Balzac designates Goriot "Pere," father, because the man devotes all he has to his two daughters. They define his amorphous existence, creating the sharp edge of poverty that he lives on in his old age. Though Goriot bestows upon the girls enormous dowries to ensure they are able to marry whomever they want and desires in return only love and a place in their homes, they deny him both. Nevertheless, he procures money for them whenever they plead for the sums their mercenary husbands refuse to grant them. Goriot is only too happy to suffer in miserable squalor if it adds to his daughters' comfort. One day, though, the debts become too much for him to bear. Goriot collapses into a fatal illness, and eventually dies, attended by neither of those whom he had loved so much.
Goriot's privation for the sake of his daughters forces him to live in a boardinghouse, along with varying examples of Parisian life in 1819. One fellow boarder, Eugene Rastignac, a poor law student from the country, befriends him when he discovers Goriot's daughters occupy the lofty sphere of society he desperately wants to inhabit. Eugene becomes increasingly enmeshed in their affairs, at the end burying Goriot when his daughters refuse to.
Eugene develops a profound respect for Goriot's unwavering affection toward his children, viewing him as the prototype of a father. Eugene is disgusted by the ignominious end the man comes to. "Great souls cannot stay long in this world. How, indeed, should noble feelings exist in harmony with a petty, paltry, and superficial society?" Eugene charges society with killing Goriot, finally declaring war on it to avenge the man's death.
Society, Parisian society certainly, with its values, may share some of the blame in the tragedy of Goriot. Materialism, hedonism, the unscrupulous clawing to the top of the heap - the world Goriot's girls inhabited did not triumph unselfish filial duty. But Goriot should have instilled in them the morals and beliefs that would have allowed them to stand tall amidst such pettiness. Giving them all they wanted was not loving them perfectly, not doing what was best for them. Permitting them to marry mercenaries directly contradicted the purpose of the large dowries. Scrambling to find money every time they asked for it only reinforced their remorseless greed.
Eugene refuses to accept the path society would have him take, declining to marry the young, naive heiress who adores him, but to whom he is indifferent. Instead, he aligns himself with Goriot's more compassionate, contrite daughter. As she is still married, it is not the most moral choice, but it is infinitely noble in his, and Balzac's, eyes. Why greed and disrespect for one's parents are sins in Balzac's world, but adultery is not, is unclear.
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I've always had the sense that the final sentence - that after making the declaration, Eugène would have dinner with mme de Nucingen - is ironic, only showing that no one is enough un-involved in society to really make war on it. I believe it's a final statement from Balzac, showing that his realistic vision of the world (people are always a result of the society they live in) prevails, though it would of course have been better if it hadn't. In this case the choice of mme Nucingen, for she is indeed a horrible person, does not have to be moral at all - only a beliveable result of the factors that add up to make Rastignac who he has become.
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