The literature of the nineteenth century is, as I discussed in last week's lecture a literature of things, of objects. Is it any coincidence that the term Realism should be derived from the Latin word res meaning `thing'? The literature of the nineteenth century is also however, a literature of place, of social space, a literature of precise geographical specificity.

Since the nineteenth century was very much the century of the city and the rapid growth of the city (the population of Paris increased threefold during Balzac's lifetime), the literature and the art of the nineteenth century was thus also a literature and an art of the urban, the metropolitan. This is certainly true of Le Père Goriot. Indeed, almost on the very first page of the novel, in a kind of narratorial digression, we find the narrator wondering aloud if the story he is about to tell would be understood outside of Paris:

What the narrator is saing here is this: look, my story is so rooted in Paris, so much about the people and atmosphere of the place, that it may not be fully comprehensible to anyone living outside of Paris. Balzac's Paris, the Paris described in Le Père Goriot is, I would argue, a fascinating mix of the real, the historically existant and the mythical and the poetic. At the same time as remaining superficially faithful to the real contours, detours, sights and smells of the city he projects onto the city his own poetic or mythologized vision.

The Paris of Balzac's lifetime was largely mediaeval, based as it was on a mediaeval street pattern and largely unchanged. It was not until the 1850's with the modernization programme commissioned by Napoléon III and carried out by Baron Haussmann that the modern Paris we know today took shape. Balzac's Paris was one of glitter, ferment and temptation since the capital became a magnet for the concentraion of wealth and power. Yet it was also one of squalid streets, dark alleys and poor hygiene.

In keeping with Balzac's realist aesthetic, his representation of life in Paris is broadly similar to documentary accounts produced at the time. Housing and police documents of the time for example, paint a dismal picture of the low standard of living and insanitary conditions of the poorer areas of Paris. The population of Paris grew rapidly in the period after 1815 but with no real increase in the number of available properties. Overcrowding, and the social and medical problems it causes was endemic. This explains the large number of boarding houses in poorer areas and, indeed, the often varied social mix who dwelt in those boading houses. As for the streets, well they were almost uniformly poorly lit, awash with mud and filth and were a constant place of crime. Little wonder then, that Rastignac makes so much fuss at having to brave the streets instead of taking a cab.

By and large, the Paris depicted by Balzac in his novels is one dominated by social, economic and moral difference. The description of the Pension Vauquer at the beginning of the novel with its hierarchy of levels and rooms for the comparatively rich and the comparatively poor represents the Parisian social space in miniature. Balzac's Paris is then, one of economic difference and social and moral distinction.

Let's now take a more detailed look at the topography (the division and organization of space) of the novel. Most critics agree that Balzac's Paris is composed of three distinct and interrelated worlds:

These three separate social spaces correspond, respectively, to the following social orders:

This division of social space is historically quite accurate and it was indeed true that it was in the post-Napoleonic period that Paris acquired its distinct neighbourhood each with its own economically and socially specific population.

Other critics have taken a more simplistic view of social space and the social order and claim that in Balzac's fiction just two worlds are compared and contrasted:

This is undoubtedly the more dramatic ordering of social space since it leaves no room for half measures or being in-between. Indeed, this is the conceptual opposition that Balzac establishes and then systematically undermines throughout the novel. It provides the two separate battlegrounds on which the novel's three main protagonists (Goriot, Vautrin and Rastignac) struggle for supremacy, or in the case of Goriot, for survival.

The emphasis of Le Père Goriot is firmly on geographical separation as indices of social, economic and moral distinction. This opposition is taken up and exploited throughout Le Père Goriot mainly through the oppoosiiton of the Pension Vauquer and the haut monde of Madame de Beauséant's salons.

However, running through these two clearly defined territories is a deep seam or trammel of mystery and clandestine financial transactions. This seam or trammel undermines or destabilizes the hierarchy, the binary division of social space revealing not difference or separation but similarity and connection. Where, superficially, there appears to be difference, there is in fact sameness. In terms of the functionning of the plot the character of Rastignac is pivotal since his presence helps to reveal the secret connections of these two ostensibly autonomous realms. Part of Rastignac's bildung is thus the discovery of the underlying organizing principle of society. The underlying organizing principle of society is, of course, as we discussed last week, money. One of the key scenes in the novel is when Rastignac meets Anastasie and Monsieur de Restaud for the first time and he commits the embarassing social error of mentionning the name of le Père Goriot. (Folio pp.94/5). Through this apparently innocent act of verbal awkwardness he strumbles unwittingly into an area of secrecy and taboo. He articulates the deep connectedness of the classes, particularly the middle and upper classes of the Restoration. Goriot's fortune has bought his daughter an advantageous marriage into the aristocracy but the aristocracy's reliance on the fortunes of the bourgeoisie must never be mentionned. Goriot, the visible reminder of dubious origins must be hidden from sight and never mentionned.

The superficial separation between the social worlds of the aristocracy and the bourgeoisie is revealed to be illusory, it simply doesn't exist. The `high' and `low' worlds described in the novel are unified and united by an under the surface system of dehumanized financial relations. Money is the point of contact behind apparent social divisions, but it is a travesty of the real human bonds.

In his novels then, Balzac creates a Paris that is a swirling, mobile landscape dominated by chance encounter, fast transactions and the frenetic circulation of money, goods and bodies regardless of class. It is thus unified at the level of exchange and exploitation.

Balzac is alive to the economic developments and opportunities taking place in Restoration Paris. Napoleon had been defeated at Waterloo a mere for years prior to the action of the novel and Paris had only just be free of the occupation of allied troops. Politically, power lay in the hands of a tiny minority of extremely affluents electors (only 90,000 men were qualified by wealth to vote and of these only a super-rich minority of 10,000 could serve as deputies). Power and money went hand in hand and were, in fact, constitutionally linked in Restoration France. This goes a long way in explaining Rastignac's frenetic desire for wealth as a means of securing a profitable career. Although between 1815 and 1818 things were rather uncertain economically, by 1819 the economy was beginning to pick up. Paris, in particular, was the beneficiary of a number of significant building projects: new markets and slaughterhouses, The Saint-Denis and Ourcq canals and the Sèvres bridge.

Okay then, so much for Balzac's historically accurate depiction of life in Restoration Paris. In fact, despite Balzac's avowed intention to be the objective secretary of French society and his constant use of omniscient narrators, his texts are in fact shot through with complex metaphors. Woven into the fabric of his narratives is an intricate pattern of imagery that make them more like extended prose poems than novels. Let's pick out or unweave and unravel some of these threads now:

Although there are, as far as I know at least, not that many actual animals in Le Père Goriot (I'm prepared to be proved wrong), the text abounds in animal imagery. For those who like their statistics neat, there are 67 different animals referred to in the novel and there are 92 animal comparisons applied to 19 of the characters.

The animal imagery applied to the various human characters is of both a conventional or public nature. For example, Goriot is often described as being like or wanting to be like a faithful dog to his daughters but when he eventually dies a pauper he is described as dying `comme un chien'. In both cases, although the connotations of chien are both negative and positive, they nonetheless correspond to conventional imagery. More importantly though, the animal imagery also correspond to a personal, private and idiosyncratic world view. The abundance of animal imagery, most of the negative or pejorative, express a profoundly pessimistic world view. Human society is bestial. It's a dog eat dog world out there, the law of the jungle is in force, its all about the survival of the fittest. Modern life lacks noblity and heroism (two attributes associated with - although by no means exclusive to - the human).

The dedication of Le Père Goriot to the `grand et illustre Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire' is important since he was one of the innovators in the natural sciences who posited the notion of `unity of being', the belief that animal life adapted itself into different species according to habitat. Saint-Hilaire termed this theory transformism (le transformisme) and it could be argued that it was an early form of Darwinism. Balzac was a sucker for science and what we would now call pseudo-science and in his work one finds many references to phrenology (reading a persons character from bumps on their head) and mesmerism (belief in an invisible fluid which passed from one person's eyes to another's). Remember that Balzac wanted to catalogue the different human types or species and modelled his fictional practice on the classificatory schemas of natural scientists like Saint-Hilaire, Cuvier and Buffon.

Many of the characters' names in the text invoke the names of animals or qualities associated with animals: Goriot = goret (piglet), Vautrin = veau (calf) or the verb se vautrer (to slouch, to wallow in the mire as in se vautrer dans la boue/la fange).

What is interesting is that each `species' of human has its own distinct behavioural patterns and territory as I mentionned in my comments on the topography of the novel. Each is fiercely territorial and is anxious not to become part of the food chain to be devoured by another more powerful creature.

Closely related to the complex network of animal imagery are references to the world, and more specifically to Paris as, variously, a new world forest (Folio p.156), an ocean (Folio p.34/p.124) and a slough (Folio p.77). Here again, animal associations are prominent. The Pension Vauquer is variously described in the text as a `bocage' (grove, copse), a `terrier' (burrow, hole), a caverne (cave), a `steppe' (steppe) and a `marécage' (marsh, swamp, bog). What is significant about the animal world - symbolized by the jungle - is its immorality, or to be more precise its amorality. There is no concern with moral values; the main concern is to survive, is the struggle for survival and superiority. To take but one example, on pages 88 to 90 Rastignac meets the arch-dandy and philanderer Maximes de Trailles and there is an immediate and reciprochal hostility between the two young men:

They are both predatory males in the jungle of Parisian society and both seek to mark out their territory. This comparison is not lacking justification since Maxime de Trailles is well known in aristocrat circles for provoking insults and then killing his rival in duels.

The literature, and indeed the art of nineteenth-century France is fascinated by the figure of the prostitute. The prostitute is a powerful image because as both seller, commodity and (occasionally) entrepreneur in one, s/he represents, to use Walter Benjamin's terms, the commodification of social relations characteristic of capitalist society. Balzac is no exception. In an early novel entitled Ferragus, Balzac describes Paris as `cette grande courtisane' and what may be referred to as the prostitutional motif is also a central thread in Le Père Goriot too. We are all prostitutes, we all have a price and would be ready to sell out to the highest bidder. The prostitutional motif is closely relation to the concepts of exploitation and exchange that are everywhere in the novel. And of course, exploitation and exchange are travesties of real human relationships. To read Le Père Goriot is to witness the spectacle of individuals selling out, bartering themselves, exchanging an aristocratic name for wealth or conversely wealth for an aristocraic name. The notion of exchange is central to the novel. We see characters exchanging or bartering all the time. Typically, it is Vautrin who introduces the theme of prostition, he is the one character who sees with the most lucidity the ways of the world. Take, for example his statement on page 74:

There is another reference on page 152:

Or there is the most important reference to a Paris personified as a high-class prostitute on pages 158 to 159:

Vautrin realizes then, that Parisien life is based on prostitution (`Sur soixantes beaux marriages qui ont lieu dans Paris, il y en a quarante-sept qui donnent lieu à des marchés semblables' Folio p.155) and attempts to become a sort of pimp, un maquereau, un mac. For example, Vautrin tries to exploit Rastignac's physical beauty in a deal that would make Victorine Taillefer the sole inheritor of her father's fortune and thus a highly attractive wife for the right man. What he seems to be saying is, look kid, with your looks and my brains we could make a killing (quite literally!). Rastignac himself however, is more than capable of being both prostitute and pimp in one - seller and commodity. From page 58 onwards he realizes the strategic value of pleasing powerful women. His relationship with Delphine is one based on his exploiting his aristocratic name in return for access to Delphine's wealth. But Delphine too prostitutes herself. She was the willing accomplice in a bought marriage as well as exchanging her body in return for Rastignac's social ticket.

Mud, both of the literal and the metaphorical variety, is everywhere in the novel. Mud sticks. On both the literal and the metaphorical level mud is associated with poverty. Most of the inhabitants of the Pension Vauquer are trying to escape the mud and the dirt of the streets to the higher level of comfortable society. Rastignac is the most important character who seeks to escape the mud and dirt of the streets. On page 85 to 86 Rastignac resents getting his boots dirty and is jealous (Folio p.89) of Maxime de Trailles spotless fine leather boots. For him, mud and dirt is concretely linked with poverty and cleanliness with money. However, the second metaphorical meaning of mud/dirt is corruption. It is Rastignac who first describes Paris as `un bourbier' (Folio p.77) - a slough or mud-pit - after listening to one of Vautrin's long diatribes. At the end of the novel this impression has deepened:

Even, the elegant and aristocratic Madame de Beauséant is of this opinion:

This kind of mud (mud as representing corruption) sticks and is eveywhere. No matter how hard Rastignac may try to escape the moral turpitude of Paris, he will always be dragged back in and back down. The mud metaphor is another way in which the dictinction between the high and low realms are collapsed and conflated: mud/corruption is everywhere.

The very last pages of the novel are interesting to read in the light of the mud metaphor. You may recall that Rastignac has just attended Goriot's lonely funeral at Père Lachaise cemetary in the north-east of Paris. Rastignac looks down at the Paris skyline from the commanding vantage-point of the cemetary which is situated on a hill and delivers his challenge to the city: `A nous deux maintenant' (Folio p.367). Whereas in Stendhal, height or altitude tends to represent some form of superiority, distance or transcendance, the scene here is in no way symbolic of Rastignac's moral superiority. Far from being a moment of redemption and rejection, it signals descent and acceptance. It is a prelude to a descent into the mire of Parisian social life. The last words of the novel are, after all, not `A nous deux maintenant' but `Et pour premier acte de défi qu'il portait à la société, il alla dîner chez Madame de Nucingen' (Folio p.367). From the vantage-point of the cemetary, Rastignac sees the totality of Paris, with all its sordid and hitherto secret interconnections and accepts it. He chooses not `révolte' or `obéissance' but `lutte', an ambiguous term which in Rastignac's lexicon designates the social game of Parisian life.