Plot Summary?
We’re just getting started.

Add this title to our requested Study Guides list!
SuperSummary Logo
Plot Summary

Le Père Goriot

Guide cover placeholder
Plot Summary

Le Père Goriot

Honoré de Balzac

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1835

Plot Summary
Le Père Goriot is a novel by French author Honoré de Balzac. It was published in serial form from 1834 to 1835 and tells the story of three intertwined characters, Goriot, Vautrin, and Rastignac.

The novel begins at the boarding house Maison Vauquer, owned by Madame Vauquer. Three of the tenants are central characters in the story. The first is Goirot, an elderly man, who dotes on the other tenants and his daughters. He is subject to ridicule because he lost his fortune long ago and now barely scrapes by.

Rastignac is a law student, a naive man who has moved to Paris from the south of France. He is immediately attracted to the upper class, though as an outsider to Paris he does not quite fit in. Madame de Beauséant, his cousin, tutors him so that he can function in high society. He soon endears himself to one of Goriot’s daughters, Delphine, after he exhausts his poor parents’ money living in the city. He begins to plot ways to get into higher society permanently. He decides to put aside his law studies and take a shortcut. He persuades his mother and sisters to sell what they can and send him their money to outfit his entrance into the upper class of Paris.



Another tenant, Vautrin, offers to help him pursue an unmarried but wealthy woman, Victorine. Her brother is blocking access to her family fortune, but Vautrin says that he can arrange to have the brother killed in a duel. Rastignac balks at the idea of having someone killed just to gain access to money, but Vautrin claims that the ends always justify the means. He decides not to go along with it but makes a note of the plan. Before long, the tenants discover that Vautrin is wanted by the police because he is the mastermind criminal, The Cheater of Death. He arranges to have Victorine’s brother killed anyway, but is finally captured by the police.

Meanwhile, Goriot is supportive of Rastignac’s interest in his daughter, but he is not able to do anything about her husband’s tyrannical control over her, nor is he able to support her. He finds out that his other daughter has had to sell her family jewelry to pay off her lover’s debts. He is overcome with grief that he is unable to support her financially; he suffers a stroke under all the stress.

Neither of his daughters is able to see him before he dies. He rages about their disrespect for him and how ungrateful they have become. In the end, Delphine does not come, and Anastasie arrives after he has fallen into a coma. At his funeral, there are only a few people: Rastignac, a servant, and two paid mourners. Both daughters only send their coaches with the family crests on them.



After the ceremony, the lights of Paris begin to appear. Rastignac prepares to dine with Delphine; he turns to her to say that it is only between the two of them now.

The novel is considered a coming of age story though not in the traditional sense. Rastignac is an everyman at the beginning. He is initially repulsed by what he sees in Paris high society. His experiences up to that point have been only with his poor family in a much smaller area, and the excesses of high society make him uncomfortable because he does not understand them.

As he progresses through the novel, however, he is tutored in the ways of this community, and he begins to embrace what he finds. He sets aside his goal of being a lawyer and instead begins the social climb using money from his family and eventually his connections with women to spur his ascent.



His story is driven by the theme of social class and social separation. Although Rastignac aspires to be a part of the wealthy elite, it is clear that he does not belong in that world and they will never accept him there. He is advised by several characters to act with a sense of ruthless ambition. There is no room for compassion in a world where people are sharply divided between power and powerlessness. Rastignac develops a keen sense of this ambition, using his relationship with Goroit’s married daughter to improve his status.

This ambition corrupts what was initially a sense of honor in wanting to make a good living for his family. At the time, law was not quite the high paying profession it is now, but it would have made a steady income for a poor family living in the south of France. He decides that this path is mere drudgery, and uses what little money his family has to jumpstart a life in the world of high society. It is a risk that a man with more honor might not have taken.

The book is one of Balzac’s greatest achievements. It spurred the use of “Rastignac” in French to mean someone with cutthroat social ambitions and was the groundwork for later characters in his realistic style. Although Balzac is sometimes criticized for presenting such a negative view of people in the upper class, critics have praised his complex characters and attention to detail. The novel is an unrelenting look at what it means to be corrupted by ambition, and the ways that people will stop at nothing for a chance at power.

Continue your reading experience

SuperSummary Plot Summaries provide a quick, full synopsis of a text. But SuperSummary Study Guides — available only to subscribers — provide so much more!

Join now to access our Study Guides library, which offers chapter-by-chapter summaries and comprehensive analysis on more than 5,000 literary works from novels to nonfiction to poetry.

Subscribe

See for yourself. Check out our sample guides:

Subscribe

Plot Summary?
We’re just getting started.

Add this title to our requested Study Guides list!

A SuperSummary Plot Summary provides a quick, full synopsis of a text.

A SuperSummary Study Guide — a modern alternative to Sparknotes & CliffsNotes — provides so much more, including chapter-by-chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and important quotes.

See the difference for yourself. Check out this sample Study Guide: