Reading Order
Pierre and JeanPierre and Jean Reading Order
Pierre and Jean (Pierre et Jean, 1888) by Guy de Maupassant is the author's second novel and his most psychologically refined work — a short, precisely constructed narrative about two brothers in Le Havre whose relationship is destroyed when Jean receives an unexpected inheritance from a family friend, and Pierre begins to suspect what the inheritance implies about their mother's past. Maupassant prefaced the novel with his famous essay 'The Novel,' in which he argues against the omniscient moralizing narrator and for the author's complete effacement behind the story — and Pierre and Jean itself exemplifies that theory, presenting a devastating psychological drama with no authorial comment. The novel is one of the finest examples of French realism at the sentence level: spare, exact, and devastating.
Where to start
Pierre and Jean (1888) — the complete novel; no prequel required
Complete Pierre and Jean Book List
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Pierre and Jean (Pierre et Jean)
Guy de Maupassant·1888
Pierre and Jean — Frequently Asked Questions
Is Pierre and Jean part of a series?
No. Pierre and Jean is a self-contained novel. It is one of only six novels that Maupassant wrote — he was primarily a short story writer, producing nearly three hundred stories over his short career — and it is the most carefully constructed of the six, demonstrating in novel form the same economy and precision that characterize his best stories. The novel is complete in itself and can be read without knowledge of Maupassant's other work, though readers who know his stories will recognize the same interest in psychology, the same Normandy and Parisian settings, and the same unsentimental observation of human behavior.
What is the significance of Maupassant's preface 'The Novel'?
Maupassant's preface to Pierre and Jean, titled 'The Novel' (Le Roman), is one of the key documents of nineteenth-century French literary theory. In it, Maupassant argues against the omniscient narrator who comments on events and judges characters, in favor of an author who presents events without commentary and trusts the reader to draw conclusions. He argues that the best novelists create the impression of life without explaining or moralizing. The preface is as important a statement of naturalist-realist principles as Zola's prefaces to the Rougon-Macquart novels, and it is worth reading alongside the novel itself.
What is Pierre and Jean about?
The novel begins when the Roland family — a retired Parisian jeweler in Le Havre, his wife Louise, and their two sons Pierre (older, a doctor) and Jean (younger, a lawyer) — learns that their friend Léon Maréchal has died and left his entire estate to Jean alone. The unexplained bequest triggers Pierre's suspicion: why would Maréchal leave everything to Jean and nothing to him? As Pierre investigates the family's past, he becomes increasingly certain that Maréchal was Jean's father — that his mother had an affair — and his certainty destroys his relationship with Jean, alienates him from his family, and ultimately drives him to take a position as ship's doctor on a transatlantic liner. The novel's emotional center is Pierre's suffering: his inability to unknow what he suspects, and his horror at what his knowledge does to the family he loves.
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