Peasants. Balzac O.

The novel depicts the rural population of France in its rich typicality, as an active and suffering hero of the novel. Balzac stands on the point of view of the protection of large land ownership. The EG, the large aristocratic estate of Count Monkorne, in the eyes of Balzac, is the concentration of centuries -old culture, according to its views, the only possible. The struggle for whether to be or not to be this “basis of culture” is the central point of the novel.

This action ends with a complete defeat of a large estate with its fragmentation into small peasant plots, ends as the stage of the revolution that began in 1789 and - in the future of Balzac - will end in the death of culture. This prospect creates a pessimistic main tone of the whole novel. Balzac wanted to write here the tragedy of large aristocratic land ownership and, together with it, the tragedy of culture.