 Le Père Goriot is also recognized as a bildungsroman , wherein a naive young person matures while learning the ways of the world . Rastignac is tutored by Vautrin , Madame de Beauséant , Goriot , and others about the truth of Parisian society and the coldly dispassionate and brutally realistic strategies required for social success . As an everyman , he is initially repulsed by the gruesome realities beneath society 's gilded surfaces ; eventually , however , he embraces them . Setting aside his original goal of mastering the law , he pursues money and women as instruments for social climbing . In some ways this mirrors Balzac 's own social education , reflecting the distaste he acquired for the law after studying it for three years . 
