When we read Pere Goriot, Honore de Balzac’s tragic tale about an old man who believes that it is possible to buy his daughters’ a better place in society than he himself had – we are likely to be moved to pity by this story of a man who sacrifices everything – his money, his possessions and property, and in the end his life – to buy a reputation and social status. We may also be inclined to feel in no small way superior, for we believe ourselves to be beyond such considerations of class and standing, we citizens of the New World and the 21st century. But the story that Balzac unfolds for us, one of a particular kind of greed, is one that could and still does happen today, in the here and now. Certainly the details are different, the strategies changed. But the desire to obtain a place in society is still as fierce – and still as ripe with the potential for creating tragedy – as it was in the Paris that Balzac presents us with.
