Le Père Goriot: Critics' Quotes

Brookes on Vautrin

- Not just a villain - Also the wise moral advisor for both Rastignac and the reader

Saintsbury on Balzac's social life

- Often considered a hermit - Spent very little time in Parisian salons, in comparison to other writers because "he felt it was his business not to frequent society but to create it"

Petrey on the lack of closure

- Rastignac's poverty sends him on an endless journey to retain the aristocratic position which his birth in theory entitles him to. - Idea of an endless struggle mirrored in the endless nature of the novel, i.e. ambiguous ending and lack of closure through 'La Comédie Humaine'

Peter Lock on Balzac's involvement in the text

"Balzac, even in his modest moments, is always close to the stage...playing the parts of showman, propagandist, manipulator, prophet, and sage."

Freud on paternity

"Pater semper incertus est."

Flaubert on Rastignac

"Rappelle-toi Rastignac dans La Comédie Humaine! Tu réussiras, j'en suis sûr!"

Balzac on 'La Comédie Humaine'

"Saluez-moi car je suis un genie."

S. A. Picon

"un roman carrefour, un rond-point"

Link between Napoleon and Balzac

« Ce qu'il [Napoléon] a commencé par l'épée, je l'achèverai par la plume. » - inscription on the base of a small statue of Napoleon belonging to Balzac

Balzac on paternity in 'Illusions Perdues'

« Je veux aimer ma créature, la façonner, la pétrir à mon usage, afin de l'aimer comme un père aime son enfant »

Alain Robbe-Grillet on intelligibility

« Tous les éléments techniques du récit - emploi systématique du passé simple et de la troisième personne, adoption sans condition du déroulement chronologiques, intrigues linéaires, courbe régulière des passions, tension de chaque épisode vers une fin etc. - tout visait à imposer l'image d'un univers stable, cohérent, continue, univoque, entièrement déchiffrable. »

Eric Auerbach on Balzac's realism (x3)

"Balzac...seized upon the representation of contemporary life as his own particular task and...can be regarded as the creator of modern realism." "every milieu becomes a moral and physical atmosphere which impregnates...character, surroundings, ideas, activities, and fates of men" - thanks to Balzac placing his characters so loyally within a "precisely defined historical and social setting"

Balzac on arrivisme

"La société ne fait-elle pas de l'homme, suivant les milieux où son se déploie, autant d'hommes différents qu'il y a de variétés en zoologie?"

Janet Beizer on the role of the father

"Nineteenth-century fictions do display the father. But they ultimately undermine his status, his authority, and his power as lawgiver and regulator of family, social and narrative codes. The nineteenth-century text, divided against itself, repeatedly undercuts the proferred images of its own authority."

Victor Hugo on the publication of a book

"Once the book is published...once the infant has given its first cry, it is born...father and mother can neither of them do anything more about it."

Brooks on Rastignac

"Rastignac has indeed at the last achieved a position analogous to that of the author: master of his material, capable of recognizing, through the visionary glance, the terms of the true drama hidden behind facades. From his state of limited vision...he has risen to dominating heights, seized the knowledge of his way into and through the world, and become master of his destiny."

Christian Prendergast

"[What] is promised by the [Balzacian] narrator is a transformation of the opaque landscape of Paris into an entirely legible surface."

van Rossum-Guyon on the morale of the period

"la morale - ou plutôt l'anti-morale de l'époque"

Janet Beizer on death and the family

"since there comes a point at which death in the family can no longer be distinguished from death of the family, the notion of family plots as ordering devices is impaired from within."

Jules Michelet on the importance of Paris

"the central point of the globe where all the lines of magnetic force meet and combine" - the novel could only have been set in Paris

Rémi Lenoir on the representation of the family

"une structure cognitive" "une structure sociale"

Saint-Marc Girardin

'Le Père Goriot' is an immoral and inferior version of 'King Lear' because it does not contrast moral goodness with moral wickedness.

Petrey on social labelling

- Goriot thinks his daughters will remain as such forever because they are labelled as his daughters. - Victorine's father is able to reject his daughter by refusing to give her the label of being her child. When Vautrin succeeds in getting her brother killed, the fact of him being Victorine's father does not change, but the "constative identity" does. - Forced to accept Victorine as his own, as fathers cannot be fathers in the novel if they are unable to pass on an inheritance.

Petrey on the impact of money on paternity

- Goriot wonders, on his deathbed, whether if he were still rich whether his paternity would be fulfilled and that his daughters would visit him. - However, the concept of the father, in societal terms, dies before the physical death of the actual father. - At his death, Goriot can only defend the idea that he is a father by natural laws. Societal perception fails him.

Petrey on Goriot as the product of history

- Goriot's biography is the product of history, i.e. the French Revolution led to grain shortages. - His economic and societal downfall is also the product of history; under the Bourbon Restoration, Goriot's daughters became embarrassed by the non-aristocratic source of their wealth, forcing their father to give up his life in trade in an effort to conceal their lowly origins.

Brooks on fatherhood and religion

- Goriot's dependence on his daughters implies that the creator lives within his creation, in a new realisation of the self. - Proven by: "When I became a father...I understood God. He is complete everywhere, since all creation came from him. Sir, so am I with my daughters."

Bellos on Goriot's sexual love towards his daughters

- Goriot's idiolisation of his daughters becomes sexual: "Mes filles, c'était mon vice à moi; elles étaient mes maîtresses, enfin tout!" - Paternal love develops into masochistic sexuality, taking pleasure in pain so that his filles (daughters) become filles (prostitutes) on whom Goriot becomes dependent: "il se couchait aux pieds de sa fille pour la baiser". - Simultaneously despises his daughters because he knows that they will never support him

Brooks on Goriot and Rastignac's relationship

- Goriot's overzealous relationship towards Rastignac means that by providing him with money, Goriot can continue financing his daughter's affection. - Shows how family structures are determined by social interests = sentimental and economic interdependence

Petrey on the son-in-law

- Goriot's vision to improve the status of paternity is to forbid marriage because he feels that Rastignac, his son-in-law, has destroyed his position as a father by taking away his daughters, especially as he can provide for his daughters in a way that Goriot cannot. - Mme de Langeais agrees, claiming that it is the start of a new beginning for one family, but the death of another family at the same time. - Paradoxical argument - True horror of the son-in-law is that he exposes the family as a fragile social construct, a "conventional effect"

Brooks on Rastignac's journey

- His character transcends from one of beauty and ambition, to one of money and power. - Idea of transcendence implies an upward movement, from the mud pit of the Vauquer pension to a superior social position above Paris

Berrong on characters presented as their sexual opposites

- Mme Vauquer: "un moine" - Goriot: "fille entretenue" - Rastignac: "jeune fille", "dattier femelle" - Goriot tells Rastignac that his daughter is spending money on him "comme pour une mariée"

Bellos on narrators

- Multiple narrative focus parodies the artificial neatness of 18th-century novelistic tradition. - Questions the scepticism of knowledge - Perhaps a result of Balzac's hurried working methods - But nevertheless reinforces the realist genre

Bellos on Shakespeare

- Novel alludes to 'King Lear', i.e. a father gives up all his wealth to his daughters who reject him: "Nothing can come of nothing, nothing can go back to nothing". - 'Le Père Goriot' sees the lack of the third good and loving daughter. Rastignac fills this role but he is neither female, a descendant of the protagonist, or unambiguously good. - Allusions to Shakespeare reinforce the element of drama in the novel

Bellos on the novel's plot

- Novel can either be seen as a moral tale of Rastignac finding his way between the extremes of love and hate personified in Goriot and Vautrin respectively OR as a telling of the tale of the great city of Paris in which the characters' events are merely episodes - Novel tracks the tragedy of multiple plot lines, all of which become tragic due to the corruption of money and society, because of three main reasons: 1. Decline of human values as the Industrial Revolution instilled corruption and greed into society 2. Destruction of family bonds 3. Defeat of the bourgeoisie

Peter Lock on emotion

- Novel teaches the reader that the world is a vale of tears - Claims that the passions felt in the novel contain within them the whole range of human emotions, allowing Goriot to feel both maternal and paternal impulses towards his daughters, both loving and hating them, and experiencing both selfishness and self-sacrifice - Goriot's paternal sentiment represents all human emotions in general, warning that whilst his love for his daughters represents purity, it also demonstrates the destructive effects of overzealous love.

Bellos on the development of the novel as a form

- Novels before Balzac were largely considered by both writers and readers as forms of entertainment, i.e. not part of serious literature, which was either drama or verse. - The particular concept of story-telling that we have today is due to Balzac's novel. Its tragic plot, rather than romantic plot, means the novel was a key part of the development of the novel as a form of serious cultural expression in the 19th century. - The reader = chariot of the Indian idol Juggernaut, i.e. Balzac attempted to lose those readers who were not prepared to embark on a journey of truth, not just of fiction. = mise en abyme, i.e. representation of the novel within the novel

Petrey on Vautrin's view of the family

- Patriarchal society gives him purpose and identity: "Who am I? Vautrin... If I succeed, nobody will ask 'Who are you?' I'll be monsieur Four-Million." - Not defined by the family, like Goriot is - But through self-constructing his own name, Vautrin risks losing it by not attaching it to any societal strings

Bellos on Rastignac and Vautrin's worth

- Rastignac does abuse his family in order to facilitate his own ascension into the bourgeoisie. - Yet the reader gives him more worth than Vautrin because he doubts himself and questions his moral virtue, e.g. hesitating before sending the letter asking his family for money because he sympathises with their struggle

Mortimer on the death of the father

- Rastignac is forced to navigate Paris on his own after Goriot dies, Vautrin is arrested, and Beauséant leaves Paris. - At the end of the novel, Rastignac is therefore seen as having fully 'arrived', meaning that it is only after Goriot's death that Rastignac fully knows himself. - Important steps in the novel and in the characters' lives are made after the death of the father.

Petrey on the impact of money for Rastignac

- Rastignac undergoes both an internal and external transformation when he succeeds in acquiring money. - Portrayed through phallocentric imagery: "The instant money slips into a student's pocket, there is erected in him a fantastic column." - Suggests that without money, one is stripped of phallic identity and is less of a man.

Bellos on the loss of the father and mother

- Seems that Delphine and Anastasie arguably lost their father as well as their mother since Goriot abandoned all authority over his daughters in favour of "Donner toujours, c'est ce qui fait qu'on est père". - Such Christian self-sacrifice would have been seen as an admirable quality and indeed Balzac images Goriot as a saint: "un homme qui est père comme un saint, un martyre, est chrétien" - Goriot is described as the one on which all the light of a painting would fall, like the central figure of a Renaissance painting.

Bellos on Balzac's use of characters

- Sets his novel apart by using ordinary characters - Shows that the passions of normal people going about their normal lives as just as powerful and important as those characters of higher social prestige - Characters are ordinary, but extraordinary enough to arouse tragic emotions of pity and fear, i.e. the everyman

Bellos on Rastignac's role

- Sometimes takes over as narrator - Teaches the reader about the nature of society by receiving teachings from Vautrin etc. - Narrator sometimes steps in to comment on his naivety so that the reader learns from Rastignac, as well as with him - Rastignac therefore has two distinct literary functions, just as he has two distant sides to his character: observing eye vs. actor in the novel.

Petrey on Restoration ideology

- States that an objective fact, e.g. one's birth, establishes one's social identity - Balzac shows that birth is not pertinent to identity and instead focusses on the role of money in widening the gap between social discourse and objective reality. - Results in an increase in finances but a decrease in moral standard: "Negative moral commentary takes the form of affirmative financial vision."

Peter Brooks on melodrama

- Suggests that the novel appeals to the emotions through the coming together of novelistic form with theatrical drama - This drama is, however, no exaggeration: "ce drame n'est ni une fiction, ni un roman. All is true." = the drama of the real, hence extensive detail

Brooks on use of social connections

- The Comte de Restaud's reactions and the rapid oscillation between Rastignac being accepted adn then rejection reveals the novel to be a comedy of manners and social realism. - Hyperbolised to focalise Rastignac's social ineptitude/inexperience

Petrey on the King as father

- The idea of the King as father became widely held during the Bourbon Restoration. - Paternal dissolution in the novel therefore has disastrous consequences because the name of the father was associated with survival of the state. - Mme de Langeais' manipulation of 'Goriot' can therefore be seen to question/undermine the Restoration. - The fact that Goriot is a commoner made wealthy through the Restoration suggests that his character is a crime against nature.

Juliette Frøhlich

- The idea that the Vauquer lodging house is located on a steep slope suggests that it is "in the subterranean region of the social ladder". - Suggests that this part of Paris is so low down in social standing that it is almost in the underworld, in hell, in the mud pit

Berrong on the relationship between Vautrin and Rastignac

- The relationship between Vautrin and Rastignac is one of mentorship. - The trope of a more experienced individual enlightening a promising but naive newcomer who is keen to learn the ways of the world runs throughout 'La Comédie Humaine'. - The positive attributes assigned to Vautrin suggests that he has something of worth to pass on to Rastignac.

Paul Claudel on authorship

- The world is a text to be deciphered. - Rastignac achieves a position similar to that of the author, becoming master of understanding, of differentiating appearance and meaning, and becomes master of his destiny.

Mortimer on the metaphorical presentations of Paris

- Unites the personification of Paris as an ocean and as a mud pit: "ocean of mud" - Rastignac sometimes walks through it, sometimes drowns

Bellos on the novel as a drama

- Use of meal times as interruptions to the novel allude to classical tragedy, acting like the chorus in Greek plays. - Comparable to the comic scenes in Shakespeare's tragedies = entertaining/realistic contrast to the high drama of tragedy - Meal times allow Balzac to interrupt linear progression and to switch scenes, acting like a cut in a play. - Reveals the coming-together of novel and drama

Berrong on the role of Vautrin's homosexuality

- Vautrin seems to be more closely aligned to his criminal activity, than to his homosexuality. - Represents the narcissistic idea that modern Europeans have been corrupted by a love of self: "le type de toute une nation dégénerée, d'un peuple savage et logique, brutal et souple" - Could be seen as burgeoning homophobia, but this would have been due to unfamiliarity with the unknown, rather than an attack on homosexuality

Berrong on homosexuality

- Vautrin's interest in men, and particularly in Rastignac, is linked to sexuality within the novel but is perhaps linked more closely with the desire to gain control over the student than with sexual desire. - Just as Rastignac seeks power over Anastasie in order to advance in society, so Vautrin tries to manipulate Rastignac so as to control him. - Balzac's parallels between Vautrin's interest in Rastignac with Rastignac's interest in Anastasie/Delphine through the use of the verb 'pénétrer' means that both relationships are presented as a mixture of physical lust and a desire for power/control. - Balzac therefore does not imply that either heterosexuality or homosexuality are stranger than the other.

Petrey on Rastignac's two father figures

- père Goriot = père refers to a true father figure, building upon the childish term "papa" to name the true paternal function - papa Vautrin = colloquialism demonstrating an attitude more than a position - Rastignac becomes Goriot's son and quasi-son-in-law, whilst he becomes Vautrin's pupil - Goriot = obedience; Vautrin = revolt

Engels on Balzac's legacy

Claims that Balzac's analyses of a society dictated by class, money, and personal ambition taught him more than many professional historians and economists

Petrey on the role of money

Different roles for different characters: - Rastignac: money would allow him to fulfil his identity as a member of aristocratic society - Goriot: allow him to cement his role as father

Brooks on mud

Idea that the Vauquer lodging house is located at the very bottom of the muddy street is likened to the start of Dante's descent into hell

David Ellison on Rastignac

Nietzschean Übermensch: "one who has uncovered the origins of moral values and has undertaken to transvalue them according to how they enhance or prove detrimental to one's goals."

Mortimer on Rastignac's success

Rastignac succeeds in 'arriving' in Paris (l'arrivisme) because of two main reasons: - the teaching that he receives, e.g. from Vautrin, Goriot, observing society - his own personal qualities, including courage, drive, and an ability to learn quickly despite his initial naiveté

W. H. Helm on Balzac's legacy

Refers to Balzac as the "French Dickens" and to Dickens as the "English Balzac"

Berthier on Vautrin's homosexuality

Reinforces his non-compliance with the law

Schehr on sexuality

- Analyses the sign that hangs over the boarding house: "pension bourgeoise des deux sexes et autres" - Claims that this refers to Vautrin because "he is neither of the male sex, for he does not love women, nor of the female sex, because he is a man."

Numerous critics on representation

- Auerbach and Levin consider the novel a landmark in the history of mimesis, or representation. - Due to the extent of its "reality-effect" (Roland Barthes) - Creating the "illusion of life" (Bellos)

Bellos on Balzac's character

- Balzac never resolves the contradiction between Rastignac's emotional sensitivity and his brutal pursuit of wealth and status. - Means his character is consistently one of moral ambiguity

Lucey on historical contrast

- Balzac presents a contrast between the 19th-century Parisian class struggle and the pre-Revolutionary family through placing in opposition Rastignac's socially-climbing trajectory and his mother and sisters' dependence on his success for them to gain access to the world of the elite. - Rastignac becomes a demanding baby, asking his mother to find a third nipple from which he can suck money.

Petrey on social relations

- Characters define their identity in terms of whom they are connected to: "Attitude reigns over fact." - When Mme de Restaud officially recognises Rastignac as her cousin and declares: "I give you my name", his identity becomes as firm as Goriot's is shaky. - Idea of constative identity: "social response constitutes the entirety of constative identity"

Berrong on Balzac's presentation of homosexuality

- Claims that Balzac is very modern in his approach to the concept of homosexuality, for he presents a world in which male same-sex desire is portrayed but never commented upon or judged - The dislike that many characters feel towards Vautrin is never associated with his homosexuality, but rather with his devious, criminal ways.

Émilie Zola on Balzac's writing style

- Declared Balzac the father of the naturalist novel - Where naturalism describes a more pessimistic and analytical form of realism - Whilst the Romantics saw the world through a coloured lens, the naturalist sees through a clear glass.

Brookes on Goriot's death

- Describes it as an "elegant parricide" - Oxymoron between the privileged superficiality of elegance and stark reality of death, embodying the contrast between high and low society - May explain why Delphine did not attend to her father as he lay dying because it would have represented the journey 'downwards' into the lower echelons of society

Brooks on substructure and superstructure

- Draws a distinction between substructure, something inherent to a concept, and superstructure, something external to a concept - Substructure of the novel = culture/ideas of social class - Superstructure of the novel = network of relationships - Rastignac becomes increasingly able to move between the sub- and super-structure of the novel.

Brookes on the "code parisien"

- Goriot is allowed in the backstairs of the Restaud's home, but not in their dressing room. - Rastignac breaks this code by attempting the navigate the house to imply familiarisation with the house and its people. - Symbolises the metaphor of surface and death, of uncovering the layers of Parisian society.

Petrey on social roles

- Goriot lives through his children, but when père no longer has this meaning, Goriot loses his sense of identity. - The role of fatherhood is all that makes up Goriot's sense of identity. - Balzac may be demonstrating how one's function in society defines the individual.

Muret on Goriot's emotions towards his daughters

His emotions are so intense and irrational towards his daughters because they represent his desire to punish them for the death of their mother: "Mes filles, c'était mon vice à moi; elles étaient mes maîtresses, enfin tout!"

Motto of Paris

Latin: fluctuat nec mergitur French: il est agité par les vagues, et ne sombre pas English: she is rocked by the waves, but does not sink

Bellos on the use of Paris within the novel

The novel's accurate references to the physical and geographical aspects of Paris meant that it appears as the following: - tourist guide to Paris - social guide to the main quartiers - moral guide to life in the city Described as metaphors comparing the city to an ocean, a jungle, a battlefield, a mud pit, and a prostitute

Brooks on the role of the narrator

The omniscient narrator means that the reader only receives an impression of the characters through the filter of the narrator.