FLAUBERT'S LAST TESTAMENT
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foolish and ridiculous as possible. We are surely not free to suppose
that he had any inclination to show them mercy because they were
poor clerks and lived very limited lives. When the word bourgeoisie
came to be used in this country in a social-political sense, it was
likely to be restricted in its reference to people of pretty solid estab–
lishment. For the social group more or less analogous to that to which
Bouvard and Pecuchet belonged we used other words, choosing them
according to our political disposition-"white collar worker," "office
proletariat," "little people." But Flaubert made no such distinction.
For
him
the bourgeoisie was the bourgeoisie from top to bottom. He
saw the characteristics and the power of the class as continuous from
the wealthy to the poor.
If
he had thought to call the small bourgeoi–
sie the "little people," he would have done so contemptuously, hav–
ing reference to the size of their ideas and ideals and impulses. And
he feared them exactly for this littleness, which he believed they
wanted to impose upon the world. It was by no means the straitened
lives that Bouvard and Pecuchet lived for forty-seven years until the
great moment when they met each other that induced Flaubert to let
them off from being imbeciles. No doubt in reference to just
this
hole-and-corner existence he had at one time cruelly planned to call
the book The History of Two Cockroaches.
But two cockroaches cannot be friends with each other. And
Fran~ois
Denys Bartholomee Bouvard and Juste Romain Cyrille
Pecuchet-their Christian names once mentioned in their history are
forever forgotten and may as well be memorialized here- are truly
friends. This fact is of decisive importance in the novel- it defeats
whatever intention Flaubert may have had to make his protagonists
contemptible. To Flaubert friendship was not merely a relation: it
was a virtue, as it was for Montaigne, as it was for Swift.
Bouvard and Pecuchet are able to be friends because they are
sufficiently different in their natures, although at one
in
their minds.
Bouvard, as the sound of his name suggests, is the fleshier of the
two, the more rotund, and the easier-going, the more sentimental,
sensual, and worldly. Pecuchet, in accordance with his name, is lean
and stringy; he is puritanical, passionate, pessimistic-a little more
sincere
than Bouvard. Flaubert set great store by their names. When
he overheard Zola say that he had found the perfect name for a
character, Bouvard, he turned pale, and in the greatest agitation
begged Zola not to use it. And he was much troubled when a banker
