The novel takes place during the Bourbon Restoration, which brought profound changes to French society; the struggle by individuals to secure a higher social status is a major theme in the book.

[5] When Balzac began writing Le Père Goriot in 1834, he had written several dozen books, including a stream of pseudonymously published potboiler novels.

In 1829 he published Les Chouans, the first novel to which he signed his own name; this was followed by Louis Lambert (1832), Le Colonel Chabert (1832), and La Peau de chagrin (1831).

[6] Around this time, Balzac began organizing his work into a sequence of novels that he eventually called La Comédie humaine, divided into sections representing various aspects of life in France during the early 19th century.

In the winter of 1828–29, a French grifter-turned-policeman named Eugène François Vidocq published a pair of sensationalized memoirs recounting his criminal exploits.

"[9] He wrote the first draft of Le Père Goriot in forty autumn days; it was published as a serial in the Revue de Paris between December and February.

[17] Although he had prepared only a small predecessor for La Comédie humaine, entitled Études de Mœurs, at this time, Balzac carefully considered each work's place in the project and frequently rearranged its structure.

Before long, the boarders learn that police are seeking Vautrin, revealed to be a master criminal nicknamed Trompe-la-Mort (Daredevil, literally Cheat-the-Death or Death-Dodger).

When his other daughter, Anastasie, informs him that she has been selling off her husband's family jewelry to pay her lover's debts, the old man is overcome with grief at his own impotence and suffers a stroke.

Balzac's style in Le Père Goriot is influenced by the American novelist James Fenimore Cooper and Scottish writer Walter Scott.

In a preface to the second edition in 1835, Balzac wrote that the title character Goriot – who made his fortune selling vermicelli during a time of widespread hunger – was an "Illinois of the flour trade" and a "Huron of the grain market".

Although history is not central to Le Père Goriot, the post-Napoleonic era serves as an important setting, and Balzac's use of meticulous detail reflects the influence of Scott.

Vautrin, for example, slips in and out of the story – offering advice to Rastignac, ridiculing Goriot, bribing the housekeeper Christophe to let him in after hours – before he is revealed as a master criminal.

[24] Rastignac is tutored by Vautrin, Madame de Beauséant, Goriot, and others about the truth of Parisian society and the coldly dispassionate and brutally realistic strategies required for social success.

[26] Le Père Goriot, especially in its revised form, marks an important early instance of Balzac's trademark use of recurring characters: persons from earlier novels appear in later works, usually during significantly different times of life.

"[30] Although the complexity of these characters' lives inevitably led Balzac to make errors of chronology and consistency, the mistakes are considered minor in the overall scope of the project.

This new detail sheds considerable light on the actions of all three characters within the pages of Le Père Goriot, complementing the evolution of their stories in the later novel.

[33] Balzac uses meticulous, abundant detail to describe the Maison Vauquer, its inhabitants, and the world around them; this technique gave rise to his title as the father of the realist novel.

Much less intricate are the descriptions of wealthier homes; Madame de Beauséant's rooms are given scant attention, and the Nucingen family lives in a house sketched in the briefest detail.

[36] Although the characters and situations are fictions, the details employed – and their reflection of the realities of life in Paris at the time – faithfully render the world of the Maison Vauquer.

The Charter of 1814 granted by King Louis XVIII had established a "legal country" which allowed only a small group of the nation's most wealthy men to vote.

[54] France's social upheaval provides Vautrin with a playground for an ideology based solely on personal advancement; he encourages Rastignac to follow suit.

[58] The relations between family members follow two patterns: the bonds of marriage serve mostly as Machiavellian means to financial ends, while the obligations of the older generation to the young take the form of sacrifice and deprivation.

Anastasie, meanwhile, is married to the comte de Restaud, who cares less about the illegitimate children she has than the jewels she sells to provide for her lover – who is conning her in a scheme that Rastignac has heard was popular in Paris.

The end of the book contrasts Goriot's deathbed moments with a festive ball hosted by Madame de Beauséant – attended by his daughters, as well as Rastignac – suggesting a fundamental schism between society and the family.

Convinced that he cannot achieve a decent status in Paris without a considerable display of wealth, he writes to his family and asks them to send him money: "Sell some of your old jewelry, my kind mother; I will give you other jewels very soon.

[71] It is the central text of Anthony Pugh's voluminous study Balzac's Recurring Characters, and entire chapters have been written about the detail of the Maison Vauquer.

"[75] Many critics of the time, though, were positive: a review in Le Journal des femmes proclaimed that Balzac's eye "penetrates everywhere, like a cunning serpent, to probe women's most intimate secrets".

[76] Balzac himself was extremely proud of the work, declaring even before the final installment was published: "Le Père Goriot is a raging success; my fiercest enemies have had to bend the knee.

[78] In the 20th century, a number of film versions were produced, including adaptations directed by Travers Vale (1915), Jacques de Baroncelli (1922), and Paddy Russell (1968).