Dysfunctional Family Analysis

Chapter 3 : Portrayal of the use of dysfunctional families

Balzac’s use of dysfunctional family in old goriot shows how money in an developing capitalist society not , only had a major, role in shaping the actions and personalities of specific individuals but also harm such institutions as the family. Money as a medium of social exchange distorts traditional social and family ties and leads not only to the central figures being isolated from, those around them in the greater world, of business and society but also from members of their own family. In the words of George luckas “he show how stormily accumulating money capital usuriously exploits town and countryside and how the old social formations and ideologies must yield before its triumphant onslaught.” Thus, through his construction of dysfunctional families in old goriot, Balzac makes a larger critique on the barbarian aspects of capitalism that had destroyed the conceptions of humanity, human society, art etc.; the tragic self dissolution of bourgeois ideologies by their own economic root, by the aspects of capitalism.

Although written and published 1834-35, the story told in old goriot begins in 1819 when France in between a fierce fight to establish a new national identity which would include both the monarchical