SOURCE: Berrong, Richard M. “Vautrin and Same-Sex Desire in Le Père Goriot.” Nineteenth-Century French Studies 31, nos. 1 & 2 (fall-winter 2002-2003): 53-65.

In the following essay, Berrong examines the nature and presentation of the homosexuality of the character Vautrin in Le père Goriot, noting the differences between Balzac's views of same-sex desire and homoeroticism and modern essentialist conceptions.

An awareness of Vautrin's sexual interest in other men, and particularly Eugène Rastignac, in Balzac's Le Père Goriot is not new. Though Philippe Berthier, in his often cited article on male same-sex desire in the three “Vautrin” novels, Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes, Illusions perdues, and Le Père Goriot, “Balzac du côté de Sodome,” shows the extent to which eminent Balzac scholars like Bardèche and Barbéris fought to deny it as late as the 1970s (167-68), his own 1979 essay, while focusing largely on Splendeurs...