Father Goriot recap

At Madame Vauquer's shabby Paris boarding house, law student Eugène de Rastignac meets the impoverished former merchant Goriot and the formidable Vautrin. Rastignac learns that Goriot ruined himself to enrich his daughters, Anastasie de Restaud and Delphine de Nucingen, who now keep him at a distance while demanding further sacrifices. Rastignac pursues Delphine as a route into fashionable society, while Vautrin offers him a murderous shortcut to wealth through Victorine Taillefer. The scheme collapses when Vautrin is exposed as an escaped convict. Goriot's daughters continue fighting over money and their marriages, and their distress brings on his fatal illness. They fail to attend him as he dies still adoring them. Rastignac and Bianchon finance a poor funeral; afterward Rastignac surveys Paris from the cemetery and commits himself to mastering the society whose cruelty he has witnessed.

Madame Vauquer runs a decaying boarding house in a poor quarter of Paris, where residents of different ages and fortunes share a dreary table. Among them are the ambitious law student Eugène de Rastignac, the disowned heiress Victorine Taillefer, the medical student Bianchon, the imposing and mysterious Vautrin, and old Goriot. Goriot once occupied the best rooms but has moved steadily upward into cheaper quarters while selling his possessions. The boarders mock his decline and assume that the richly dressed women who visit him are mistresses. Rastignac, newly alert to the possibilities of Parisian society, begins observing both Goriot's secretive life and Vautrin's unsettling ability to read everyone around him.

Rastignac seeks entry to high society through his cousin, the Vicomtesse de Beauséant. Visits to the houses of the Comtesse de Restaud and the Baroness de Nucingen lead him to the truth about Goriot: the two elegant women are his daughters, Anastasie and Delphine. Goriot spent his fortune providing enormous dowries for them, but their husbands dislike their connection to a former tradesman and the daughters receive him chiefly when they need help. Rastignac's innocent mention of Goriot makes him unwelcome at the Restauds'. Madame de Beauséant explains the social contest he has entered and suggests that courting Delphine could advance him while striking at Anastasie. Rastignac asks his own struggling family to finance the clothes and expenses needed for this campaign.

Equipped with money sent at real sacrifice by his mother and sisters, Rastignac enters fashionable Paris. He is introduced to Delphine, wins money for her at roulette, and becomes her attentive escort and lover. Delphine wants access to Madame de Beauséant's exclusive circle, while Rastignac wants the standing she can give him. Goriot is delighted by their attachment because it lets him hear about and remain close to his daughter. He helps arrange an apartment for the pair. Yet Delphine's marriage is also a financial trap: Nucingen has tied up her dowry in his ventures and resists giving her control of it. Rastignac's social rise therefore rests on a relationship already burdened by money, secrecy, and Goriot's boundless willingness to sacrifice himself.

Vautrin offers Rastignac a brutal alternative to slow advancement. He proposes that Rastignac court Victorine, whose wealthy father would accept her as heir if her brother died; Vautrin can arrange the brother's death in a duel and expects payment from the resulting fortune. Rastignac recoils but remains dangerously passive as the plan advances. Victorine's brother is killed, making her prospects suddenly valuable. Before Vautrin can profit, the police use two boarders to confirm his identity and drug him. Arrested after a moment of terrifying resistance, he is revealed as Trompe-la-Mort, an escaped convict and powerful figure in the criminal underworld. His removal ends the immediate conspiracy, but Rastignac has seen how closely respectable ambition and open crime can resemble one another.

The crises in Goriot's family intensify. Anastasie has sold family jewels and incurred ruinous debts for her lover, while Delphine discovers how thoroughly Nucingen has entangled her property in his business. Each daughter turns to Goriot for rescue, though he has almost nothing left to give. Their confrontation in his room becomes a bitter quarrel over money, jealousy, and which of them has suffered more. Goriot is devastated by their distress and by his inability to solve it; the strain brings on a collapse. Even while gravely ill, he thinks chiefly of securing their happiness and imagines that they will come when they learn how much he needs them. Rastignac and Bianchon assume responsibility for his care as the boarding house continues its indifferent routine.

Goriot's illness becomes fatal. Rastignac repeatedly tries to bring Anastasie and Delphine to him, but debts, jealous husbands, preparations for a ball, and their own evasions keep them away. In delirium Goriot alternates between defending his daughters, recognizing their selfishness, and longing for one final embrace. He dies with Rastignac and Bianchon beside him, not the children for whom he surrendered everything. The students pawn valuables and borrow money to arrange a bare funeral. Neither daughter attends; only their empty carriages follow the coffin. From the heights of Père-Lachaise cemetery, Rastignac looks over Paris and accepts the city as his adversary. He goes directly to dine with Delphine, beginning a more hardened pursuit of success within the society that has just revealed its cost.

After his daughters' financial crises and quarrel bring on Goriot's final collapse, Rastignac and Bianchon nurse him at the boarding house. Goriot continues to excuse Anastasie and Delphine and longs for them, but neither comes to his deathbed in time. Rastignac pays for the funeral with borrowed money and arranges the most meager ceremony he can; the daughters' empty carriages appear, but their families do not mourn beside the grave. From Père-Lachaise, Rastignac looks across Paris and resolves to confront the society that has consumed Goriot's fortune and abandoned him. He then goes to dine with Delphine, turning grief into the beginning of his deliberate struggle for power within the same world.