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136-491: Le Père Goriot ( French pronunciation: [lə pɛʁ ɡɔʁjo] , "Old Goriot" or "Father Goriot" ) is an 1835 novel by French novelist and playwright Honoré de Balzac (1799–1850), included in the Scènes de la vie privée section of his novel sequence La Comédie humaine . Set in Paris in 1819, it follows the intertwined lives of three characters: the elderly doting Goriot,

272-533: A classified advertisement in the Gazette de France , hoping that his anonymous critic would see it. Thus began a fifteen-year correspondence between Balzac and "the object of [his] sweetest dreams": Ewelina Hańska . Ewelina ( née Rzewuska) was married to a nobleman twenty years her senior, Marshal Wacław Hański , a wealthy Polish landowner living near Kyiv . It had been a marriage of convenience to preserve her family 's fortune. In Balzac Countess Ewelina found

408-410: A pallbearer and the eulogist at Balzac's funeral. Some modern researchers have attributed a factor in his death to excessive coffee consumption or a caffeine overdose (Balzac reportedly drank over 50 cups a day) but this has yet to be proved. Balzac is buried at Père Lachaise Cemetery in Paris. At his memorial service, Victor Hugo pronounced "Today we have people in black because of the death of

544-406: A type foundry . His inexperience and lack of capital caused his ruin in these trades. He gave the businesses to a friend (who made them successful) but carried the debts for many years. As of April 1828 Balzac owed 50,000 francs to his mother. Balzac never lost his penchant for une bonne spéculation . It resurfaced painfully later when—as a renowned and busy author—he traveled to Sardinia in

680-456: A "Horace de Saint-Aubin". These books were potboiler novels, designed to sell quickly and titillate audiences. In Saintsbury's view, "they are curiously, interestingly, almost enthrallingly bad". Saintsbury indicates that Robert Louis Stevenson tried to dissuade him from reading these early works of Balzac. American critic Samuel Rogers, however, notes that "without the training they gave Balzac, as he groped his way to his mature conception of

816-468: A "legal country" which allowed only a small group of the nation's most wealthy men to vote. Thus, Rastignac's drive to achieve social status is evidence not only of his personal ambition but also of his desire to participate in the body politic . As with Scott's characters, Rastignac epitomizes, in his words and actions, the Zeitgeist in which he lives. Through his characters and narration, Balzac lays bare

952-526: A Polish aristocrat and his longtime love. He died in Paris six months later. Honoré de Balzac was born into a family which aspired to achieve respectability through its industry and efforts. His father, born Bernard-François Balssa, was one of eleven children from an artisan family in Tarn , a region in the south of France. In 1760 he set off for Paris with only a Louis coin in his pocket, intent on improving his social standing ; by 1776 he had become Secretary to

1088-547: A Troubled World , calls it "the keystone of the Comédie humaine ". It is the central text of Anthony Pugh's voluminous study Balzac's Recurring Characters , and entire chapters have been written about the detail of the Maison Vauquer. Because it has become such an important novel for the study of French literature, Le Père Goriot has been translated many times into many languages. Thus, says Balzac biographer Graham Robb , " Goriot

1224-401: A bank—a position his aunt Jacqueline had obtained for him. In the first decade of the 19th century he first came into contact with the criminal underworld. When a young Italian soldier that Collin was interested in committed a forgery, Collin took the responsibility and was sentenced to five years' hard labour in 1810. Several attempted escapes have increased the sentence to 20 years by 1818, when

1360-602: A bridge over the river Loire . In 1816 Balzac entered the Sorbonne , where he studied under three famous professors: François Guizot , who later became Prime Minister , was Professor of Modern History; Abel-François Villemain , a recent arrival from the Collège Charlemagne , lectured on French and classical literature; and, most influential of all, Victor Cousin 's courses on philosophy encouraged his students to think independently. Once his studies were completed, Balzac

1496-463: A chance to abandon his far-away family and remake himself in the city's ruthless image. His urban exodus is like that of many people who moved into the French capital, doubling its population between 1800 and 1830. The texture of the novel is thus inextricably linked to the city in which it is set; "Paris", explains critic Peter Brooks , "is the looming presence that gives the novel its particular tone". It

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1632-437: A closely plotted novella of only fifty pages. According to the literary critic Kornelije Kvas, "Balzac's use of the same characters (Rastignac, Vautrin) in different parts of The Human Comedy is a consequence of the realist striving for narrative economy". Balzac's work habits were legendary. He wrote from 1 A.M. to 8 A.M. every morning and sometimes even longer. Balzac could write very rapidly; some of his novels, written with

1768-459: A cunning serpent, to probe women's most intimate secrets". Another review, in La Revue du théâtre , praised his "admirable technique of details". The many reviews, positive and negative, were evidence of the book's popularity and success. One publisher's critique dismissed Balzac as a " boudoir writer", although it predicted for him "a brief career, but a glorious and enviable one". Balzac himself

1904-442: A garret furnished in the most Spartan fashion, with a starvation allowance and an old woman to look after him", while the rest of the family moved to a house twenty miles (32 km) outside Paris. Balzac's first project was a libretto for a comic opera called Le Corsaire , based on Lord Byron 's The Corsair . Realizing he would have trouble finding a composer, however, he turned to other pursuits. In 1820 Balzac completed

2040-558: A good knowledge of hanging wallpaper. Balzac transferred this to his descriptions of the Pension Vauquer in Le Père Goriot , making the wallpaper speak of the identities of those living inside. Some critics consider Balzac's writing exemplary of naturalism —a more pessimistic and analytical form of realism, which seeks to explain human behavior as intrinsically linked with the environment. French novelist Émile Zola declared Balzac

2176-449: A great success for which you are at a loss to account is a crime that has never been discovered, because it was properly executed." This sentence has been frequently – and somewhat inaccurately – paraphrased as: "Behind every great fortune is a great crime." The novel's representations of social stratification are specific to Paris, perhaps the most densely populated city in Europe at

2312-615: A happy life, although only meeting at nights, for approximately five years, until the Baron Nucingen glimpses Esther and falls in love with her. Collin realizes that they can get a lot of money out of Nucingen if he becomes Esther's lover. The money would then serve Lucien to marry the rich, but plain Clothilde de Grandlieu. They get the needed million together, but Esther kills herself after having had to sleep with Nucingen in May 1830. Her suicide note

2448-429: A house known for its wretched food. Balzac owed the former detail to the expertise of his friend Hyacinthe de Latouche, who was trained in the practice of hanging wallpaper. The house is even defined by its repulsive smell, unique to the poor boardinghouse. One of the main themes in Le Père Goriot is the quest to understand and ascend society's strata . The Charter of 1814 granted by King Louis XVIII had established

2584-525: A human barbarism that survived through attempts at civilization. In a preface to the second edition in 1835, Balzac wrote that the title character Goriot – who made his fortune selling vermicelli during a time of widespread hunger – was an " Illinois of the flour trade" and a " Huron of the grain market". Vautrin refers to Paris as "a forest of the New World where twenty varieties of savage tribes clash" – another sign of Cooper's influence. Scott

2720-510: A kindred spirit for her emotional and social desires, with the added benefit of feeling a connection to the glamorous capital of France. Their correspondence reveals an intriguing balance of passion, propriety and patience; Robb says it is "like an experimental novel in which the female protagonist is always trying to pull in extraneous realities but which the hero is determined to keep on course, whatever tricks he has to use". Marshal Hański died in 1841, and his widow and her admirer finally had

2856-481: A massive temporal rift; the first part (of four) covers a span of six years, while the final two sections focus on just three days. Le Cousin Pons (1847) and La Cousine Bette (1848) tell the story of Les Parents Pauvres ( The Poor Relations ). The conniving and wrangling over wills and inheritances reflect the expertise gained by the author as a young law clerk. Balzac's health was deteriorating by this point, making

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2992-497: A master criminal nicknamed Trompe-la-Mort ( Daredevil , literally Cheat-the-Death or Death-Dodger ). Vautrin arranges for a friend to kill Victorine's brother, in the meantime, and is captured by the police. Goriot, supportive of Rastignac's interest in his daughter and furious with her husband's tyrannical control over her, finds himself unable to help. When his other daughter, Anastasie, informs him that she has been selling off her husband's family jewelry to pay her lover's debts,

3128-440: A matter of formalities. But Lucien cracks under questioning and reveals Herrera's true identity. Lucien subsequently hangs himself, but not without retracting everything he said, leaving doubts about Herrera's identity again. Three of Collin's former partners in crime are also in prison but Collin convinces them to treat him as Abbé Herrera. He learns from them that his friend Théodore Calvi is awaiting execution and that another of

3264-531: A mysterious criminal-in-hiding named Vautrin and a naive law student named Eugène de Rastignac . Originally published in serial form during the winter of 1834–1835, Le Père Goriot is widely considered Balzac's most important novel. It marks the first serious use by the author of characters who had appeared in other books, a technique that distinguishes Balzac's fiction. The novel is also noted as an example of his realist style, using minute details to create character and subtext . The novel takes place during

3400-418: A near-fatal accident in 1832 (he slipped and cracked his head on the street), Balzac decided not to stand for election. 1831 saw the success of La Peau de chagrin ( The Wild Ass's Skin or The Magic Skin ), a fable-like tale about a despondent young man named Raphaël de Valentin who finds an animal skin which promises great power and wealth. He obtains these things, but loses the ability to manage them. In

3536-480: A panorama of post-Napoleonic French life, is generally viewed as his magnum opus . Owing to his keen observation of detail and unfiltered representation of society, Balzac is regarded as one of the founders of realism in European literature . He is renowned for his multi-faceted characters; even his lesser characters are complex, morally ambiguous and fully human. Inanimate objects are imbued with character as well;

3672-518: A person willing to climb the social ladder at any cost. Another well known line of this book by Balzac is when Vautrin tells Eugene, "In that case I will make you an offer that no one would decline." This has been reworked by Mario Puzo in the novel The Godfather (1969) and its film adaptation (1972); "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse". It was ranked as the second most significant cinematic quote in AFI's 100 Years...100 Movie Quotes (2005) by

3808-411: A quill, were composed at a pace equal to thirty words per minute on a modern typewriter. His preferred method was to eat a light meal at five or six in the afternoon, then sleep until midnight. He then rose and wrote for many hours, fueled by innumerable cups of black coffee. He often worked for fifteen hours or more at a stretch; he claimed to have once worked for 48 hours with only three hours of rest in

3944-476: A result, he was frequently sent to the "alcove", a punishment cell reserved for disobedient students. (The janitor at the school, when asked later if he remembered Honoré, replied: "Remember M. Balzac? I should think I do! I had the honour of escorting him to the dungeon more than a hundred times!") Still, his time alone gave the boy ample freedom to read every book which came his way. Balzac worked these scenes from his boyhood—as he did many aspects of his life and

4080-413: A son (unlikely, seeing as it is made very clear that he has never had any interest in women) and includes his death at the hands of a forger. Vautrin's later life story is not considered canon . Vautrin is a seductive, enigmatic and complex character, not easily classified, not even as a villain. He is a well-built, strong man, about forty years old at the time he first appears in the series. Vautrin has

4216-509: A strong criminal energy and is ruthless in obtaining his purposes, manipulating people and sometimes resorting to murder. He tries to realize his dreams of power and wealth through Eugène de Rastignac and later through Lucien de Rubempré . In some respects, Vautrin/Collin/Abbé Herrera recalls the tempting devils in "pact with the devil" themes like Faust . He promises both young men fame, power and wealth and proposes to become their mentor. Yet, Vautrin's plans with them are thwarted: Rastignac

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4352-409: A tool of power reflects the harsh reality of the unstable social structures of the time. Parents, meanwhile, give endlessly to their children; Goriot sacrifices everything for his daughters. Balzac refers to him in the novel as the "Christ of paternity" for his constant suffering on behalf of his children. That they abandon him, lost in their pursuit of social status, only adds to his misery. The end of

4488-452: A treatise on "the means of preventing thefts and murders, and of restoring the men who commit them to a useful role in society", in which he heaped disdain on prison as a form of crime prevention.) In 1814 the Balzac family moved to Paris, and Honoré was sent to private tutors and schools for the next two and a half years. This was an unhappy time in his life, during which he attempted suicide on

4624-433: A woman interests herself in you; and she must be young and wealthy, and a woman of the world. Yet, if you have a heart, lock it carefully away like a treasure; do not let any one suspect it, or you will be lost; you would cease to be the executioner, you would take the victim's place. And if ever you should love, never let your secret escape you! This attitude is further explored by Vautrin, who tells Rastignac: "The secret of

4760-553: A writer, he attempted to be a publisher, printer, businessman, critic, and politician; he failed in all of these efforts. La Comédie humaine reflects his real-life difficulties, and includes scenes from his own experience. Balzac suffered from health problems throughout his life, possibly owing to his intense writing schedule. His relationship with his family was often strained by financial and personal drama, and he lost more than one friend over critical reviews. In 1850, Balzac married Ewelina Hańska ( née   Contessa Rzewuska ),

4896-487: A young poet trying to make a name for himself, who becomes trapped in the morass of society's darkest contradictions. Lucien's journalistic work is informed by Balzac's own failed ventures in the field. Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes ( The Harlot High and Low , 1847) continues Lucien's story. He is trapped by the Abbé Herrera ( Vautrin ) in a convoluted and disastrous plan to regain social status. The book undergoes

5032-467: Is Jacques Collin. He gives them a drug that will knock Vautrin unconscious, so they can search on his shoulders for the branded letters T.F., which stand for "Travaux [forcés]" and "Faussaire" ("hard labor" and "forger"). The plan works and Collin is arrested and imprisoned in Rochefort . Later, it is revealed that Collin escapes prison disguised as a guard escorting another prisoner. Some years later, in

5168-411: Is blocked only by her brother. He offers to clear the way for Rastignac by having the brother killed in a duel . Rastignac refuses to go along with the plot, balking at the idea of having someone killed to acquire his wealth, but he takes note of Vautrin's machinations. This is a lesson in the harsh realities of high society. Before long, the boarders learn that police are seeking Vautrin, revealed to be

5304-616: Is commemorated on 16 May, four days before Balzac's birthday) was actually the second child born to the Balzacs; exactly one year earlier, Louis-Daniel had been born, but he lived for only a month. Honoré's sisters Laure and Laurence were born in 1800 and 1802, and his younger brother Henry-François in 1807. As an infant Balzac was sent to a wet nurse ; the following year he was joined by his sister Laure and they spent four years away from home. (Although Genevan philosopher Jean-Jacques Rousseau 's influential book Émile convinced many mothers of

5440-413: Is dying in extreme poverty, at the end of the book, he sells his few remaining possessions to provide for his daughters so that they might look splendid at a ball. The relations between family members follow two patterns: the bonds of marriage serve mostly as Machiavellian means to financial ends, while the obligations of the older generation to the young take the form of sacrifice and deprivation. Delphine

5576-409: Is far too independent to need a mentor and Lucien is too dreamy, romantic and feeble to be able to realize Collin's dreams. Though Vautrin's attraction towards Rastignac and Lucien apparently remains platonic , it is also erotic/sentimental in character, especially in the case of Lucien. The fact that he is not only bound to them by his hunger for power but also by emotional ties considerably increases

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5712-553: Is in some ways more tragic, since "he has a Regan and a Goneril, but no Cordelia". The narrative of Goriot's painful relations with his children has also been interpreted as a tragicomic parable of Louis XVI's decline. At a crucial moment of filial sentiment in Balzac's novel, Vautrin breaks in singing "O Richard, O mon roi"—the royalist anthem that precipitated the October Days of 1789 and the eventual downfall of Louis XVI—a connection that would have been powerful to Balzac's readers in

5848-462: Is not discovered, money is missing from her house and Herrera and Lucien are arrested on suspicion of having killed her. The police suspect Herrera of being Collin but can't prove it. Collin, pretending that he is Lucien's true father to explain his affection for the young man, plays the role of the priest so admirably that the judge is nearly convinced. When Esther's suicide note and testament are found, Herrera's and Lucien's liberation seems to be only

5984-462: Is one of the novels of La Comédie humaine that can safely be read in English for what it is." Initial reviews of the book were mixed. Some reviewers accused Balzac of plagiarism or of overwhelming the reader with detail and painting a simplistic picture of Parisian high society. Others attacked the questionable morals of the characters, implying that Balzac was guilty of legitimizing their opinions. He

6120-510: Is reflective of the author's own life, a possible attempt to stabilize it through fiction. "The vanishing man", wrote Sir Victor Pritchett, "who must be pursued from the rue Cassini to ...  Versailles , Ville d'Avray , Italy, and Vienna can construct a settled dwelling only in his work". Balzac's extensive use of detail, especially the detail of objects, to illustrate the lives of his characters made him an early pioneer of literary realism . While he admired and drew inspiration from

6256-826: Is said that in Le Père Goriot, Paris becomes a character in the same way the city did in The Hunchback of Notre Dame and London becomes in Charles Dickens ' works. This is evident in Balzac's portrayal of the Parisian society as mercilessly stratified, corrupt, amoral, and money-obsessed. In addition, the protagonists living in its quarters were presented in perfect harmony with their environment. Rastignac, Vautrin, and Goriot represent individuals corrupted by their desires. In his thirst for advancement, Rastignac has been compared to Faust , with Vautrin as Mephistopheles . Critic Pierre Barbéris calls Vautrin's lecture to Rastignac "one of

6392-448: Is trapped in a loveless marriage to Baron de Nucingen, a money-savvy banker. He is aware of her extramarital affairs, and uses them as a means to extort money from her. Anastasie, meanwhile, is married to the comte de Restaud, who cares less about the illegitimate children she has than the jewels she sells to provide for her lover – who is conning her in a scheme that Rastignac has heard was popular in Paris. This depiction of marriage as

6528-523: Is very adept at repairing locks. However, the police are on his tracks: The chief of the Sûreté , one Bibi-Lupin, under the name of Gondureau, confronts two other inhabitants of the House Vauquer, telling them that Vautrin is really the escaped convict Jacques Collin, who functions as a banker and a confidant to the Parisian underworld. Bibi-Lupin asks them to help arrest Vautrin but they need proof that he really

6664-467: The American Film Institute . Honor%C3%A9 de Balzac Honoré de Balzac ( / ˈ b æ l z æ k / BAL -zak , more commonly US : / ˈ b ɔː l -/ BAWL - ; French: [ɔnɔʁe d(ə) balzak] ; born Honoré Balzac ; 20 May 1799 – 18 August 1850) was a French novelist and playwright. The novel sequence La Comédie humaine , which presents

6800-513: The Bourbon Restoration , which brought profound changes to French society; the struggle by individuals to secure a higher social status is a major theme in the book. The city of Paris also impresses itself on the characters – especially young Rastignac, who grew up in the provinces of southern France. Balzac analyzes, through Goriot and others, the nature of family and marriage, providing a pessimistic view of these institutions. The novel

6936-457: The Catholic Church . In the preface to La Comédie humaine he wrote: "Christianity, above all, Catholicism, being ... a complete system for the repression of the depraved tendencies of man, is the most powerful element of social order". In the late 1820s Balzac dabbled in several business ventures, a penchant his sister blamed on the temptation of an unknown neighbour. His first enterprise

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7072-536: The Industrial Revolution . In this period, France saw a tightening of social structures, with a lower class burdened with overwhelming poverty. By one estimate, almost three-quarters of Parisians did not make the 500–600 francs a year necessary for a minimal standard of living. At the same time, this upheaval made possible a social mobility unthinkable during the Ancien Régime . Individuals willing to adapt to

7208-575: The King's Council and a Freemason (he had also changed his name to the more noble sounding "Balzac", his son later adding—without official recognition—the nobiliary particle : " de "). After the Reign of Terror (1793–94), François Balzac was despatched to Tours to coordinate supplies for the Army . Balzac's mother, born Anne-Charlotte-Laure Sallambier, came from a family of haberdashers in Paris. Her family's wealth

7344-551: The La Comédie humaine series using the name of Vautrin, so he is usually referred to in literary criticism under this name. Balzac was inspired to the character by Eugène François Vidocq (1775–1857) a former criminal who later became chief of the Paris police. Little is known about Collin's early life. From the novels it can be gathered that was born in or around 1779, had an above-average education and that he worked as an apprentice in

7480-501: The Romantic style of Scottish novelist Walter Scott, Balzac sought to depict human existence through the use of particulars. In the preface to the first edition of Scènes de la Vie privée , he wrote: "the author firmly believes that details alone will henceforth determine the merit of works". Plentiful descriptions of décor, clothing, and possessions help breathe life into the characters. For example, Balzac's friend Henri de Latouche had

7616-420: The chateau is a museum dedicated to the author's life. In 1833, as he revealed in a letter to his sister, Balzac entered into an illicit affair with fellow writer Maria Du Fresnay, who was then aged 24. Her marriage to a considerably older man (Charles du Fresnay, Mayor of Sartrouville ) had been a failure from the outset. In this letter, Balzac also reveals that the young woman had just come to tell him she

7752-438: The social Darwinism of this society. In one particularly blunt speech, Madame de Beauséant tells Rastignac: The more cold-blooded your calculations, the further you will go. Strike ruthlessly; you will be feared. Men and women for you must be nothing more than post-horses; take a fresh relay, and leave the last to drop by the roadside; in this way you will reach the goal of your ambition. You will be nothing here, you see, unless

7888-437: The 1830s. An ill-founded faith in paternal legitimacy follows both Goriot and Louis XVI into the grave. Rastignac's family, off-stage, also sacrifices extensively for him. Convinced that he cannot achieve a decent status in Paris without a considerable display of wealth, he writes to his family and asks them to send him money: "Sell some of your old jewelry, my kind mother; I will give you other jewels very soon." They do send him

8024-552: The Balzac Monument has stood since 1939 nearby the intersection of Boulevard Raspail and Boulevard Montparnasse at Place Pablo-Picasso. Rodin featured Balzac in several of his smaller sculptures as well. The Comédie humaine remained unfinished at the time of his death—Balzac had plans to include numerous other books, most of which he never started. He frequently flitted between works in progress . "Finished articles" were frequently revised between editions. This piecemeal style

8160-637: The French social order in short succession: the French Revolution , which led to the First Republic ; Napoleon's rise, the fall and the return of the House of Bourbon. Le Père Goriot begins in June 1819, four years after Napoleon 's defeat at Waterloo and the Bourbon Restoration . It depicts the mounting tension between the aristocracy , which had returned with King Louis XVIII , and the bourgeoisie produced by

8296-482: The Maison Vauquer, a boarding house in Paris' rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève covered with vines, owned by the widow Madame Vauquer. The residents include the law student Eugène de Rastignac, a mysterious agitator named Vautrin, and an elderly retired vermicelli -maker named Jean-Joachim Goriot. The old man is ridiculed frequently by the other boarders, who soon learn that he has bankrupted himself to support his two well-married daughters. Rastignac, who moved to Paris from

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8432-435: The actions of all three characters within the pages of Le Père Goriot , complementing the evolution of their stories in the later novel. Balzac uses meticulous, abundant detail to describe the Maison Vauquer, its inhabitants, and the world around them; this technique gave rise to his title as the father of the realist novel . The details focus mostly on the penury of the residents of the Maison Vauquer. Much less intricate are

8568-427: The author to write short stories, which Le Poitevin would then sell to publishers. Balzac quickly turned to longer works, and by 1826 he had written nine novels, all published under pseudonyms and often produced in collaboration with other writers. For example, the scandalous novel Vicaire des Ardennes (1822)—banned for its depiction of nearly-incestuous relations and, more egregiously, of a married priest—attributed to

8704-767: The book contrasts Goriot's deathbed moments with a festive ball hosted by Madame de Beauséant – attended by his daughters, as well as Rastignac – suggesting a fundamental schism between society and the family. The betrayal of Goriot's daughters is often compared to that of the characters in Shakespeare's King Lear ; Balzac was even accused of plagiarism when the novel was first published. Discussing these similarities, critic George Saintsbury claims that Goriot's daughters are "as surely murderesses of their father as [Lear's daughters] Goneril and Regan". As Herbert J. Hunt points out in Balzac's Comédie humaine , however, Goriot's tale

8840-407: The book's publication – sustained its popularity and increased the public's regard for Balzac. In the 20th century, a number of film versions were produced, including adaptations directed by Travers Vale ( 1915 ), Jacques de Baroncelli (1922), and Paddy Russell (1968). The name of Rastignac, meanwhile, has become an iconic sobriquet in the French language; a " Rastignac " is synonymous with

8976-506: The bourgeois title character) are dynamic and complex. It is followed by La Duchesse de Langeais , arguably the most sublime of his novels. Le Père Goriot ( Old Father Goriot , 1835) was his next success, in which Balzac transposes the story of King Lear to 1820s Paris in order to rage at a society bereft of all love save the love of money. The centrality of a father in this novel matches Balzac's own position—not only as mentor to his troubled young secretary, Jules Sandeau, but also

9112-410: The ceremony took a toll on both husband and wife: her feet were too swollen to walk, and he endured severe heart trouble. Although he married late in life, Balzac had already written two treatises on marriage: Physiologie du Mariage and Scènes de la Vie Conjugale . These works lacked firsthand knowledge; Saintsbury points out that "cœlebs cannot talk of [marriage] with much authority". In late April

9248-849: The chance to pursue their affections. A rival of the Hungarian composer Franz Liszt , Balzac visited Countess Hańska in Saint Petersburg in 1843 and won her heart. After a series of financial setbacks, health problems and objections from Tsar Nicholas I , the couple finally received permission to wed. On 14 March 1850, with Balzac's health in serious decline, they travelled by carriage from her family seat at Verhivnya Park in Volhynia to St. Barbara's Catholic Church in Berdychiv (Russia's former banking city in present-day Ukraine), where they were married by Abbot Ożarowski. The ten-hour journey to and from

9384-494: The characters. Detective novelist Arthur Conan Doyle said that he never tried to read Balzac, because he "did not know where to begin". This pattern of character reuse had repercussions for the plot of Le Père Goriot . Baron de Nucingen's reappearance in La Maison Nucingen (1837) reveals that his wife's love affair with Rastignac was planned and coordinated by the baron himself. This new detail sheds considerable light on

9520-413: The city of Paris, a backdrop for much of his writing, takes on many human qualities. His writing influenced many famous writers, including the novelists Émile Zola , Charles Dickens , Marcel Proust , Gustave Flaubert , and Henry James , and filmmakers François Truffaut and Jacques Rivette . Many of Balzac's works have been made into films and continue to inspire other writers. James called him "really

9656-560: The collapse of his businesses, Balzac traveled to Brittany and stayed with the De Pommereul family outside Fougères . There he drew inspiration for Les Chouans (1829), a tale of love gone wrong amid the Chouan royalist forces. Although he was a supporter of the Crown , Balzac paints the revolutionaries in a sympathetic light—even though they are the center of the book's most brutal scenes. This

9792-460: The completion of this pair of books a significant accomplishment. Many of his novels were initially serialized, like those of Dickens . Their length was not predetermined. Illusions Perdues extends to a thousand pages after starting inauspiciously in a small-town print shop, whereas La Fille aux yeux d'or ( The Girl with the Golden Eyes , 1835) opens with a broad panorama of Paris but becomes

9928-561: The decision was also significant; as Robb explained: "The disappearance of the father coincides with the adoption of the nobiliary particle. A symbolic inheritance." Just as his father had worked his way up from poverty into respectable society, Balzac considered toil and effort his real mark of nobility. When the July Revolution overthrew Charles X in 1830, Balzac declared himself a Legitimist , supporting King Charles' Royal House of Bourbon , but not without qualifications. He felt that

10064-513: The descriptions of wealthier homes; Madame de Beauséant's rooms are given scant attention, and the Nucingen family lives in a house sketched in the briefest detail. At the start of the novel, Balzac declares (in English): "All is true". Although the characters and situations are fictions, the details employed – and their reflection of the realities of life in Paris at the time – faithfully render

10200-483: The editor of the Norton Critical Edition, Peter Brooks, the book is now seen as "the most endurably popular of Balzac's myriad works" and a "classic of the 19th-century European novel ", somewhat ironically in light of the reviews and Balzac's reputation in his own time. In the years following its release, the novel was often adapted for the stage. Two theatrical productions in 1835 – several months after

10336-408: The effect he achieved with the return of Rastignac, Balzac included 23 characters in the first edition of Le Père Goriot that would recur in later works; during his revisions for later editions the number increased to 48. Although Balzac had used this technique before, the characters had always reappeared in minor roles, as nearly identical versions of the same people. Rastignac's appearance shows, for

10472-420: The end, his health fails and he is consumed by his own confusion. Balzac meant the story to bear witness to the treacherous turns of life, its "serpentine motion". In 1833 Balzac released Eugénie Grandet , his first best-seller. The tale of a young lady who inherits her father's miserliness, it also became the most critically acclaimed book of his career. The writing is simple, yet the individuals (especially

10608-468: The fact that he had fathered a child, Marie-Caroline Du Fresnay , with his otherwise-married lover, Maria Du Fresnay , who had been his source of inspiration for Eugénie Grandet . In 1836 Balzac took the helm of the Chronique de Paris , a weekly magazine of society and politics. He tried to enforce strict impartiality in its pages and a reasoned assessment of various ideologies. As Rogers notes, "Balzac

10744-512: The father of the naturalist novel . Zola indicated that whilst the Romantics saw the world through a colored lens, the naturalist sees through a clear glass—precisely the sort of effect Balzac attempted to achieve in his works. Vautrin By the time the Comédie humaine series begins, Jacques Collin is an escaped convict and criminal mastermind fleeing from the police. The character first appears in

10880-471: The father of us all." An enthusiastic reader and independent thinker as a child, Balzac had trouble adapting to the teaching style of his grammar school. His willful nature caused trouble throughout his life and frustrated his ambitions to succeed in the world of business. When he finished school, Balzac was apprenticed in a law office , but he turned his back on the study of law after wearying of its inhumanity and banal routine. Before and during his career as

11016-419: The first book edition , the novel was divided into seven chapters : The character Eugène de Rastignac had appeared as an old man in Balzac's earlier philosophical fantasy novel La Peau de chagrin . While writing the first draft of Le Père Goriot , Balzac named the character "Massiac", but he decided to use the same character from La Peau de chagrin . Other characters were changed in a similar fashion. It

11152-472: The first novel that includes him takes place. In Father Goriot , set in late 1818/early 1819 (or 1819/1820 when later novels refer to the events), Collin lived under the name of Vautrin in the House Vauquer after an escape from the Bagne of Toulon in 1815. He is described as a cynical man, who likes to crack jokes, speaks rather intimately with everyone, and seems to know everything and have been everywhere. He also

11288-422: The first time in Balzac's fiction, a novel-length backstory that illuminates and develops a returning character. Balzac experimented with this method throughout the thirty years he worked on La Comédie humaine . It enabled a depth of characterization that went beyond simple narration or dialogue. "When the characters reappear", notes the critic Samuel Rogers , "they do not step out of nowhere; they emerge from

11424-439: The five-act verse tragedy Cromwell . Although it pales by comparison with his later works, some critics consider it a good-quality text. When he finished, Balzac went to Villeparisis and read the entire work to his family; they were unimpressed. He followed this effort by starting (but never finishing) three novels: Sténie , Falthurne , and Corsino . In 1821 Balzac met the enterprising Auguste Le Poitevin , who convinced

11560-558: The funeral, send their empty coaches, each bearing their families' respective coat of arms. After the short ceremony, Rastignac turns to face Paris as the lights of evening begin to appear. He sets out to dine with Delphine, and declares to the city: "À nous deux, maintenant!" ("It's between you and me now!") Balzac's style in Le Père Goriot is influenced by the American novelist James Fenimore Cooper and Scottish writer Walter Scott . In Cooper's representations of Native Americans, Balzac saw

11696-444: The great moments of the Comédie humaine , and no doubt of all world literature". France's social upheaval provides Vautrin with a playground for an ideology based solely on personal advancement; he encourages Rastignac to follow suit. Still, it is the larger social structure that finally overwhelms Rastignac's soul – Vautrin merely explains the methods and causes. Although he rejects Vautrin's offer of murder, Rastignac succumbs to

11832-465: The grindstone, doing the same thing over and over again.... I am hungry and nothing is offered to appease my appetite". He announced his intention to become a writer. The loss of this opportunity caused serious discord in the Balzac household, although Honoré was not turned away entirely. Instead, in April 1819 he was allowed to live in the French capital—as English critic George Saintsbury describes it—"in

11968-436: The headmaster to contact his family with news of a "sort of a coma". When he returned home, his grandmother said: " Voilà donc comme le collège nous renvoie les jolis que nous lui envoyons! " ("Look how the academy returns the pretty ones we send them!") Balzac himself attributed his condition to "intellectual congestion", but his extended confinement in the "alcove" was surely a factor. (Meanwhile, his father had been writing

12104-499: The hideous wrangling of heirs over corpses not yet cold, the human heart grappling with the Penal Code". In 1819 Passez offered to make Balzac his successor, but his apprentice had had enough of the Law. He despaired of being "a clerk, a machine, a riding-school hack, eating and drinking and sleeping at fixed hours. I should be like everyone else. And that's what they call living, that life at

12240-551: The hopes of reprocessing the slag from the Roman mines there. Near the end of his life Balzac was captivated by the idea of cutting 20,000 acres (81 km ) of oak wood in Ukraine and transporting it for sale in France. After writing several novels, in 1832 Balzac conceived the idea for an enormous series of books that would paint a panoramic portrait of "all aspects of society". The moment

12376-493: The idea came to him, Balzac raced to his sister's apartment and proclaimed: "I am about to become a genius!" Although he originally called it Etudes des Mœurs (literally 'Studies of manners', or 'The Ways of the World') it eventually became known as La Comédie humaine , and he included in it all the fiction that he had published in his lifetime under his own name. This was to be Balzac's life work and his greatest achievement. After

12512-466: The law, he pursues money and women as instruments for social climbing. In some ways this mirrors Balzac's own social education, reflecting the distaste he acquired for the law after studying it for three years. Le Père Goriot , especially in its revised form, marks an important early instance of Balzac's trademark use of recurring characters: persons from earlier novels appear in later works, usually during significantly different times of life. Pleased with

12648-547: The lives of those around him—into La Comédie humaine . His time at Vendôme is reflected in Louis Lambert , his 1832 novel about a young boy studying at an Oratorian grammar school at Vendôme. The narrator says : "He devoured books of every kind, feeding indiscriminately on religious works, history and literature, philosophy and physics. He had told me that he found indescribable delight in reading dictionaries for lack of other books." Balzac often fell ill, finally causing

12784-516: The man of talent; a nation in mourning for a man of genius". The funeral was attended by "almost every writer in Paris", including Frédérick Lemaître , Gustave Courbet , Dumas père and Dumas fils , as well as representatives of the Légion d'honneur and other dignitaries. Later, a statue (called the Monument to Balzac ) was created by the celebrated French sculptor Auguste Rodin . Cast in bronze,

12920-452: The men, La Pouraille, also has no hopes of escaping the death sentence. Calvi was Vautrin's lover in Rochefort and the two escaped together. Collin uses his ingenuity to twist the facts and prove Calvi innocent (even though Calvi is in fact guilty) and saves La Pouraille too. This involves giving himself up: like his historical model Eugène François Vidocq he offers to serve as an informer to

13056-492: The middle. Balzac revised obsessively, covering printer's proofs with changes and additions to be reset. He sometimes repeated this process during the publication of a book, causing significant expense both for himself and the publisher. As a result, the finished product quite often was different from the original text. Although some of his books never reached completion, some—such as Les employés ( The Government Clerks , 1841)—are nonetheless noted by critics. Although Balzac

13192-770: The money he requests, and – although it is not described directly in the novel – endure significant hardship for themselves as a result. His family, absent while he is in Paris, becomes even more distant despite this sacrifice. Although Goriot and Vautrin offer themselves as father figures to him, by the end of the novel they are gone and he is alone. Le Père Goriot is widely considered Balzac's essential novel. Its influence on French literature has been considerable, as shown by novelist Félicien Marceau 's remark: "We are all children of Le Père Goriot ." Brooks refers to its "perfection of form, its economy of means and ends". Martin Kanes, meanwhile, in his book Le Pére Goriot: Anatomy of

13328-619: The new July Monarchy (which claimed widespread popular support) was disorganized and unprincipled, in need of a mediator to keep the political peace between the King and insurgent forces. He called for "a young and vigorous man who belongs neither to the Directoire nor to the Empire, but who is 1830 incarnate...." He planned to be such a candidate , appealing especially to the higher classes in Chinon . But after

13464-467: The newly upscale quarter of the rue de la Chaussée-d'Antin , and the run-down area on the eastern slope of the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève . These quartiers of the city serve as microcosms which Rastignac seeks to master; Vautrin, meanwhile, operates in stealth, moving among them undetected. Rastignac, as the naive young man from the country, seeks in these worlds a new home. Paris offers him

13600-550: The newly-weds set off for Paris. His health deteriorated on the way, and Ewelina wrote to her daughter about Balzac being "in a state of extreme weakness" and "sweating profusely". They arrived in the French capital on 20 May, his fifty-first birthday. Five months after his wedding, on Sunday, 18 August 1850, Balzac died of gangrene associated with congestive heart failure , in the presence of his mother—his wife, Eve de Balzac (formerly Countess Hańska) had gone to bed. He had been visited that day by Victor Hugo, who later served as

13736-522: The novel Illusions Perdues , one Abbé Carlos Herrera stops Lucien de Rubempré from drowning himself in the Charente . He strikes a pact with Lucien: He will make him rich and successful but Lucien has to obey him without questions. The novel ends there. In Splendeurs et misères de courtisanes , beginning in 1824, Herrera and Lucien have moved to Paris. Here we quickly learn that Herrera is really Collin. Lucien falls in love with one Esther Gobseck and they lead

13872-567: The novel, and without the habit he formed as a young man of writing under pressure, one can hardly imagine his producing La Comédie humaine ". Biographer Graham Robb suggests that as he discovered the Novel, Balzac discovered himself. During this time Balzac wrote two pamphlets in support of primogeniture and the Society of Jesus . The latter, regarding the Jesuits , illustrated his lifelong admiration for

14008-401: The novels in them were his attempt to create a body of work "depicting all society, sketching it in the immensity of its turmoil". Although he had prepared only a small predecessor for La Comédie humaine , entitled Études de Mœurs , at this time, Balzac carefully considered each work's place in the project and frequently rearranged its structure. The novel opens with an extended description of

14144-450: The official records of homosexuals once maintained by the Paris police were finally released, his name was found listed. In February 1832 Balzac received an intriguing letter from Odessa —with no return address and signed simply " L'Étrangère " ("The Foreigner")—expressing sadness at the cynicism and atheism in La Peau de Chagrin and its negative portrayal of women. His response was to place

14280-448: The old man is overcome with grief at his own impotence and suffers a stroke. Delphine does not visit Goriot as he lies on his deathbed, and Anastasie arrives too late, only once he has lost consciousness. Before dying, Goriot rages about their disrespect toward him. His funeral is attended only by Rastignac, a medical student named Bianchon, a servant named Christophe, and two paid mourners . Goriot's daughters, rather than being present at

14416-560: The plot: "Subject of Old Goriot – A good man – middle-class lodging-house – 600 fr. income – having stripped himself bare for his daughters who both have 50,000 fr. income – dying like a dog." He wrote the first draft of Le Père Goriot in forty autumn days; it was published as a serial in the Revue de Paris between December and February. It was released as a stand-alone volume in March 1835 by Edmond Werdet , who also published

14552-556: The principles of brutality upon which high society is built. By the end of the novel, he tells Bianchon: "I'm in Hell, and I have no choice but to stay there." While Rastignac desires wealth and social status, Goriot longs only for the love of his daughters: a longing that borders on idolatry . Because he represents bourgeois wealth acquired through trade – and not aristocratic primitive accumulation  – his daughters are happy to take his money, but will see him only in private. Even as he

14688-402: The privacy of their own lives which, for an interval, we have not been allowed to see." Although the complexity of these characters' lives inevitably led Balzac to make errors of chronology and consistency, the mistakes are considered minor in the overall scope of the project. Readers are more often troubled by the sheer number of people in Balzac's world, and feel deprived of important context for

14824-623: The prosecutor. After he manages to treat the madness of one of Lucien's former mistresses (she became mad after learning about Lucien's death, as her last talk with Lucien was a row) with one of Lucien's love letters to her, his offer is accepted. A small note informs us that Collin remained chief of the Sûreté for fifteen years and retired in 1845. Charles Rabou , who finished the novel The Deputy of Arcis  [ fr ] after Balzac's death, included Vautrin in this story. However, his Vautrin loses most of his former genius. The novel gives Vautrin

14960-430: The psychological tension of the novels and makes Collin's character more humane. Though he can often act as a real villain , his love, especially for Lucien, is obviously genuine, seeing the way he breaks down when informed of his death. Love even makes him sacrifice himself: he was first condemned to five years hard labour for a fake that a young "friend" (Franchessini) of his committed and for which Vautrin, even though he

15096-405: The rules of this new society could sometimes ascend into its upper echelons from modest backgrounds, much to the distaste of the established wealthy class. When Balzac began writing Le Père Goriot in 1834, he had written several dozen books, including a stream of pseudonymously published potboiler novels. In 1829 he published Les Chouans , the first novel to which he signed his own name; this

15232-426: The second edition in May. A revised third edition was published in 1839 by Charpentier. As was his custom, Balzac made copious notes and changes on proofs he received from publishers, so that the later editions of his novels were often significantly different from the earliest. In the case of Le Père Goriot , he changed a number of the characters into persons from other novels he had written, and added new passages. In

15368-450: The second he would not have been at home there.... [H]e felt it was his business not to frequent society but to create it". However, he often spent long periods at the Château de Saché , near Tours , the home of his friend Jean de Margonne, his mother's lover and father to her youngest child. Many of Balzac's tormented characters were conceived in the chateau's small second-floor bedroom. Today

15504-406: The south of France, becomes attracted to the upper class. He has difficulty fitting in, but is tutored by his cousin, Madame de Beauséant, in the ways of high society. Rastignac endears himself to one of Goriot's daughters, Delphine, after extracting money from his own already-poor family. Vautrin, meanwhile, tries to convince Rastignac to pursue an unmarried woman named Victorine, whose family fortune

15640-587: The spirit of the past". At the same time, Balzac accused the Scottish writer of romanticizing history, and tried to distinguish his own work with a more balanced view of human nature. Although the novel is often referred to as "a mystery", it is not an example of whodunit or detective fiction . Instead, the central puzzles are the origins of suffering and the motivations of unusual behavior. Characters appear in fragments, with brief scenes providing small clues about their identity. Vautrin, for example, slips in and out of

15776-408: The story – offering advice to Rastignac, ridiculing Goriot, bribing the housekeeper Christophe to let him in after hours – before he is revealed as a master criminal. This pattern of people moving in and out of view mirrors Balzac's use of characters throughout La Comédie humaine . Le Père Goriot is also recognized as a bildungsroman , wherein a naive young person matures while learning

15912-406: The time to nurse their own children, sending babies to wet nurses was still common among the middle and upper classes.) When the Balzac children returned home, they were kept at a frosty distance from their parents, which affected the author-to-be significantly. His 1835 novel Le Lys dans la vallée features a cruel governess named Miss Caroline, modeled after his own caregiver. At age ten Balzac

16048-465: The time. Traveling only a few blocks – as Rastignac does continually – takes the reader into vastly different worlds, distinguished by their architecture and reflecting the class of their inhabitants. Paris in the post-Napoleonic era was split into distinct neighborhoods. Three of these are featured prominently in Le Père Goriot : the aristocratic area of the Faubourg Saint-Germain ,

16184-411: The ways of the world. Rastignac is tutored by Vautrin, Madame de Beauséant, Goriot, and others about the truth of Parisian society and the coldly dispassionate and brutally realistic strategies required for social success. As an everyman , he is initially repulsed by the gruesome realities beneath society's gilded surfaces; eventually, however, he embraces them. Setting aside his original goal of mastering

16320-455: The winter of 1828–29, a French grifter -turned-policeman named Eugène François Vidocq published a pair of sensationalized memoirs recounting his criminal exploits. Balzac met Vidocq in April 1834, and used him as a model for a character named Vautrin he was planning for an upcoming novel. In the summer of 1834 Balzac began to work on a tragic story about a father who is rejected by his daughters. His journal records several undated lines about

16456-448: The world of the Maison Vauquer. The rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève (where the house is located) presents "a grim look about the houses, a suggestion of a jail about those high garden walls". The interiors of the house are painstakingly described, from the shabby sitting room ("Nothing can be more depressing") to the coverings on the walls depicting a feast ("papers that a little suburban tavern would have disdained") – an ironic decoration in

16592-433: Was "by turns a hermit and a vagrant", he managed to stay in tune with the social spheres which nourished his writing. He was friends with Théophile Gautier and Pierre-Marie-Charles de Bernard du Grail de la Villette , and he was acquainted with Victor Hugo . Nevertheless, he did not spend as much time in salons and clubs of Paris like many of his characters. "In the first place he was too busy", explains Saintsbury, "in

16728-415: Was 30 years old at the time). This was the first work signed "Honoré de Balzac". He followed his father in the surname Balzac but added the aristocratic-sounding nobiliary particle to help him fit into respected society, a choice based on skill rather than by right. "The aristocracy and authority of talent are more substantial than the aristocracy of names and material power", he wrote in 1830. The timing of

16864-451: Was a considerable factor in the match: she was eighteen at the time of the wedding, and François Balzac fifty. As the author and literary critic Sir Victor Pritchett explained, "She was certainly drily aware that she had been given to an old husband as a reward for his professional services to a friend of her family and that the capital was on her side. She was not in love with her husband". Honoré (named after Saint-Honoré of Amiens , who

17000-430: Was also a profound influence on Balzac, particularly in his use of real historical events as the backdrop for his novels. Although history is not central to Le Père Goriot , the post-Napoleonic era serves as an important setting, and Balzac's use of meticulous detail reflects the influence of Scott. In his 1842 introduction to La Comédie humaine , Balzac praises Scott as a "modern troubadour" who "vivified [literature] with

17136-527: Was condemned for not including more individuals of honorable intent in the book. Balzac responded with disdain; in the second preface of 1835, he wrote with regard to Goriot: "Poor man! His daughters refused to recognize him because he had lost his fortune; now the critics have rejected him with the excuse that he was immoral." Many critics of the time, though, were positive: a review in Le Journal des femmes proclaimed that Balzac's eye "penetrates everywhere, like

17272-427: Was extremely proud of the work, declaring even before the final installment was published: " Le Père Goriot is a raging success; my fiercest enemies have had to bend the knee. I have triumphed over everything, over friends as well as the envious." As was his custom, he revised the novel between editions; compared to other novels, however, Le Père Goriot remained largely unchanged from its initial version. According to

17408-409: Was followed by Louis Lambert (1832), Le Colonel Chabert (1832), and La Peau de chagrin (1831). Around this time, Balzac began organizing his work into a sequence of novels that he eventually called La Comédie humaine , divided into sections representing various aspects of life in France during the early 19th century. One of these aspects which fascinated Balzac was the life of crime. In

17544-473: Was his first structured use of recurring characters, a practice whose depth and rigor came to characterize his novels. In 1843 Balzac placed Le Père Goriot in the section of La Comédie humaine entitled "Scènes de la vie parisienne" ("Scenes of life in Paris"). Quickly thereafter, he reclassified it – due to its intense focus on the private lives of its characters – as one of the "Scènes de la vie privée" ("Scenes of private life"). These categories and

17680-503: Was in publishing which turned out cheap one-volume editions of French classics including the works of Molière . This business failed miserably, with many of the books "sold as waste paper". Balzac had better luck publishing the Memoirs of the Duchess of Abrantès , with whom he also had a love affair. Balzac borrowed money from his family and friends and tried to build a printing business, then

17816-599: Was interested in any social, political, or economic theory, whether from the right or the left." The magazine failed, but in July 1840 he founded another publication, the Revue Parisienne . It produced three issues. These dismal business efforts—and his misadventures in Sardinia—provided an appropriate milieu in which to set the two-volume Illusions perdues ( Lost Illusions , 1843). The novel concerns Lucien de Rubempré,

17952-442: Was persuaded by his father to follow him into the Law; after a stint in the office of the avoué Jean-Baptiste Guillonnet-Merville for three years he trained and worked at the office of the notary Édouard-Victor Passez, a family friend. During this time Balzac began to understand the vagaries of human nature. In his 1840 novel Le Notaire , he wrote that a young person in the legal profession sees "the oily wheels of every fortune,

18088-448: Was pregnant with his child. In 1834, 8 months after the event, Maria Du Fresnay's daughter by Balzac, Marie-Caroline Du Fresnay, was born. This revelation from French journalist Roger Pierrot in 1955 confirmed what was already suspected by several historians: the dedicatee of the novel Eugénie Grandet , a certain "Maria", turns out to be Maria Du Fresnay herself. Balzac had also long been suspected of being attracted to males as well. When

18224-480: Was released to mixed reviews. Some critics praised the author for his complex characters and attention to detail; others condemned him for his many depictions of corruption and greed. A favorite of Balzac's, the book quickly won widespread popularity and has often been adapted for film and the stage. It gave rise to the French expression " Rastignac ", a social climber willing to use any means to better his situation. The novel draws on several historical events that shook

18360-513: Was sent to the Oratorian grammar school in Vendôme , where he studied for seven years. His father, seeking to instill the same hardscrabble work ethic which had gained him the esteem of society, intentionally gave little spending money to the boy. This made him the object of ridicule among his much wealthier schoolmates. Balzac had difficulty adapting to the rote style of learning at the school. As

18496-496: Was the first book Balzac released under his own name, and it gave him what one critic called "passage into the Promised Land". It established him as an author of note (even if its historical fiction-genre imitates that of Sir Walter Scott ) and provided him with a name outside his past pseudonyms. Soon afterwards, around the time of his father's death, Balzac wrote El Verdugo —about a 30-year-old man who kills his father (Balzac

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