Zusammenfassung
Zusammenfassung von Vater Goriot
Für wen es gedacht ist
For readers who love social novels full of money, ambition and sharp portraits of a whole city, and anyone curious about Balzac and The Human Comedy.
Worum es in diesem Buch geht
Father Goriot is a novel by Honoré de Balzac, first published in 1835. It is set in Paris in 1819, just after the fall of Napoleon, when old titles and new money are fighting for the same drawing rooms. Balzac wrote it as part of a huge project he called The Human Comedy, a linked set of novels meant to portray every level of French society. Characters from this book walk into many of the others.
The story begins in a shabby boarding house and follows a poor law student, Eugène de Rastignac, who has come to the city to make his name. Down the hall lives an old man, Goriot, who once made a fortune selling pasta and flour and who now lives on almost nothing. Two elegant young women visit him in secret. Who are they, and why does the old man grow poorer as they grow richer?
In this summary you get the whole shape of the book. You meet the boarders, the daughters, the sly lodger Vautrin, and the glittering salons of the Faubourg Saint-Germain. You see how the city teaches a young man its rules, and what those rules cost the people who love without condition. Let us begin where Balzac begins, in the house on the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève.
In dieser Zusammenfassung
- 1A shabby boarding house holds a whole societyFree
- 2A young man arrives with hunger in his eyes
- 3Goriot's secret visitors and strange habits
- 4A blunder in a countess's drawing room
- 5Vautrin teaches the cynical lesson plainly
- 6What a father will give, and what he is asked
- 7Rastignac and Delphine draw closer
- 8A dangerous offer and a house in decline
- 9What the novel says about love, money and Paris
- 10How Balzac tells it, from rooms to the whole city
Punkt 1 von 10
A shabby boarding house holds a whole society
The novel opens with a portrait of the Maison Vauquer, a boarding house in a poor district of Paris. Balzac describes the damp walls, the greasy dining room, the smell of old cooking and the worn furniture. He does this on purpose. For him, a place shapes the people who live in it, and the house is a small model of the world outside.
The owner is Madame Vauquer, a widow who watches every candle and every slice of bread. She is a shrewd woman who judges people by what they can pay. Her boarders pay little and receive little, and she feeds them just enough to keep them from leaving. Over the years she has learned to read every lodger by the state of his coat.
The boarders are a mixed group. There is Mademoiselle Victorine Taillefer, a gentle young woman whose rich father has cast her off. There is Madame Couture, who looks after her. There are the old clerk Poiret, the spinster Mademoiselle Michonneau, and the medical student Bianchon, who is cheerful and decent. They sit around one table each evening and trade gossip and jokes.
Two lodgers stand out. One is the confident, hearty Vautrin, a middle-aged man who seems to know a little about everyone and to pay his bills on time. The other is old Goriot, who once held the best rooms in the house and has slowly been pushed to worse ones. The others mock him and call him a fool, and he accepts it.
Balzac wants you to see from the start how cruel a small group can be to the weakest among them. The table laughs at Goriot because he is old, odd and apparently useless. Yet the narrator hints that this mockery will look shameful by the end. It plants every seed the rest of the book will harvest.
That’s 1 of 10 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Who’s who
- Eugène de Rastignac
- A poor young law student, he seeks social advancement with help from his cousin Madame de Beauséant.
- Father Goriot
- A retired pasta merchant living in Madame Vauquer's boarding house, he devotes his resources to his daughters.
- Vautrin
- A worldly fellow boarder, he offers Rastignac friendship and ruthless advice about achieving wealth and influence.
- Delphine de Nucingen
- Goriot's younger daughter is a banker's lonely wife who welcomes Rastignac's admiration.
- Anastasie de Restaud
- Goriot's elder daughter is a countess whose expensive household and love affair strain her finances.
- Madame de Beauséant
- Rastignac's aristocratic cousin introduces him to fashionable society and explains its unforgiving rules.
- Madame Vauquer
- The boarding house's widowed proprietor measures Goriot and her other lodgers by their ability to pay.
- Victorine Taillefer
- A gentle young boarder rejected by her wealthy father, she attracts Vautrin's interest in Rastignac's prospects.
About this edition
Every format is free to start, and print and large print are at cost.
- LengthAbout 106,000 words
- Reading timeAbout 7 h 5 min
- FormatseBook, large-print eBook, audiobook, 15-minute summary
- LanguagesEnglish and 13 other languages
Questions about Vater Goriot
What is Father Goriot about?
It follows a young law student, Rastignac, learning how ambition works in 1819 Paris, while he lives beside an old man who has given all his money to two daughters who barely visit him.
Is Father Goriot part of The Human Comedy?
Yes. Balzac placed it in his large series of linked novels about French society. Characters such as Rastignac and Vautrin appear again in other books of the series.
When was Father Goriot written and where is it set?
Balzac published it in 1835. The story is set in 1819, in Paris, mainly in a boarding house on the Rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève and in the fashionable salons of the city.
Is Father Goriot hard to read?
The plot moves steadily, and the social scenes are lively and easy to follow.
Is Father Goriot based on King Lear?
It is often compared to King Lear because both show a father who gives away everything and is neglected by his daughters. Balzac sets his version in an ordinary Paris boarding house.