While wealth is one aspect of the allure of Parisian society, it’s not the only temptation that awaits a young, idealistic man from the provinces, like Rastignac. Rastignac comes from a hardworking background and arrives in Paris eager to launch a career that will let him distinguish himself and also support his struggling family. But he soon discovers that truly succeeding involves more than becoming a good lawyer—it also necessitates learning how to navigate a complex and demanding social world, which puts him, as an outsider, at an immediate disadvantage. Into his confusion steps Vautrin, a secret criminal who argues that the only way for Rastignac to realize his ambitions is to shun conventional morality, and who offers to help him achieve this through suspect means. Through the dynamic between the naïve Rastignac and the calculating Vautrin, Balzac argues that ambition makes people vulnerable to corruption, hinting that society is structured in such a way that those who refuse to be corrupted can’t achieve success.
Rastignac faces a steep learning curve when he attempts to enter Paris society and must skillfully navigate this social world in order to get ahead. Rastignac’s ambition is a product of his impoverished upbringing: He “was one of those young men trained by poverty for hard work, who […] from the start prepare for a successful career by working out the scope of their studies, adapting them in advance to future trends in society[.]” Rastignac is the hope of a large family living on a struggling country estate, and he arrives in Paris determined to start the most lucrative career he can find not just for his own sake, but for theirs as well. Rastignac discovers that mastering Parisian social graces is more complicated than he had imagined. After accidentally giving offense to Madame de Restaud by referring to her father, Goriot, as “Père” instead of “Monsieur,” he realizes how inaccessible success already appears to be: “How can I move in society,” he thinks to himself, “when to manage it properly you need […] polished boots […] gold chains, white doeskin gloves at six francs a pair for the daytime, and yellow gloves every evening?” To have any hope of climbing socially, in other words, one must already have the means to navigate within that society, whether that means fancy accessories or knowledge of the correct titles to use. Not only must one be able to avoid social faux pas in order to fulfill one’s ambitions, one must also project a certain image. Society woman Madame de Beauséant tells Rastignac, “In Paris success is everything, it is the key to power. If women believe you to have wit and talent, so will men, unless you disillusion them. Then you can set your heart on anything, every door will be open to you.” By this time, Rastignac has become so distracted by trying to enter the doors of society that he is neglecting the law studies that first brought him to Paris, showing how social-climbing can detract from more meaningful aspects of a person’s life.
Facing an uphill battle, the ambitious are easily corrupted, as shown by Rastignac’s experience with Vautrin—a fellow boarder who, unknown to anyone else in the house, is an escaped criminal who cons and exploits naïve people. Vautrin warns Rastignac that by the time he establishes himself in his chosen field and takes on the responsibilities of providing for a wife, his life will be half over. “You stand at the crossroads of your life, young man, you must choose. You have already made one choice; you went to see your Beauséant cousin and had a taste of luxury. […] That day you came back with a word marked on your forehead […] Succeed! succeed at any price.” Vautrin plays on Rastignac’s impatience for success by suggesting that Rastignac’s future depends on the choices he makes right now. Vautrin explains to Rastignac that it’s no good playing by conventional rules in order to find success—most people, he claims, take shortcuts. “Do you know the way to get on here? Through brilliant intelligence or skillful corruption. […] It's no good being honest,” he says. Playing on the young man’s desire and his obligation to his family, he promises to help Rastignac find a shortcut to wealth by securing for him a wealthy, well-endowed wife in exchange for a share of the riches. “Out of any sixty society weddings taking place in Paris,” he assures Rastignac, “there are forty-seven based on transactions of this kind.” That is, Rastignac’s willingness to take such a shortcut already shows that he’s fit for higher society. Vautrin arranges to secure a wealthy wife for Rastignac by killing off the brother of a fellow boarder, Victorine, in a duel, assuring that Victorine will have a tremendous dowry—thereby establishing Rastignac’s place in Parisian society, allowing him to provide for his poor family, and ensuring a hefty commission for Vautrin himself. Rastignac struggles with his conscience and decides to warn Victorine’s family about Vautrin’s intentions, only to have Vautrin drug his wine the night before, incapacitating him. Though Rastignac avoids being made complicit in Vautrin’s crime, he discovers that access to society requires a steeper price than he is willing to pay.
After Rastignac escapes the worst of Vautrin’s corrupting influence, the novel still ends on an ambiguous note: “Rastignac, now all alone, walked a few paces to the higher part of the cemetery, and saw Paris spread out […] His eyes fastened almost hungrily on the […] home to that fashionable society to which he had sought to gain admission. He […] pronounced the epic challenge: 'It's between the two of us now!'” In other words, Rastignac is still ambitious to secure a place for himself in Paris’s higher society, and just because he has avoided one corrupting snare doesn’t mean he won’t fall prey to another—his ambition still remains, making him vulnerable.
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Ambition and Corruption Quotes in Père Goriot
At the moment one of these two rooms belonged to a young man who had come to Paris from the Angoulême area to study law, and whose large family endured the harshest sacrifices in order to send him twelve hundred francs a year. Eugène de Rastignac, for such was his name, was one of those young men trained by poverty for hard work, who realize from their earliest youth what their parents expect of them, and from the start prepare for a successful career by working out the scope of their studies, adapting them in advance to future trends in society so that they can be the first to exploit it.
The sight of his family in such constant distress, which they had generously kept from him, the comparison he was forced to make between his sisters, who had seemed so lovely when he was a child, and the Parisian women who were the living fulfilment of his earlier dreams of beauty, the precarious future of this large family which depended on him, the penny-pinching care with which he saw them save every scrap and crumb, and drink the dregs from the wine press, in a word numerous circumstances which it would be pointless to relate, vastly increased his desire for success and made him crave distinction.
By pronouncing the name of Père Goriot Eugène had again waved the magic wand, but this time with an effect quite contrary to that produced by the words ‘related to Madame de Beauséant.’ He was in the situation of someone admitted as a favour into the house of a curio collector who inadvertently knocks into a cabinet full of sculptured figures, breaking off three or four insecurely fastened heads. He wished the earth would swallow him up.
‘The more coldly calculating you are, the further you will go. Strike without pity and people will fear you. Accept men and women as mere post horses to be left worn out at every stage and you will reach the summit of your ambitions. Don't forget that you will be nothing here unless you have a woman to take an interest in you. You need one who is young, rich, elegant. But if you have any genuine feelings, hide them like a treasure; never let anyone suspect them, or you will be lost.’
‘All right, let Père Goriot win you admission to Madame Delphine de Nucingen's house. The beautiful Madame de Nucingen will be the standard you bear. Enjoy the marks of her favour and women will dote on you. […] You will be very successful. In Paris success is everything, it is the key to power. If women believe you to have wit and talent, so will men, unless you disillusion them. Then you can set your heart on anything, every door will be open to you. Then you will learn what the world is really like: an assembly of dupes and knaves. Don't be counted with either.’
He was ashamed of what he had written. How intense would be their heartfelt wishes for him, how pure their fervent prayers to heaven! How they would delight in their self-sacrifices! How his mother would grieve if she could not send the whole sum! He would use such fine sentiments, such fearful sacrifices as rungs in a ladder to reach Delphine de Nucingen. Tears, a last few grains of incense cast on the sacred altar of the family, fell from his eyes.
The moment money slips into a student's pocket, […] [h]is aspirations are as boundless as his ability to achieve them. He desires everything and anything, he is gay, generous and expansive. In short the bird which only yesterday had no wings has now spread them in full flight. The penniless student snaps up a crumb of pleasure like a dog snatching a bone amid countless perils […] the young man who for a fleeting moment has a few gold coins to jingle in his pocket savours his pleasures, counts them one by one, revels in them, sails through the air, has forgotten the meaning of the word 'poverty’. Paris is all his.
‘You stand at the crossroads of your life, young man, you must choose. You have already made one choice; you went to see your Beauséant cousin and had a taste of luxury. You went to visit Madame de Restaud, Père Goriot's daughter, and had a taste of how Parisian women live. That day you came back with a word marked on your forehead, and one I could read easily enough: Succeed! succeed at any price. Bravo! I said, there's a lad after my own heart.’
‘If I have one more piece of advice for you, my pet, it is not to stick to your opinions any more firmly than to your words. When you are asked for them, sell them. A man who boasts that he never changes his opinions is a man committed always to follow a straight line, an idiot who believes in infallibility. There are no such things as principles, only events; no laws, only circumstances. Your exceptional man adjusts to events and circumstances in order to control them. If there really were fixed principles and fixed laws, nations would not keep changing them as we change our shirts.’
What moralists call the depths of the human heart are merely the disappointments, the involuntary reactions of self-interest. These ups and downs so often bemoaned, these sudden reversals, are quite calculated for the enhancement of our pleasures. Seeing himself well dressed, with smart gloves, smart boots, Rastignac forgot his virtuous resolution. Young people do not dare look into the mirror of their consciences when they are being tempted to do wrong, while those of riper years have already seen themselves reflected there; therein lies the difference between these two periods of human life.
The student walked back from the Théâtre-Italien to the rue Neuve-Sainte-Geneviève, his head full of the most alluring plans. He had not failed to notice how closely Madame de Restaud had observed him, both in the vicomtesse's box and in that of Madame de Nucingen, and he presumed that he would no longer find the comtesse's door closed to him. He could already count on four major contacts in the most select Parisian society […]
'If Madame de Nucingen takes an interest in me, I will teach her how to manipulate her husband. Her husband is a very successful businessman, and he'll be able to help me make my fortune in less than no time.'
‘My word,’ he said with seeming indifference, ‘what good would it do me to live in greater comfort? I really can’t explain that sort of thing; I can’t put two words together properly. That's what it's all about,’ he added, striking his heart. ‘My life, my own life, is all in my two daughters. If they enjoy themselves, if they are happy and finely dressed, if they have carpets to walk on, what does it matter what clothes I wear or what sort of bedroom I have? I don't feel cold if they are warm. I never feel sad if they are laughing. My only sorrows are theirs.’
In the course of the next few days Rastignac led an extremely dissipated life. He dined almost every day with Madame de Nucingen, and went everywhere as her escort. He would come home at three or four in the morning, rise at midday to get ready to go out, and then go for a turn in the Bois when it was fine. He wasted time like this, heedless of the cost, and absorbed all the lessons and allurements of luxury […] He played for high stakes, losing or winning a lot of money, and finally grew used to the extravagant life of the young man in Paris.
Rastignac was indeed in a state of perplexity which must be familiar to many young men. Whether she really loved him or was just leading him on, Madame de Nucingen had inflicted on Rastignac all the pains of a genuine passion […] For the past few months she had so inflamed Eugène's senses that she finally affected his inward heart. If in the initial stages of his liaison the student had believed himself to be the master, Madame de Nucingen had now gained the upper hand[.]
It was midnight. […] Père Goriot and the student returned to the Maison Vauquer talking about Delphine with increasing fervour, each trying to outdo the other, expressing the strength of his passion in curious contention. Eugène could not deny that the father's love, unblemished by any selfish interest, left his own far behind in scope and persistence. For the father, his idol was always pure and beautiful, and his worship was intensified by all that lay in the past as well as in the future.
By enjoying the material advantages of wealth, as he had so long enjoyed the moral advantages of noble birth, he had sloughed off his skin as a provincial, and smoothly moved into a position from which he could look forward to a fine future. So, as he waited for Delphine, seated comfortably in this charming boudoir, which he was beginning to regard as almost his own, he saw himself so far removed from the Rastignac who had come to Paris the year before, that, looking closely at that person through some trick of mental vision, he asked himself if at that moment there was any resemblance between his two selves.
He saw society as an ocean of mire into which one had only to dip a toe to be buried in it up to the neck. 'The only crimes committed there are petty ones!' he said to himself. 'Vautrin was a bigger man than that.' […] In his thoughts he returned to the bosom of his family. He remembered the pure emotions of that tranquil life, he recalled days spent among those who held him dear. By following the natural laws of hearth and home, those dear creatures found complete, unbroken, untroubled happiness. Despite such worthy thoughts, he did not feel bold enough to go to Delphine and confess the faith of pure souls by bidding her follow Virtue in the name of Love.
Rastignac left at about five o'clock, after seeing Madame de Beauséant into her travelling-coach and receiving her tearful farewell […] It was cold and damp as Eugène walked back to the Maison Vauquer. His education was almost complete.
‘I shan't be able to save poor Père Goriot,’ Bianchon said to him as Rastignac came into his neighbour's room.
‘My friend,’ said Eugène, after a look at the sleeping old man, ‘stay on the path that leads to the modest goal you have been content to set yourself. As for me, I am in hell, and must stay there.’
‘They are busy, they are sleeping, they won't come. I knew it. You have to be dying to learn what children are. Ah! my friend, don't get married, don't have children! You give them life, they give you death. You bring them into the world, they drive you out of it. No, they won't come! For ten years I have known how it would be. I sometimes said so to myself, but I didn't dare to believe it.’
