Pere Goriot Read Online Free PDF Page A

ball’” (p. 128).
    â€œEugène had yet to learn that no one in Paris should present himself in any house without first making himself acquainted with the whole history of its owner, and of its owner’s wife and family...” (p. 74). Eugène has a lot to learn at the outset of Père Goriot. The form of the novel closely resembles that of the bildungsroman, a genre in which an inexperienced young fellow sets out in the world and, in the process of completing a sometimes harsh apprenticeship, learns through experience something of its ways and wiles. Balzac hews quite closely to this form, commenting now and again on Eugène’s progress (“In the past month Eugène’s good qualities and defects had rapidly developed with his character” [p. 106]; “His education was nearly complete” [p. 266]). It is important to note, however, that Balzac’s novel, while borrowing some of the formal elements of the bildungsroman, differs from the classical versions of this model in that the type of knowledge most prized here is not the humanist wisdom that is the hard-won fruit of experience, but rather the technical mastery of certain strategies for success. Eugène has to learn “the whole history” of the houses to which he seeks entry: This type of knowledge, the sine qua non of social success, is not wisdom but information. Knowledge in Père Goriot has little to do with self-enhancement or enlightenment and everything to do with social survival. The knowledge Eugène seeks and acquires has an immediate use-value; factual rather than theoretical, its value is strategic and expedient. “Rastignac made up his mind that he must learn the whole of Goriot’s previous history; he would come to his bearings before attempting to board the Maison de Nucingen” (p. 93). The path to knowledge in these modern times leads not to the sage but to the informant (to M. Muret is a good example; see p. 96 et seq.).
    Knowledge in Père Goriot is thus eminently practical. Certainly, there is knowledge to be had from the study of books and the law, but Eugène rejects this curriculum (“The student studied no longer” [p. 92] ) in favor of an encounter with Paris and Parisian society, an encounter that the novel seems to recommend. “Those who do not know the left bank of the Seine between the Rue Saint-Jacques and the Rue des Saints-Pères know nothing of life” (p. 105), writes Balzac. The streets of Paris become Eugène’s schoolroom. And the salons, too. For it is at the elegant home of Madame de Beauséant that Eugène makes “a three years’ advance in a kind of law which is not a recognized study in Paris, although it is a sort of higher jurisprudence” (p. 77).
    What is it that Eugène must know in order to gain access to and succeed in the fashionable salons and private hôtels of Paris? First of all, as we have seen, he must be acquainted with the history of the houses (this in itself would have avoided his dreadful gaffe at Madame de Restaud‘s, which results in that house being closed to him). He must know that there are two Hotels de Beauséant, that of the Vicomte and that of the Marquis, and that these are located in the rue de Grenelle and in the rue Saint-Dominique, respectively. Beyond this, his “education” consists of a type of social grooming. For example, he must learn, and does learn, “‘not [to] be so demonstrative’” (p. 78). Like Lucien de Rubempré, hero of Lost Illusions, or any recently arrived provincial, he must lose his accent and adopt the language of the Parisians. And he must learn the language of love, even if in this post-Romantic epoch a lover’s discourse amounts to nothing more than “stereotyped phrases” (p. 134). To know these things—customs and language—is to know Paris, and to know Paris is to know these things. “To know its