PERE gORIOT
Balzac included in the novel Père Goriot, characters motivated by self-interest with detailed rendering of backgrounds, their emphasis on food, money and prestige. He also created psychological studies of his characters that linked their behavior to their milieu. Balzac’s description of Mademoiselle Victorine Taillefer uses this early form of psychological study and Realist style to project an image of the how things were for the young woman, their effects on her physical appearance and what could have been if fate had taken a different road. Balzac first compares Victorine with yellow-skinned girls afflicted with anemia because he describes her as sickly pale. An image is immediately presented to the reader of a girl who elicits empathy and is on death’s door. He then paints an image of her emotional state by comparing her features with sadness and poverty.