Pierre Et Jean

Pierre et Jean marked a turning point in the development of French fiction, situated as it is between traditional social realism and the pyschological novel. It is recognized as a classic study of filial jealousy and is also notable for its evocation of the Normandy coastline captured by the Impressionists.

The fraternal love that Pierre Roland feels for his younger brother Jean has always been tinged with jealousy. But when a lawyer arrives at the house of their parents, to declare that an old family friend has bequeathed his entire fortune to Jean, this envy rapidly becomes an all-consuming force. Despising himself for the hate that he feels, Pierre roams the seaport of Le Havre alone, desperate to come to terms with his brother's success. As he walks through the streets, however, one thought dominates his mind. Why was he not left a share of the friend's estate? Vivid, ironical and emotionally profound, Pierre and Jean is considered Maupassant's greatest novel - an intensely personal story of suspicion, jealousy and family love.

Pierre and Jean is a naturalist or psycho-realist work written by Guy de Maupassant. Pierre and Jean are the sons of Gérôme Roland, a jeweller who has retired to Le Havre, and his wife Louise. Pierre works as a doctor, and Jean is a lawyer. It recounts the story of a middle-class French family whose lives are changed when Léon Maréchal, a deceased family friend, leaves his inheritance to Jean. This provokes Pierre to doubt the fidelity of his mother and the legitimacy of his brother. Pierre discovers that his theories about his brother's illegitimacy are correct when he finds and reads old letters that his mother and Léon Marechal had been sending to each other. This investigation sparks violent reactions in Pierre, whose external appearance vis a vis his mother visibly changes. In his anguish, most notably shown during family meals, he tortures her with allusions to the past that he has now uncovered. Meanwhile, Jean's career and love life improve over the course of the novel while Pierre's life gets significantly worse. Provoked by his brother's accusations of jealousy, Pierre reveals to Jean what he has learned. However, unlike Pierre, Jean offers his mother love and protection. The novel closes with Pierre’s departure on an oceanliner. Thus the novel is organised around the unwelcome appearance of a truth (Jean’s illegitimacy), its suppression for the sake of family continuity and the acquisition of wealth, and the expulsion from the family of the legitimate son.

Chapter I "Tschah!" exclaimed old Roland suddenly, after he had remained motionless for a quarter of an hour, his eyes fixed on the water, while now and again he very slightly lifted his line sunk in the sea. Mme. Roland, dozing in the stern by the side of Mme. Rosemilly, who had been invited to join the fishing-party, woke up, and turning her head to look at her husband, said: "Well, well! Gerome." And the old fellow replied in a fury: "They do not bite at all. I have taken nothing since noon. Only men should ever go fishing. Women always delay the start till it is too late." His two sons, Pierre and Jean, who each held a line twisted round his forefinger, one to port and one to starboard, both began to laugh, and Jean remarked: "You are not very polite to our guest, father." M. Roland was abashed, and apologized. "I beg your pardon, Mme. Rosemilly, but that is just like me. I invite ladies because I like to be with them, and then, as soon as I feel the water beneath me, I think of nothing but the fish." Mme. Roland was now quite awake, and gazing with a softened look at the wide horizon of cliff and sea. "You have had good sport, all the same," she murmured. But her husband shook his head in denial, though at the same time he glanced complacently at the basket where the fish caught by the three men were still breathing spasmodically, with a low rustle of clammy scales and struggling fins, and dull, ineffectual efforts, gasping in the fatal air. Old Roland took the basket between his knees and tilted it up, making the silver heap of creatures slide to the edge that he might see those lying at the bottom, and their death-throes became more convulsive, while the strong smell of their bodies, a wholesome reek of brine, came up from the full depths of the creel. The old fisherman sniffed it eagerly, ...