Old Goriot

Rating:
Summary: An exemplary tragicomedy
Review: Balzac's "Old Goriot" both celebrates and satirizes early 19th Century Parisian society and its idiosyncrasies. In terms of the variety of characters it introduces and the themes covered, it is a novel of incredibly wide scope, written with efficiency and some of the most beautiful prose, at least via Marion Crawford's English translation.

Goriot is an elderly gentleman living in a Paris boardinghouse in 1819. He used to be a prosperous vermicelli merchant, but hard times of late have forced him to pawn off his remaining precious possessions and move into the cheapest room available in the house. Since running afoul of the landlady Madame Vauquer, whose romantic attentions he once spurned, he has become an object of ridicule to the other boarders, due to his shabby clothes and apparent senility.

Most of the novel's action, however, centers around another of the boarders, a law student named Eugene de Rastignac who comes from a modest family. Rastignac's situation and motives are easy for any urban young man to identify with: He is eager to climb into the upper echelons of Paris society, but he finds to his dismay that the fashionable Parisian women are not interested in paupers. His wealthy cousin, Madame de Beauseant, advises him that he must be ruthless to make it in high society. With his cousin's help, Rastignac acquaints himself with two young society matrons, Anastasie, the Countess de Restaud, and Delphine, the Baroness de Nucingen, who happen to be Goriot's daughters.

Goriot's relationship to his daughters provides the basis for the novel. He spoiled them rotten as little girls; consequently, they grew up irresponsible, greedy, and ungrateful. Having married wealthy men, they both seek consolation from their unhappy marriages through reckless spending and extramarital beaus. Despite their faults, Goriot loves and cares for his daughters with something more like a neurotic obsession than warm, paternal devotion. You can't help feel sorry for the guy, suffering from his delusions, selling everything he owns, and living in squalor so that his daughters, who are unable or unwilling to fend for themselves or fight their own battles, can stay financially solvent.

There is an interesting subplot involving another boarder at Madame Vauquer's house, a devilish, unscrupulous fellow named Vautrin who may not be what he initially appears to be. Vautrin knows Rastignac is trying to get his foot in the door of Parisian society and he knows he needs money to do it. He proposes this scheme: Rastignac will marry a poor girl dwelling at the boardinghouse named Victorine; Vautrin will have Victorine's brother killed so that she'll inherit the whole of her father's fortune, which will bring Rastignac into big money and high society, and he can pay Vautrin for collusion. The way Balzac plays out this scenario without letting it become an interference with the main story line of Rastignac's relationship to Goriot's daughters is quite a deft feat of plotting.

Rating:
Summary: The pursuit of lucre
Review: I thought that this was a superb novel, containing an intriguing plot, rounded characters, along with an examination of thought-provoking issues.

Despite the title, "Old Goriot" is really the story of the law student Rastignac's attempts to make it in Parisian society. Rastignac is living at a run-down boarding house, the inhabitants of which include Old Goriot. There's a mystery surrounding Goriot and his connection with a couple of young women. The key phase of the novel, however, is when Rastignac comes under the influence of the cynical Vautrin.

There are echoes of other works in the novel - Old Goriot could be seen as a Lear-like figure, Vautrin as a kind of Mephistopheles. The main theme, however, is the ruinous effect of the pursuit of money and position for their own sakes: other more decent and human values are sacrificed on the altar of personal gain. Vautrin tempts Rastignac with a means of advancing his place in society, a method totally founded upon an amoral view of the world.

At the end of the novel, it's up to the reader to decide which of the characters was right all along. Was it Vautrin?

Rating:
Summary: The pursuit of lucre
Review: I thought that this was a superb novel, containing an intriguing plot, rounded characters, along with an examination of thought-provoking issues.

Despite the title, "Old Goriot" is really the story of the law student Rastignac's attempts to make it in Parisian society. Rastignac is living at a run-down boarding house, the inhabitants of which include Old Goriot. There's a mystery surrounding Goriot and his connection with a couple of young women. The key phase of the novel, however, is when Rastignac comes under the influence of the cynical Vautrin.

There are echoes of other works in the novel - Old Goriot could be seen as a Lear-like figure, Vautrin as a kind of Mephistopheles. The main theme, however, is the ruinous effect of the pursuit of money and position for their own sakes: other more decent and human values are sacrificed on the altar of personal gain. Vautrin tempts Rastignac with a means of advancing his place in society, a method totally founded upon an amoral view of the world.

At the end of the novel, it's up to the reader to decide which of the characters was right all along. Was it Vautrin?

Rating:
Summary: Cynical and touching
Review: Of course there is a paradox, but Balzac manages to make this story touching while being extremely cynical about his characters. Old Goriot is a man who worked all his life and then ruined himself to enable his daughters to marry rich. In this he was successful, they both live comfortably as spouses of rich bourgeois. Ironically, they are ashamed of their father's modest background and have virtually stopped seeing him, not to mention taking care of him. Thus he spends his old age in a dismal pension, roaming the streets in the hope of a glance of his daughters - of whose success he is still proud.

There is not even a hint of sentimentality in this novel, nor does Balzac pass any easy judgments. This is C19 realism at its best. Turn to this Frenchman to find what no author writing in English managed to do in that century.

Rating:
Summary: AWAESOME!
Review: Superb. My first try at Balzac and I'll definitely be reading more. He makes you want to reach into the book and strangle those two horrible daughters.

Rating:
Summary: A Classic
Review: Superb. My first try at Balzac and I'll definitely be reading more. He makes you want to reach into the book and strangle those two horrible daughters.

Rating:
Summary: This is the one...
Review: There's a good reason that this is commonly used as an introduction to Balzac: it's one of his best and most focused works (not that I've read them all, of course...). He wasn't a wholly consistent author (and neither would *you* be, had you written 120+ novels)--at times, he can be downright tedious. Not here, though: Old Goriot is a fast read, and utterly gripping.

The character of Goriot is handled quite delicately: Balzac plays mercilessly on our sympathy for an old man victimized by his daughters (intentional shades of King Lear here). It's not a uni-dimensional depiction, however; as Goriot's boundless love seems at times to go beyond the merely paternal--he may be a Christ-figure, but he's certainly not a straightforward one. Of course, the real show-stealer here is Vautrin, the master criminal. As much as Balzac fancied himself a historian, he was really at his most entertaining when he went over the top, as he does here: Vautrin is wonderfully demonic, and one can't but get a kick out of reading him. In contrast to these twin personalities, which tower above anyone else in the book, you have the titular protagonist, Eugene de Rastignac, a perfectly ordinary sort of guy--your archetypical 'young man from the provinces'. He provides a good counterpoint to all the madness going on, and you can't help but like the guy, even if he's not really an extraordinary person.

Anyway: you should read this. Yes--YOU. I mean come on, you really ought to read at least one Balzac in your life. And if you like it, you can go on to Lost Illusions and Cousin Bette. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: if everyone had read this, the world would have been better
Review: This was a book that I had to study for my course, and so I approached it with suspicion. However, the characters are fabulously sculpted and the book grabs your attention. I am now a confirmed fan of Balzac and will be reading more of his works in the future.

Rating:
Summary: AWAESOME!
Review: This was my first Balzac novel and it definitely got me hooked on the Comedie Humaine!