The Government Clerks (Bureaucracy) (1824-30)

Social Science (before it even existed)

In this novel Balzac depicts and criticizes government bureaucracy circa 1824, the government bureaucracy of the Bourbon and Louis-Phillipe periods, from the standpoint of his royalist political philosophy. Three aspects of the Bureaucratic system are criticized:

  1. "...wastefulness in man-power, its inefficiency, and general dilatoriness."
  2. "...the types of people attracted to the Civil Service."
  3. "...the injustice and jobbery prevalent in the matter of appointments and promotions: the preference given to third-rate minds and personalities through parliamentary, ministerial and individual wire-pulling."

A government official, Xavier Rabourdin, has been working privately in his spare time on a system for reforming government bureaucracy and the tax system. There's nothing very surprising in his plans to reform government bureaucracy. He wants to cut the number of civil servants and ministries, get more work done by fewer people for better pay, and make sure the most talented are the ones who get promoted.

To make the tax system more equitable he wants to get rid of the land tax and other forms of indirect taxation and substitute a personal tax based on "standard of living" as a "guide for estimating capacity to pay." The standard of living will be estimated from "expenditure on things such as house-rent, furniture, servants, equipages, etc."

He bases his reforms on two seemingly contradictory foundations: economic liberalism, "a doctrine of state which is...essentially laissez-faire, which owns no property, holds no monopolies, and does not dabble in production" and a royalist component, "the principle of personal rule, personal administration and an eminently personal relationship between ministers, higher officials and the rank and file of the civil service."

The Plot:

Just as the civil servant Rabourdin is about to get a long awaited promotion, the contents of the special list of civil servants he is planning to use in his reforms is leaked to the public. This list describes and assesses the civil servants of Paris and provides information on their sources of income outside the civil service. It is considered a breach of trust by various vested interests. Rabourdin is depicted by the cartoonist Bixiou "in a butcher's smock gleefully cutting the throats of his colleagues in the guise of chickens, geese, and turkeys in a cage" (Hunt, 188) Although Rabourdin fails to get the promotion, we learn in a piece of second hand gossip at the end of the novel that the inferior bureaucrat they appointed in his place failed to meet the rigors of the job and was demoted within six months.

Rabourdin's attractive and ambitious wife also plays a central role in the novel by pushing her husband to get a promotion and by using her feminine wiles to get the secretary to the minister (des Lupeaulx) to work in her husband's interests. Her efforts are ultimately thwarted by the family influence of an inferior candidate and two money lenders, Bidault (gigonnet) and Gobseck, who apply financial pressure to des Lupeaulx.

Ethnographic Description:

The novel is also notable for its descriptions of "government offices, their honeycombed premises, their furniture, the different grades of staff, their outlook, mentality, and habits." (Hunt, 187)

Balzac paints a whole series of portraits:

(Hunt, 187-188)

Many of the characters have strange pre-occupations and hobbies outside of work. Colleville "delights in drawing Nostradamus-like prognostications from the anagrams of personal names." (Hunt, 188) Du Bruel writes vaudeville for the stage. Phellion teaches at an all girl's school. Bixiou publishes cartoons and gallavants about Bohemia.

The character of the cartoonist Bixiou was actually based upon a friend of Balzac's, Monnier, who may have provided Balzac with the idea of writing this novel in the first place with his books of cartoons depicting government bureaucrats. (Hunt, 188-190)

(Long, Les Employees, brcrc10.txt)