Balzac's Pere Goriot: A Christ Among Fathers

         "There was more than human grief on his face. To paint it as it should be painted the face of this Christ among fathers, we would need to search among the images created by the princes of the palette to depict the agony suffered on the world's behalf by the Savior of mankind." This passage from Honore de Balzac's Pere Goriot suggests the intensity of the suffering and anguish that Father Goriot experiences in sacrificing his heart and soul for his two daughters. Like Christ, he endures the persecution, privation, and humiliation associated with the ultimate gift of life; and like Christ, he suffers rejection by friends and family. Pere Goriot serves as a sacrificial figure through which Balzac indicts the hypocrisy of early nineteenth-century French society. The author uses the concepts of fate and irony to create a tone of tragic loss.

            Balzac also uses fate and victimization in a social tragedy in Pere Goriot. Father Goriot lives in lodging with gossiping tenants who speculate about his initial wealth and subsequent deprivation. His two daughters visit him, yet the lodgers believe they are his mistresses (57). Following his wife's death, Goriot focuses all of his attention on them. As he tells young law student Eugene de Rastignac, "My life is in my two daughters" (132). Goriot encourages them to marry prosperously; however, their husbands refuse to let him live with them or visit them openly. Rejected, Goriot throws "himself into the lodging house as a consequence of the despair that seize[s] him" (94). The hero then seeks voluntary exile "in his own poverty" (81), sacrificing his entire life savings in order to maintain their affluent lifestyles. His preoccupation with them becomes his sole happiness. In his frustration, he asks Rastignac, "So long as they enjoy themselves and are happy and smartly dressed, and can have carpets to walk on, what does it matter what rags I wear or the sort of place I sleep in?" (132). Goriot exiles himself in much the same manner as Hamlet surreptitiously exiles himself under the assumed cloak of madness. Ironically, the daughters even rival each other in the fierceness of social competition, much like King Lear's daughters who quarrel over their unwillingness to care for their father. The most tragic aspect, however, occurs when the sisters abandon him completely. Goriot exclaims, "There's a God in Heaven! He avenges us fathers in spite of ourselves . . . It was my fault; it was I who taught them to trample me underfoot" (259). Goriot says his daughters were his "vice," and that he "loved them so much that he "went back to them again like a gambler going back to the gaming tables" (258). Balzac's realism is harsh, yet true, as he suggests the dual tragic aspects of the story. The daughters' obsession for social prestige and the father's preoccupation with their happiness lead to tragic consequences in both cases. On his deathbed Goriot sends letters requesting his daughters' presence one last time, but even then, they refuse. As Rastignac tells the countess at an afternoon call, "This father had given everything. For twenty he'd given his life, his blood, his love; he'd given his whole fortune away in one day. And once they'd squeezed the lemon dry, his daughters threw the peel in the gutter" (81). In torment, the dying man exclaims, "Ah, my friend, never marry, never have children! You give them life, and they give you death. You help them into the world, and they drive you out of it" (256). The sisters only desire his money, and Goriot learns that social status, to them transcends love and affection. This is Balzac's commentary on the snobbery of nineteenth-century French society. Ironically, a medical student, not his children, "undertakes to place the old man in a pauper's coffin . . . without form or ceremony" (272-273). Balzac here suggests that in a world of misplaced values, there exist no place for nobility of character or mind. Eugene realizes, as he waits for the daughters to occupy their places at Goriot's bedside, "Finer spirits can't stay long in this world. And how indeed can deep feeling reconcile itself with a society so shabby and petty and superficial?" (253). In essence, Balzac describes French society as "nothing but an ocean of mud" from which anyone "who ventured a foot into it would be plunged into it up to his neck" (243). In closing, however, Christophe acknowledges that Old Goriot was "a good, honest man" who "never raised his voice" or "harmed nobody" (274). Goriot truly serves as Balzac's hero, rising like the phoenix about the cruelty of this world, where Eugene's tears would ultimately find him, "reaching to heaven" (275).

              Balzac opens the tale by alluding to its realism: "The drama is not an invention; it is not a novel." The author stresses that the events are "so true that you can all see hints of it in your own homes, in your own hearts perhaps" (8). The filth and squalor of the city sharply contrast with the snobbery of the French upper class. His description of the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Genevieve parallels the London street scenes in Dickens' Oliver Twist, as well as the Italian atmosphere in Poe's "Cask of Amontillado." Balzac creates a setting of "dark colors and solemn thought" which compels the reader "to feel like a traveler going down into the catacombs, the daylight fading step by step" into a "grim sight" with "withered hearts" and "empty skulls" (9), much like Hamlet in the graveyard with his old friend Yorick. Balzac uses the age and appearance of Madame Vauquer, Goriot's landlady, to correspond with the decay of her house, much like Miss Havisham in Great Expectations, and Madeline in Poe's "House of Usher." The author also reinforces his criticism of French excess and intemperance by describing Madame Vauquer as a lady with "a fat old face'; a "nose jutting from the middle of it like a parrot's beak"; "podgy little hands"; a "body plump as a churchgoer's"; and a "flabby, uncontrollable bust" (12). Ironically, as in every society, Goriot, the one true and honest gentleman, serves as "a butt and laughingstock" for the other tenants (21). Even during Goriot's period of privation, society scorns him, unknowing and uncaring. Like the ostracized Stephen Verkovensky in Dostoyevsky's Devils, Goriot suffers a cruel persecution from his beloved. When he refuses Madame Vauquer's advances, she demands prompt payment and derisively calls him "old Goriot" (29). Balzac intensifies the father's trials even more when law student Eugene de Rastignac discovers the old man "twisting a piece of silver as though it were wax" into ingots so that he can sell his most precious silverware from his wedding as gifts for his daughters. Eugene and friend Bianchon again make sport of Goriot by claiming that his "stupidity" could be contagious, and laughing about it (57).

            Balzac shows how the effects of Goriot's self-imposed impoverishment also contribute to his tragic fate. Initially, Jean Joachim Goriot became wealthy during the period of the French Revolution yet subsequently goes into exile, for motives financial and political. Like Charles Darnay in Dickens' Tale of Two Cities, Goriot also suffers from isolation and depravity, and Eugene's description of Goriot's flat closely resembles Darnay's . Rastignac expresses how he "could not repress a start of amazement at the contrast between the father's squalid hovel and the daughter's finery" (130). The appearance of Goriot's apartment, with "its chilling comfortlessness," literally "wrung his heart," and "might have been the most dismal cell in a prison" (131). Like Oedipus, Goriot's self-inflicted exile leads to intense anguish and impoverishment.

            Balzac further depicts the corruption of French society through the character of Vautrin, a villain who sows the first seeds of moral corruption in Rastignac's heart by attempting to persuade him to accept a scheme involving murder and an immoral marriage through which he would inherit a fortune (112-115). Vautrin, of course, demands his share of the capital for his services, to acquire his fortune in the United States" (110-111), like Defoe's Moll Flanders. Just as the Artful Dodger in Oliver Twist, Vautrin rationalizes that for one to be successful, he must be corrupt, especially in a corrupt society. He tells Eugene, "Principles don't exist, only events. Laws don't exist, only circumstances" (113). Life, as Vautrin perceives it, is "no prettier than cooking" because "it smells nasty," and "you can't make a stew without getting your hands dirty" (110). One's primary consideration, Vautrin maintains, is "how to wash them properly after—those are the ethics of our age" (110). Like Hamlet, to achieve his goal, he had to become so infected by the disease that its contagion destroyed him as well. Although Rastignac rebels at the notion initially, he later ponders the possibility, as did Raskolnikov in Dostoyevsky's Crime and Punishment. Like the poor apothecary in Romeo and Juliet, Rastignac must determine whether his "poverty and not his will, consents."

              Eugene de Rastignac also serves as a tragic victim of fate. As a young man, he proves "highly gifted" and among a class of men "who have been momentarily forced, in a testing situation, ro rise above the common level" (35). Rastignac passes his first examination as a law student with only "a small amount work" (35), which leaves him ample time "to savor the visible, material delights" of Paris. His innocence and purity of heart "fill[s] him with enthusiasm" for the city and youthful "hero worship." Balzac describes him as "a man of character," desiring "to make his way by his own unaided efforts" (36).The city's appeal instantly influences him; he now abandons "his boyhood illusions" and "provincial outlook," to begin a new quest with what he feels is "a broadened mind and an excited ambition" (35). His fascination with "the fresh, charming images of social life at its most elegant" (86) falsely persuades him to envision the world as Vautrin describes it, a place in which "laws and morality" were "powerless" against wealth," and "success the ultimate virtue" (85). Rastignac's insatiable desire for capital now possesses him; writing to his mother and sisters, he persuades them to sell their family treasures so that he can "male a fortune very quickly" by ingratiating himself with the proper people among the aristocracy (88). Sadly, Rastignac weeps, as his devoted family sacrifices their life savings for him, just as Pere Goriot "destroy[s] his silver" in order "to pay his daughters' debts" (97). Balzac here suggests the cruel illusions of society, and their tragic effects. Just as Macbeth is lured into the false belief that the witches' prophecy would lead to his success as king, so is Rastignac enticed into accepting Vautrin's philosophy that equates material success with happiness. The final stage of Eugene's transformation involves Vautrin's scheme to murder the son of a prominent banker Frederic Taillefer so that he will leave his inheritance to his daughter Victorine, instead. Rastignac's subsequent marriage to the young heiress would then ensure a fortune for Eugene and Vautrin (112-113). At this request, Rastignac's moral indignation explodes; however, Vautrin rationalizes that virtue is but the cloak of deception; for "at the bottom of every great fortune without source, there's always some crime . . . carried out in the name of respectability" (115). Eugene fortunately refuses Vautrin's proposition, and states that he only "wants to work honorably, devotedly . . . night and day," owing his "success to nothing but his hard work." He acknowledges that it "will be the slowest possible way to success, but at least when I lay my head on my pillow at night, there'll be no troubling thought in it" (116). Unlike Faust, Rastignac rejects the compact with this man that "horrified him," with his "inclusive contempt for the world" (161). In spite of this victory, Eugene is torn between his love for Goriot's beautiful daughter Delphine and his inability to understand her cruelty to her father. As Goriot lay dying, Dephine chooses to attend a ball instead of answering her father's request for her presence. "Please don't try to teach me my duty to my father," she tells Eugene. Saddened by her decision, he also realizes his impotence in the matter, and senses that he "had enough insight into Delphine's character to know that she would be quite capable, if necessary of marching over her father's body in order to go to the ball; and he had neither the boldness to find fault with her, nor the temerity to offend her, nor the strength to leave her" (244). In essence, he becomes a slave of a vicious Parisian society, and this tragic realization forces him into a type of torment from which he cannot return. As he tells his friend Bianchon that evening in Goriot's room, "My friend, always stick to the modest career you've decided on. I am in hell, and I have to stay there. Whatever evil you are told about society, you can be sure it's true. It would take more than a Juvenal to describe the horror under the gold and jewels" (250).This constitutes Balzac's indictment of a society as cold as the stone upon which its epitaph is sealed. Ironically, Rastignac, not Goriot's son-in-laws, pays the funeral expenses and "undertake[s] to place the old man in a pauper's coffin himself" (272), for a service "without ceremony, or mourners, or friends, or family" (273). The young lawyer emerges from these events a transformed man, with a "new challenge he is flinging at society" (275), and a new life with the woman he loves.

           Ironically, Balzac's Vautrin also serves as a hero to those in his own social class. In a society filled with corruption, only two basic responses exist: one, act nobly, refusing to succumb to the vices of an immoral environs, as does Goriot; or two, to immerse oneself willingly into the crime and injustice of the society, preferring a nobler existence among thieves than hypocrites, in short, a type of Byronic hero who, rather than conform, chooses to abide by a different code of behavior, like Milton's Satan who decides "to create a heaven out of hell." When society and its laws fail to address the needs of its citizens, the basic laws of survival prevail, the same laws that form the basis for Vautrin's "cynical thoughts and deeds and his devil-may-care strength of character" (195). When Gondureau apprehends Vautrin as the convict Collin, or Trompe-La-Mort, the prisoner manifests a "frightful appearance of cunning strength," which made him seem "to glow with a fire from hell" (195). Attempting to wrestle free, Collin then leaps "back with savage energy" and "utters a roar" that brought "shrieks of terror from the boarders" (195). Here Balzac uses the image of a caged beast to suggest the helplessness of man's primal instinct against a corrupt moral order. Vautrin, like other members of his social class, Balzac suggests, suffers in a similar fashion. Sensing the injustice of his existence, Vautrin exclaims, "You're nothing more, any of you, than the flabby limbs of a gangrened society" (196). Despite his villainy, Vautrin inspires respect from the tenants who join sides with him "against the ungodly sham of a social contract—as dear Jean-Jacques calls it—whose pupil I am proud to declare myself" (198). Balzac here defends the notion of the Noble Savage against those who would exploit the idea of a Social Contract for their own personal gain. Man should only relinquish his personal freedoms for the greater good when morally sound leadership ensures justice and equality, conditions clearly absent in Goriot's day. Balzac's disease metaphor reinforces his theme of moral decadence in France, much like the" unweeded garden" Hamlet describes in his native Denmark.

                                                  Works Cited for Balzac's Pere Goriot

Balzac, Honore de. Pere Goriot. Henry Reed, Trans. New York: Signet, 1962.