The Tall Old Man is a novella in Balzac's The Comedy of Man, in which Balzac shows a father's doting on his daughter in a unique way.
The protagonist of "Tall Old Man", Gaullio, is a flour merchant who made a fortune by speculation during the French Revolution, and after the death of his beloved wife, Goglio's longing and infatuation for his wife was transferred to his daughters in an indiscriminate way, and the father's love and mother's love were integrated into one, which can really be described as the French version of "love transfer".
Goriot exhausted all luxuries for his daughters, including unprincipled love and indulgence. As long as his daughters demanded them, he could do everything in his power to satisfy them, and at the age of seventy the old man tearfully melted the set of gilded gold and silver tableware, so that his youngest daughter, Madame Neutzingen, could live happily with her lover. Goriot gave the last bit of principal "selflessly" and left penniless.
Goriot is happy because his daughter is happy, and he loses his dignity as a human being because of his daughter. Goriot is full of love for his daughter, and he desperately wants to fulfill her child's wishes. In a sense, Gorio represents fatherly love.
Balzac expressed gaurio's own love for his children with a great deal of ink and ink, and he gave everything he could to make his daughter choose a husband. However, the daughters constantly search for their old fathers in order to satisfy their vanity, and Gorio sees the hypocrisy and selfishness of his daughters, but still responds to their needs. The old man once said, "Only when I became a father did I understand the ubiquity of God." ”
Goriot's fatherly love is undoubtedly great, and every father loves his children and hopes that his children can live a happy and satisfying life. Balzac differed in his description of the problem from the views of the other bourgeoisie, and he portrayed the tall old man as a kind man.
Goriot's fatherly love is paranoid and crazy. Although his two daughters took him endlessly, he took it as his own spiritual enjoyment. He said, "They smiled at me by the way, oh! It was like a beautiful ray of sunshine shining in the sky, gilding the world", "I love my daughter more than God loves mankind", "I, in order not to shed tears, I can even betray the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit!" ”
For the sake of his daughter's smiling face, Goriot can actually betray his faith, which is an almost fanatical fatherly love.
In order to be able to look at his daughter from a distance, Gorio went to bribe the maids around his daughter, inquired about their time to go out, secretly waited for their carriage on the Champs Elysées, and his heart fluttered and excited when he saw the carriage passing, and he even envied the horses pulling the carriage and was willing to be the puppy on his daughter's lap.
Goriot's love for his daughters is also selfish, almost perverted. In order to possess his daughter, the tall old man went to great lengths, and Balzac also described Gorio's love in this way: "Lying at the feet of his daughter, kissing her feet, the old man stared into her eyes for half a day, and grinded his head on her shirt, like a young and gentle lover." ”
This possessiveness is very insane, and all he does is to exchange it for his daughter's love. But his daughter was careless about this love and never really cherished it. This fatherly love is very paranoid, because Goriot loves his wife so much that he transfers it to his daughter in a different way.
When he saw his youngest daughter, Danfina, he actually lay on the ground and kissed her feet, rubbing his head on her skirt. In the eyes of ordinary people, this is simply an incomprehensible thing, a father who has given everything for his children, but in front of the children, he lowers his body so humble.
Maxime, the lover of Gorio's eldest daughter, was in debt of one hundred thousand francs, and the eldest daughter begged her father for help in paying the debt, but he himself was already poor and penniless. He said: "I can't come up with this money, unless I steal it, I will definitely go." This sentence is like a miserable cry of a person on his deathbed, and the father has exhausted his heart.
Blind, twisted, and partial, Goriot has been living a life of self-deception, knowing the ruthlessness and injustice of his daughters but unwilling to admit this fact, and continues to do everything possible to cater to his daughters with money.
Goriot's giving and rewarding is seriously unbalanced, and he impassionedly and selflessly imposes paternal love on his two daughters, but he does not realize that in that society where money is supreme, he did not teach his two daughters to know how to reciprocate, and his final tragic end was expected, and the creator of this ending was precisely himself.
In the heart of a daughter, money is fatherly love, and fatherly love is money. Balzac borrowed the mouth of the tall old man and said to the reader: "Don't the country forget to stomp your father under your feet?" "This social cause is an external factor that causes the tragedy of the father's love of the old man.
Goriot's fatherly love also has a certain masochistic tendency, and in order to satisfy his daughter's selfish desires, he prefers to give everything to his daughter. For more than 20 years, he gave all his love and effort to his daughter, and overnight, he gave all his property to his daughter, and after squeezing himself dry, his daughter abandoned him.
But he loved his daughter from beginning to end, and in order to satisfy his daughter, he was willing to be poor, and everything he did was to make his children happy.
Gaullio once told Rastigné that the focus of his life was on his daughter, as long as her daughter could eat well and play well, what clothes she wore, and where she slept didn't matter. When the daughter is warm, she will be warm, the daughter will smile, she will not be upset, only if the daughter is sad, she will be sad.
Goriot is obedient to his daughter and gives and takes, and the father seems to be synonymous with an "inexhaustible" wealth.
When he gives without mercy, he feels that he is the happiest person in the world, it is the eve of the storm, and finally brews his own tragedy in the wave of paranoia and coddling. Gaullio associates his happiness and happiness with his daughter, and this fatherly love is very pathological, a kind of masochistic love, which seems great but is very cruel.
At the end of the story, Goriot dies with deep regret, and it is not only his body that is buried, but also his father's love, kindness, and warmth. The tragedies of the old man's life are all caused by money.
Gaullio was an upstart during the French bourgeois revolution, relying on speculation to make a fortune, under the rise of the status of the bourgeoisie, society has been reduced to a money society, money relations have penetrated into every family, and all feelings can be purchased with money. The so-called morality has become a tool of money, and if you want to become a superior person, you must have money, and without money you will only become an outcast of society.
And The children of Goriot have been completely corrupted by money in this life, they only love money, they have no concept of family affection, and only when they are short of money, they will think of their elderly father.
But as a father, Goriot loves his two daughters, and this fatherly obsession outweighs his fascination with money.
He regarded his two daughters as the whole of his life, preferring to give everything he had, pouring all his passion for love into them, and his father's love had no principle, no bottom line, and could even be said to be a pile of money.
The fatherly love that Goglio gave to his two daughters is not worthy of our praise, because it is a fatherly love that feels pitiful, heavy, and unprincipled.
The essence of Goliot's fatherly love is based on money, self-centered bourgeois money worship, and the cornerstone of his father's love is the moral concept of feudal patriarchy, the old man still holds the ancient ethics and morality in his heart, this beauty of human nature is desecrated by the contemporary money-based way of thinking, a father's true feelings are given, who can not be moved?
Fatherly love is a noble human emotion, and it is indeed the ultimate reaction in Golioz, and the greatest irony of the decadent bourgeois idea of the omnipotence of money.
Goriot's doting and indulgence of his two daughters eventually caused tragedy of his own destiny. Gaurio's love for his daughters was as Mrs. Voguet described him: "a strong animal." ”
Gaullio placed all his energy and financial resources on his two daughters with blindness and piety, and of course the daughters learned to take from an early age, to measure everything by money. Therefore, Goliot's gratuitous giving, unprincipled giving, will inevitably slip out of the orbit of the true meaning of fatherly love.
"The Tall Old Man", as Balzac's representative work, has a very significant significance. In a sense, Gaullio's tragic fate is caused both by his own personality and by the development of the times, and he is caused by the erosion of feudal patriarchal ideas by the morality of money.