The Fortune of Gaspard is a novel of the Comtesse of Ségur, published in 1866.
Synopsis
The Thomas father has two wire, Gaspard, raises gifted and ambitious, and Lucas, not very gifted for the studies but good wire, good brother and good workman. Man coleric and rough, the Thomas father is very hard with Gaspard, which dreams to leave the farm and to make fortune in industry, like the rich person Mr Féréor, to which the Manufacture close attracts it more than the paternal farm.Gaspard ends up entering the factory of Mr Féréor, of which it gains confidence. Cold character and calculator, he does not hesitate to denounce his colleagues or to prevail himself their good ideas near Mr Féréor. He is sometimes disturbed by vague remorses, but its only ambition is to become the right-hand man of his employer.
This one however recognizes in Gaspard the young man that it was, while Gaspard tests for him a very subsidiary recognition. Their relation is done more affectionate, and Gaspard ends up being adopted by that which he regards as his benefactor.
Whereas Gaspard carried out all its ambitions, it feels always dissatisfied. The rival of Mr Féréor, the Frölichen industrialist, threat to ruin the adoptive father of Gaspard if the young man does not marry his daughter, Mina. Gaspard accepts this marriage of convenience to save the Féréor establishments, and discovers with surprised a charming young girl of which it éprend quickly.
Mined brings to Mr Féréor and Gaspard what they missed and that them fortune could not bring to them: love of life, piety and charity.
The novel
Dedicated to the grandson of the countess, Paul de Pitray, the novel proposes to show that the instruction alone is not sufficient to make an honest man. Science without conscience is only ruin of the heart , wrote Rabelais, and it is a little the message which to her manner the countess of Ségur wants to transmit to her grandson: it is useful to work well. And you will know, which Gaspard learned only well late, how much it is necessary to be good, charitable and pious.Historical context
For the first time in her work, the countess of Ségur is interested in the industrial world and this character whom English would call the coil-made man . She could take as a starting point the manufacture of Boisthorel, located at 2 km of the castle of Nouettes where she had settled.France was still at that time a primarily rural country, outdistanced by Great Britain and Germany as regards industrial development.
Rural France and industrial France in the novel
- the two factories which the countess of Ségur describes are still of family small companies. They deliver already a Concurrence which takes the form of a war without pity, incarnated by German Frölichein, who does not move back in front of nothing to fly of the market shares to his French rival Féréor. It is also a world moving, where the technical innovation is the engine of the richness.
a new invention, a source of glory and of re-elected for Sir, of the fabric coppers and zinc; Mister manufactures zinc and copper boards; and Mister will make fabric with roofer of it, without expenses and sorrow; thousands of meters per day and costing little.
Mr Féréor is a hard owner and without states of heart. He is assisted by foremen whose father of Gaspard gives the following portrait:
Your, your, your, I do not make fun badly of your foremen. In those of Mr. Féréor there is not of them one which only goes to the mass; they drink their money with the coffee and hustle their workmen. Not, not, I do not give my children to make of them good-for-nothings, smokers, coffee runners!When Gaspard announces its determination to take the industrialist like model, its schoolmaster prevents it:
were you rich like Mr. Féréor, you will not be happier than him, you will feel unceasingly that you miss something: your heart will remain dry; you will not love anybody and nobody will love you. You will always seek true happiness without never finding it.
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Opposite this industrial world, the rural world, catholic, still enraciné in traditional values, the religion, work. The countess does not make of it an idyllic table which would be opposed to the industrial world rough with the profit and corrupted. The father of Gaspard is rough which beats his wife, her children, its workmen and thinks that the school is not used for nothing. Lucas, the good wire, is a veined peasant who is delighted to have sold extremely expensive a morbid heifer by making it pass for an excellent animal.
Le manager paid three hundred and eighty francs, called its farmhand, and took along the animal, magic to have a cotentine Trap door, while the Thomas father was magic to have sold his claimed cotentine.
Role of the state education
The passage of the rural world to the industrial world is articulated on the development of education. The school of the village plays a double part: the first consists in giving to the peasants a sufficient education so that they can read and write, and that they do not risk, by ignorance, to be made notch by more erudite than them. It is a utilitarian function which several episodes illustrate in which a peasant loses money fault of knowing to read.The second function of the school is to release from the rural elites which will provide the executives of industry. The prize giving is the occasion for headhunters to locate the young talents and to make to them offers enticing in industry. It is then the company which provides them the scientific and technical training which enables them to develop the company and thus to save to him more money.
Literary context
The character of Gaspard, cynical go-getter, kind of rural Rastignac, incites criticisms to evoke Balzac. However the intelligent, unhappy small farmer in the rough medium which it his and is decided to escape from it by all the means, is not without pointing out Julien Sorel, hero of the Rouge and the black as Michel Tournier notes it.
Adaptations
- '' the Fortune of Gaspard'', Gerard Blain, adaptation for television (1992)
See too
Related articles
External bond
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'' the Fortune of Gaspard '' on Gallica
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