and longs for their attention. He showers them with money so that he can have some affection, but this approach has its limits, since when he runs out cash, they are less inclined to have visits with him.
The reality of aristocracy, therefore, is not what it seems through Eugene’s youthful and idealistic perception, and he learns this through bitter experience. He begins to neglect his studies, and devotes himself to seducing Delphine. They fall in love, and make plans to build a life together. He later discovers that she is extremely petty, vain, and materialistic. As often happens among young men enthralled by beautiful young women, he overlooks these defects. But the reality slowly filters in from other sources. One is his cousin, Madame Beasant, who understands the reality of Paris and the nobility very well. At one point, she tells Eugene that in Paris he will soon discover:
The deep corruption of women, and the miserable vanity of men. The more coldly you calculate, the more you will advance. Be without pity…if you have genuine emotions, hide them, and don’t allow others to suspect them, otherwise you will lose, and will no longer be the executioner, rather you will be the victim.
Another is from “Trompe-la-Mort” (cheat death), or Monsieur Vautrin, a shrewd and cunning escaped convict who is staying in the same lodgings as Eugene and Goriot. Vautrin represents Paris’s underbelly, as it were—being a member of neither the aristocracy nor the bourgeoisie—in part because he rejects the contrat social upon which this corrupt society is based. His position and experiences perhaps also give him a uniquely penetrating perspective on life in Paris. At one point, he tells Eugene:
There are 50 thousand young men like you in Paris seeking a quick fortune. Do you know how to achieve that here in Paris? Ingenuity or corruption. Honesty will get you nowhere…it stinks, you have to dirty your hands, but that is the morality of our era.
Despite the accumulating evidence that Paris’s aristocracy was not what it seemed, Eugene continues to pursue the relationship with Delphine. When Father Goriot finds out, he is ecstatic because it represents an opportunity to correct his previous error of marrying his daughters to members of the nobility who wanted nothing to do with him. Eugene was a humble and morally pure young man who would not deny Goriot the affection of his daughters. It was therefore an opportunity to be reunited with his loved ones, and Goriot offers him a dowry and a comfortable apartment where they could live. The scheme falls apart when the old Goriot becomes gravely ill. It is a testament to his pathetic situation that, during his final agonizing days and hours, he is attended to by Eugene, the only character who feels genuine pity and empathy for the old man. His deepest longing is to have his daughters at his side, but they have abandoned him, as it were, being completely absorbed in their mostly petty and vain duties as members of the aristocracy.
As Eugene learns the underlying truth about the shallowness of this world, the reader gets the sense that he will act on this insight, which would entail abandoning the pursuit of Delphine and recommitting to his studies, and fulfilling his obligations to his family in the countryside, which has invested heavily in his career goals. An opportunity presents itself to make this move when Eugene is pursued Madame Victorine, one of the few characters in the book not corrupted by Paris. Moreover, after her brother’s sudden death, she possesses a multimillion dollar inheritance which means whoever marries her will be wealthy and comfortable.
But to the disappointment of many readers, it was not to be; she disappears from the scene near the end of the text. And Eugene, meanwhile, after incurring the expenses of Goriot’s illness and burial, continues to pursue Delphine and everything she symbolizes, namely, Paris’s shallow, vain, and petty aristocracy.
The book ends on that note, and over our discussion at Fran’s both myself and the other book-club member were a bit puzzled. My theory was that Balzac’s intention was to evoke strong emotions, particularly surprise and disappointment, which makes the book memorable and which is often the mark of art which leaves a lasting impact. There was also, it seems, an important pedagogical function. The first is the seductiveness of evil, which is a recurring theme in 19th century Russian and French literature. Even when the character knows that his goals are morally questionable, he pursues them as if being pulled, as it were, by some irresistible force which terminates only in tragedy or death. Another important lesson of Pere Goriot is how misleading surface realities often are. Humans, myself included, have the tendency to incorrectly interpret others’ lives on the basis of external appearances. Wealth, beauty and privilege are often equated with happiness and fulfillment by those looking from the outside, but the reality is often characterized with shallowness, insecurity, and pettiness. It follows that aiming to join this class, as Eugene did for himself, and Goriot did for his daughters, is, in the grand scheme of things, pointless and self-defeating. There is perhaps more pleasure and contentment in the purity and simpleness of the peasant lifestyle, as Tolstoy shows in Anne Karenina and as Balzac implies the text under discussion. Here, relationships are not corrupted by money or by status competition. Rather, they are characterized with real and authentic human emotion. Under these conditions, life is perhaps more fulfilling even if material standards of living are lower.
Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, is that the reader of Father Goriot gets a sense of why the aristocracy in France was violently overthrown. Although those in the countryside far from Paris perhaps had relatively decent lives, Paris itself was stricken by obscene inequalities, with the extreme wealth of the aristocracy often just a few blocks away from poverty and disease infested neighbourhoods like the one where Eugene, Goriot, and Vautrin lodged. The juxtaposition of these two worlds helps to create the illusion that those in the poorer part can enter the richer one. Eugene’s and Goriot’s main aim in life was precisely that, and for the latter at least it ended in tears. But, as occurred with Eugene, more and more eventually recognize that the elite are shallow, corrupt, and self-serving. Inevitably, a tinder will light the fuse which brings the entire edifice crashing down.
