# Father Goriot — Character guide

> Key figures in Father Goriot by Honoré de Balzac.

- [Eugène de Rastignac](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/father_goriot_se/characters/eugene_de_rastignac.md): Rastignac arrives in Paris with noble name, thin purse, and a cousin well placed in fashionable society, lodging among paupers at the Maison Vauquer while courting drawing rooms he cannot afford. His hunger for success c
- [Father Goriot](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/father_goriot_se/characters/father_goriot.md): Once a prosperous tradesman during the Revolution, Goriot has sold everything to dower his daughters into the aristocracy, who now receive him only in back stairways and shame. He clings to his illusions with a father's 
- [Vautrin](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/father_goriot_se/characters/vautrin.md): Vautrin dominates the boarding-house table with wit, appetite, and unsettling insight into how Paris really works, singling out Rastignac as a young man worth teaching. He preaches a doctrine of ruthless self-interest an
- [Delphine de Nucingen](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/father_goriot_se/characters/delphine_de_nucingen.md): Married to a wealthy banker who controls every sou, Delphine moves through the glitter of the Faubourg Saint-Germain while privately selling her diamonds and borrowing to keep up appearances. She becomes Rastignac's love
- [Anastasie de Restaud](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/father_goriot_se/characters/anastasie_de_restaud.md): Anastasie has climbed into the old nobility through marriage, but her husband's cold control and her own extravagance have entangled her with the moneylender Gobseck and a scandalous affair. She treats her father as an e
- [Madame Vauquer](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/father_goriot_se/characters/madame_vauquer.md): Mme. Vauquer presides over her lodgers' dinners, rents, and reputations with equal attention, measuring every boarder by the size of their purse and the state of their linen. Her house, its blistered Cupid and dusty lime
- [Vicomtesse de Beauséant](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/father_goriot_se/characters/vicomtesse_de_beauseant.md): The Vicomtesse de Beauséant rules the Faubourg Saint-Germain from a drawing-room where a glance can make or unmake a newcomer, and she takes up Eugène de Rastignac as a kind of social experiment. Her authority rests on a
- [Victorine Taillefer](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/father_goriot_se/characters/victorine_taillefer.md): Victorine Taillefer lives at Mme. Vauquer's on crumbs while her wealthy father refuses to acknowledge her, and her meekness makes her almost invisible at the dinner table. Rastignac's passing kindness stirs something in 
- [Poiret](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/father_goriot_se/characters/poiret.md): Poiret shuffles through the Maison Vauquer in threadbare respectability, repeating phrases and deferring to anyone with firmer opinions. His passivity, which looks merely pitiable, becomes dangerous when Michonneau draws
- [Mademoiselle Michonneau](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/father_goriot_se/characters/mademoiselle_michonneau.md): Mlle. Michonneau sits at the boarding-house table measuring everyone's weaknesses, her sour virtue masking an appetite for gain. When the police need eyes inside the pension, she becomes their instrument, dragging the ha
- [Horace Bianchon](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/father_goriot_se/characters/horace_bianchon.md): Bianchon boards at the Maison Vauquer while grinding through his medical studies, poor but clear-eyed and generous. He treats Goriot's decline with professional care and personal kindness, and he offers Rastignac a count
- [Maxime de Trailles](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/father_goriot_se/characters/maxime_de_trailles.md): Maxime de Trailles moves through aristocratic drawing-rooms with the ease of a man who has never paid for anything himself, and Anastasie de Restaud's passion for him is his chief source of funds. His elegance conceals a
- [Baron de Nucingen](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/father_goriot_se/characters/baron_de_nucingen.md): Nucingen moves through Parisian finance with the weight of a man whose money can buy almost anything except the refinement his wife craves. He keeps Delphine on a tight allowance while she spends her evenings dazzling th
- [Comte de Restaud](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/father_goriot_se/characters/comte_de_restaud.md): Restaud belongs to the old nobility that measures worth in lineage, yet his marriage to Anastasie de Restaud has bound his fortune to the very Goriot money he would rather forget. He watches his wife's salon and her expe
- [Derville](https://www.betterreads.dev/discover/father_goriot_se/characters/derville.md): Honest lawyer who handles legal affairs for several characters including Goriot.

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