“My heart is big enough to hold all your troubles.”
Thus speaks Old Goriot, un père extraordinaire. No amount of money is too small for his daughters; no sacrifice is too great. This vermicelli maker has worked hard to amass enough money to marry his daughters well. But, surely it is a fool who thinks that money can offer either satisfaction or security.
His two daughters, Delphine and Anastasie, have each married vile men who forbid them to see their father. He’s good enough to provide them money, of course, but not good enough to come to their homes. And so Goriot lives in a lodging-house of the most modest nature, in a room with wallpaper peeling from the damp.
One of seven lodgers at Maison Vauquer is Eugène Rastignac, who has come to Paris at the great financial sacrifice of his family in the country. Eugène is supposedly a law student in Paris, but he is a much more serious student of Paris’ society in the early 1800s than he is of law. By the end of the novel, his education is almost complete.
Throughout his novel, Balzac brings us to the awareness of the emptiness of riches, and the pain of love’s deceit. As Old Goriot lies dying, having given everything he has for his daughters’ luxuries, he asks Eugène, “Did you see my girls? They’re coming here directly, they will rush here as soon as they know that I am ill; they always took such good care of me in the Rue de la Jussienne!” He lives a life of hope which is at first admirable, but by the end of the novel has become pitiable.
There are other relationships depicted in this book, dalliances and affairs, but none are as significant to me as that of Father Goriot and his daughters. It is a heart wrenching read, so well summarized by this sentiment from Eugène near its conclusion:
There is a God! Oh! yes, there is a God! and he has made a better world for us, or this earth is blank and meaningless.
He knows that there is no fulfillment to be found in Paris, in a world which he had once wished to gain. Now he faces Society, with the words, “It’s war between us now!” I am comforted that he, at least, has learned this after the death of Old Goriot.