Bouvard and Pécuchet: A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life, part 1 — Background and Themes

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In Category - Historical Psychological Social Fiction

Authors: Flaubert, Gustave, 1821-1880 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2008 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: France -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction; French fiction -- Translations into English; Middle class -- France -- History -- 19th century -- Fiction; Middle class -- France -- Retirement -- Fiction Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 80,153

Reading time 349 min

Text sections 9

The source record for Bouvard and Pécuchet: A Tragi-comic Novel of Bourgeois Life, part 1 — Background and Themes measures this digital text at 80,153 words, 5 hr 49 min estimated reading time, and 9 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 15.7 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “France -- Social life and customs -- 19th century -- Fiction,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #25014

Flaubert's satirical novel follows two Parisian copy-clerks who retire to the countryside, only to fail repeatedly at mastering agriculture, chemistry, archaeology, and history. The excerpts reveal their obsessive cataloging, absurd confidence, and the tension between Enlightenment ideals and bourgeois incompetence.

Editorial Edition Score 4.8/5

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Description quality20 pts
Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
EPUB file integrity20 pts

Total of 100 points, scaled to a 2.5-5.0 range. Editions with an empty description or a missing EPUB file are not scored.

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File: pg25014

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CHAPTER I. PAGE KINDRED SOULS 1

CHAPTER II. EXPERIMENTS IN AGRICULTURE 26

CHAPTER III. AMATEUR CHEMISTS 72

CHAPTER IV. RESEARCHES IN ARCHÆOLOGY 123

CHAPTER V. ROMANCE AND THE DRAMA 163

CHAPTER VI. REVOLT OF THE PEOPLE 191

CHAPTER VII. "UNLUCKY IN LOVE" 228

CHAPTER VIII. NEW DIVERSIONS 242

FACING PAGE "NO, MY LITTLE ANGEL! DON'T BE AFRAID!" (See page 238) _Frontispiece_

MUTUALLY BECOMING AFFLICTED, THEY LOOKED AT THEIR TONGUES 90

HE WAS ABOUT TO CLASP HER IN HIS ARMS 234

As there were thirty-three degrees of heat the Boulevard Bourdon was absolutely deserted.

Farther down, the Canal St. Martin, confined by two locks, showed in a straight line its water black as ink. In the middle of it was a boat, filled with timber, and on the bank were two rows of casks.

Beyond the canal, between the houses which separated the timber-yards, the great pure sky was cut up into plates of ultramarine; and under the reverberating light of the sun, the white façades, the slate roofs, and the granite wharves glowed dazzlingly. In the distance arose a confused noise in the warm atmosphere; and the idleness of Sunday, as well as the melancholy engendered by the summer heat, seemed to shed around a universal languor.

Two men made their appearance.

One came from the direction of the Bastille; the other from that of the Jardin des Plantes. The taller of the pair, arrayed in linen cloth, walked with his hat back, his waistcoat unbuttoned, and his cravat in his hand. The smaller, whose form was covered with a maroon frock-coat, wore a cap with a pointed peak.

As soon as they reached the middle of the boulevard, they sat down, at the same moment, on the same seat.

In order to wipe their foreheads they took off their headgear, each placing his beside himself; and the little man saw "Bouvard" written in his neighbour's hat, while the latter easily traced "Pécuchet" in the cap of the person who wore the frock-coat.

"Look here!" he said; "we have both had the same idea--to write our names in our head-coverings!"

"Yes, faith, for they might carry off mine from my desk."

"'Tis the same way with me. I am an employé."

Then they gazed at each other. Bouvard's agreeable visage quite charmed Pécuchet.

His blue eyes, always half-closed, smiled in his fresh-coloured face. His trousers, with big flaps, which creased at the end over beaver shoes, took the shape of his stomach, and made his shirt bulge out at the waist; and his fair hair, which of its own accord grew in tiny curls, gave him a somewhat childish look.

He kept whistling continually with the tips of his lips.

Bouvard was struck by the serious air of Pécuchet. One would have thought that he wore a wig, so flat and black were the locks which adorned his high skull. His face seemed entirely in profile, on account of his nose, which descended very low. His legs, confined in tight wrappings of lasting, were entirely out of proportion with the length of his bust. His voice was loud and hollow.

This exclamation escaped him:

"How pleasant it would be in the country!"

But, according to Bouvard, the suburbs were unendurable on account of the noise of the public-houses outside the city. Pécuchet was of the same opinion. Nevertheless, he was beginning to feel tired of the capital, and so was Bouvard.

And their eyes wandered over heaps of stones for building, over the hideous water in which a truss of straw was floating, over a factory chimney rising towards the horizon. Sewers sent forth their poisonous exhalations. They turned to the opposite side; and they had in front of them the walls of the Public Granary.

Decidedly (and Pécuchet was surprised at the fact), it was still warmer in the street than in his own house. Bouvard persuaded him to put down his overcoat. As for him, he laughed at what people might say about him.

Suddenly, a drunken man staggered along the footpath; and the pair began a political discussion on the subject of working-men. Their opinions were similar, though perhaps Bouvard was rather more liberal in his views.

A noise of wheels sounded on the pavement amid a whirlpool of dust. It turned out to be three hired carriages which were going towards Bercy, carrying a bride with her bouquet, citizens in white cravats, ladies with their petticoats huddled up so as almost to touch their armpits, two or three little girls, and a student.

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Two men meet on a deserted Paris boulevard under thirty-three degrees of heat, each having written his name inside his hat. This accidental symmetry launches Bouvard and Pécuchet into a friendship built on shared mediocrity and an insatiable appetite for encyclopedic knowledge. The novel’s first chapter establishes a pattern: the pair will seize upon a discipline—agriculture, chemistry, archaeology, history—devour its manuals, and apply its precepts with disastrous literalness. Flaubert’s prose oscillates between deadpan catalogues of their efforts and sudden, deflating ironies. The excerpts show them moving from confidence to confusion, as when they attempt to write a history of the Duke of Angoulême, only to discover that historical facts are unstable and that “history will never be fixed.” The comedy lies not in their failures alone but in the relentless, systematic way they pursue each new folly.

The Hat as Identity

The opening scene hinges on a trivial object: each man’s headgear bears his own name. Bouvard’s hat reads “Bouvard”; Pécuchet’s cap reads “Pécuchet.” This mutual discovery—that both had “the same idea—to write our names in our head-coverings”—launches their bond. The hats are not mere identifiers; they are emblems of a bureaucratic mindset that reduces identity to a label. Later, the pair will apply this same taxonomic impulse to everything they encounter: they classify plants, date artifacts, and seek genealogies in apple trees. The hat episode also foreshadows their tendency to mistake surface resemblance for deeper kinship. They assume that sharing a habit means sharing a soul. Flaubert undercuts this by showing how their projects consistently unravel, leaving them staring at contradictory evidence.

The Comedy of Systematic Failure

Bouvard and Pécuchet approach each new field with the confidence of autodidacts. They read manuals, consult experts, and attempt to replicate results. Yet every endeavor collapses under the weight of its own contradictions. In archaeology, they “sought for quantities of absent things on their walls, ended by seeing them, but lost the recollection of what dates they represented.” In history, they discover that “dates are not always authentic,” that calendars vary, and that “architecture may lie.” The pattern is relentless: they begin with certainty, encounter a snag, and then pivot to a new system. Flaubert’s narration never mocks them overtly; instead, it accumulates details until the absurdity becomes overwhelming. The pair’s inability to learn from failure is the engine of the novel’s tragicomic momentum.

The Unreliability of Knowledge

A professor’s letter in the excerpts lists rules for historical criticism: reject impossible things, beware of forged medals, consider the biases of apologists. Bouvard and Pécuchet absorb these rules but cannot apply them consistently. They swing from credulity to skepticism, from believing Bossuet’s providential history to dismissing it as “farce-actor” rhetoric. Their crisis culminates in the realization that “history will never be fixed” because every historian selects evidence according to “some special predilection.” This epistemological vertigo is not resolved; the pair simply moves on to another project. Flaubert does not offer a solution. Instead, he presents the pursuit of certainty as a comedy of errors, where the protagonists’ earnestness only deepens their confusion.

Readers should attend to the rhythm of the pair’s enthusiasms: each chapter introduces a new discipline, a flurry of activity, and a quiet collapse. Flaubert’s sentences often mirror this pattern, building elaborate lists that end in deflation. The novel’s unfinished state—this is only part one—leaves the trajectory open, but the excerpts suggest that Bouvard and Pécuchet will continue to chase knowledge without ever grasping it. The comedy is in the gap between their ambition and their method.

I’ve always found a sweet, funny kinship between those two copy-clerks, endlessly cataloguing their certainties, and the bright-eyed courage in The Ranch Girls and Their Great Adventure — Edition Insights. Both worlds adore a fresh start. One mocks it; the other cherishes it. Years of shelf-sitting taught me that mischief and hope often drink from the same quiet cup.