Le Pere Goriot recap

At the shabby Maison Vauquer, law student Eugène de Rastignac meets the impoverished former merchant Goriot and the mysterious Vautrin. Rastignac learns that Goriot sacrificed his fortune to his daughters Anastasie de Restaud and Delphine de Nucingen, who now exploit his devotion while keeping him outside their fashionable lives. Seeking his own rise, Rastignac becomes Delphine's lover. Vautrin offers him another path: court the disinherited Victorine Taillefer while Vautrin arranges her brother's death, making her rich. Rastignac recoils, but the killing occurs before police expose Vautrin as the escaped convict Jacques Collin. Goriot exhausts his last resources meeting his daughters' demands and suffers a fatal collapse during their latest crises. They fail to attend him or his funeral. After burying Goriot almost alone, Rastignac looks over Paris and resolves to challenge its corrupt society on its own terms, then goes to dine with Delphine.

The Maison Vauquer is a shabby Paris boarding house whose residents include the ambitious law student Eugène de Rastignac, the retired merchant Goriot, the imposing and secretive Vautrin, the disinherited Victorine Taillefer, and several impoverished older lodgers. Goriot once occupied expensive rooms but has descended floor by floor as his money disappeared. Rastignac begins using his distant cousin, the Vicomtesse de Beauséant, to enter aristocratic society. His visits reveal that Goriot's two daughters are Anastasie de Restaud and Delphine de Nucingen, both married into wealth. Goriot has surrendered nearly everything to establish them, yet they receive him privately and permit society to regard him as an embarrassment. Madame de Beauséant explains the merciless rules of the world Rastignac wants to enter: he will need money, a fashionable woman as sponsor or lover, and a willingness to conceal his feelings. Goriot's rejected fatherhood and Rastignac's social education become linked as the student sees how family affection is converted into status and financial advantage.

Rastignac asks his mother and sisters to send money they can scarcely afford, then remakes his appearance for Parisian society. He pursues Delphine de Nucingen, who is rich in public but financially constrained by her banker husband and eager for admission to circles such as Madame de Beauséant's. Rastignac wins money for Delphine at a gambling table and becomes her companion and lover. Goriot welcomes the relationship because it gives him another route to his daughter, even using his remaining resources to prepare an apartment for the couple. Meanwhile Vautrin offers Rastignac a colder plan. Victorine Taillefer loves the student but will inherit only if her favored brother is removed. Vautrin proposes to arrange the brother's death in a duel, after which Rastignac could marry Victorine and gain her fortune. Rastignac is appalled yet tempted by the speed with which the scheme would solve his poverty. The two possible routes before him—Delphine's fashionable world and Vautrin's engineered inheritance—both expose money beneath the language of love.

A police agent tells Michonneau and Poiret that Vautrin is believed to be Jacques Collin, an escaped convict known as Trompe-la-Mort. Michonneau drugs him so officers can confirm his identity. Before the arrest, Vautrin's associate provokes Victorine's brother into a duel and kills him, making Victorine her father's likely heir despite Rastignac's refusal to embrace the plot. The police seize Vautrin after his disguise is exposed; he drops his genial mask but leaves with composure, condemning the boarders' hypocrisy. Madame Vauquer's household rapidly empties. At the same time, Goriot is consumed by his daughters' demands. Anastasie has sold family diamonds to cover Maxime de Trailles's debts and faces her husband's control, while Delphine struggles over money withheld by Nucingen. Goriot offers each daughter whatever remains to him and treats every fresh demand as proof that she still needs her father. Their competing crises push him toward physical collapse as Rastignac sees that removing a criminal has done nothing to remove the respectable world's cruelty.

Anastasie and Delphine confront Goriot with new financial emergencies and quarrel in his room. Unable to satisfy them, he suffers a severe collapse. Rastignac and the medical student Bianchon care for him at the Maison Vauquer and repeatedly summon his daughters, but social obligations, marital conflict, and self-interest keep them away while he is conscious. Goriot dies longing for them, moving between anger, excuses, and unconditional devotion. Rastignac must find money for the funeral himself. Neither daughter attends; their households send only empty heraldic carriages, and Goriot is buried with minimal ceremony. Madame de Beauséant, meanwhile, leaves Paris after giving a final ball while the man she loves marries another woman, providing Rastignac with another example of society's polished indifference. Standing above Paris after the burial, Rastignac resolves to confront and master the city. He immediately goes to dine with Delphine, choosing continued participation in the world that abandoned her father.

Goriot suffers a final collapse after Anastasie and Delphine bring their financial and marital crises to him. Rastignac and Bianchon nurse him in the Maison Vauquer, but neither daughter comes while he remains conscious despite repeated messages. Goriot dies still making excuses for them and longing to see them. Rastignac pays what he can for the funeral. The daughters send empty carriages bearing their coats of arms, but no family member attends, and the burial is reduced to the cheapest rites. From the cemetery, Rastignac looks over Paris and consciously accepts it as an adversary he intends to master. He then goes to dine with Delphine, joining the society whose indifference he has just witnessed. Vautrin has been exposed as the escaped convict Jacques Collin and arrested, though his removal does not reform the world he diagnosed. Madame de Beauséant has withdrawn after her public abandonment, Anastasie remains trapped by debts and scandal, and Delphine by her marriage and ambition. Goriot's fortune and life have been consumed by daughters who are absent at his grave, while Rastignac converts the lesson into a more deliberate pursuit of power.