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Vautrin and same-sex desire in Le Pere Goriot.(Honore de Balzac)(Critical Essay)

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From: Nineteenth-Century French Studies
Date: 20020922
Author:Berrong, Richard M.

An awareness of Vautrin's sexual interest in other men, and particularly Eugene Rastignac, in Balzac's Le Pere Goriot is not new. Though Philippe Berthier, in his often cited article on male same-sex desire in the three "Vautrin" novels, Splendeurs et miseres des courtisanes, Illusions perdues, and Le pere Goriot, "Balzac du cote de Sodome," shows the extent to which eminent Balzac scholars like Bardeche and Barberis fought to deny it as late as the 1970s (167-68), his own 1979 essay, while focusing largely on Splendeurs et miseres, brought the issue squarely to the forefront of ...

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