Resumo de Le Pere Goriot - Balzac, Honor'e de.

Le Père Goriot is a book which is not amenable to any brief, succinct thematic paraphrase. It is not so much one book but many, containing, as it does, a number of complex plots and sub-plots. In many ways Le Père Goriot can be seen as La Comédie humaine in miniature, a microcosm of La Comédie humaine as a whole (itself a microcosm of post-revolutionary French society - Le Père Goriot as microcosm of a microcosm) with its intricate interconnections, criss-crossing destinies and complex social networks.

What is Le Père Goriot about?

As I mentionned just a moment ago, of the seven boarders at the Pension Vauquer, only three have their own story: Goriot, Vautrin and Rastignac. Their three stories make up the three foci of the novel. Their stories are not absolutely separate, independant but interconnected and inter-dependant. Moreover, underlying their stories is an underlying thematic unity.
Goriot, Vautrin and Rastignac are all movers in social space, they are all passeurs entre deux rives moving backwards and forwards across the boundaries of class, breeding and culture. Goriot's daughters are both married into the French aristocracy (both old and new) and rely on his excessive paternal love to bail them out the financial crises that constantly assail them (Anastasie is being ruined by her lover's passion for gambling, Delphine by her husband's meaness and shady financial dealings). There is a constant va et vient between Goriot in the poverty of the boarding house and the glittering society of his daughters as he sells and pawns his last possessions. Vautrin too, is not so much a man of the world as a man of two worlds, who understands the operations of huigh society and finds it little different from the workings of a much lower-class criminal underworld (see his comments: Folio p.73, p.77 and p. 114). And lastly, there is Rastignac who, although impoverished is of noble birth and can glide in and out of both milieux with greater ease than any of the other characters.
At this point I should introduce the main characters of the aristocratic milieu where half the action of Le Père Goriot takes place. The main characters associated with the beau monde, the upper-class society Rastignac is trying to infiltrate are:
Madame de Beauséant is a relative of Rastignac and she helps him in his effort to enter society. Madame de Beauséant herself is agonizing over the future marriage of her lover, the Marquis d'Ajuda-Pinto, to another woman.
Anastasie de Restaud is married to Monsieur de Restaud but is herself having an affair with the dissolute dandy Maxime de Trailles who is ruining her financially.
Delphine de Nucingen, one of Goriot's daughter married to the Alsatian banker, the Baron de Nucingen. Delphine is in the process of being abandonned by her lover, the Duc de Marsay and Rastignac sees his opportunity. He begins to court Delphine as a way of gaining entry into smart society and by the end of the novel their relationship is well under way.

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