" Rastignac’s story speaks to an age of revolution and counterrevolution, of blurred and reasserted class boundaries, a turbulent age in which the pursuit of wealth has taken on stark new importance. Success requires learning to read subtle distinctions of class and the meanings embodied in the Paris cityscape. In this bourgeois century where everyone looks alike you are going to have to find out for yourself who’s who. If you are ambitious and if you are out for love, you will need to choose wisely to advance your career. You need to understand both the social hierarchy and the economic substratum that lies hidden beneath it. "

― Peter Brooks , Balzac's Lives