Status
Available
Call number
Genres
Publication
The Modern Library (New York, 1950). 512 pages. $1.95.
Description
Wealthy and doting father impoverishes himself in securing brilliant marriages for his ambitious daughters. Symbolizes the extravagance of paternal sacrifice.
User reviews
LibraryThing member Benedict8
I became furious at Pere Goriot for being such a chump. I don't see the value of this book.
LibraryThing member cbl_tn
Père Goriot is, as much as anything, a character study of several residents of a Paris boarding house during the Bourbon Restoration. The title character is a retired vermicelli manufacturer sliding deeper and deeper into poverty as his two daughters, a comtesse and a baroness, divest him of
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everything he owns of value to fund their lavish lifestyles. The protagonist of the novel is actually the young law student Eugène de Rastignac, son of a noble but poor provincial family. Eugène’s sympathy for Old Goriot grows as he learns more of Goriot’s circumstances and of his love for his daughters. Goriot welcomes Eugène into his affections and encourages his affair with the younger daughter, the baroness de Nucingen. It’s also a tale of Eugène’s gradual corruption under the influence of the crook Vautrin. It’s an interesting glimpse of Parisian society at that point in time. I would have enjoyed it more without the melodrama. Show Less
Language
Original language
French
Physical description
xvi, 496 p.