La Société Rurale du Bourbonnais à l'époque du Père Tiennon

Abstract

The comparison between La Vie d'un Simple, a novel situated in the Bourbonnais in the 19th century, and contemporary documents, allows us to appreciate the extent of the sociological interest in E. Guillaumin's work. The principal division within rural society was that between land owner and non landowner. The percentage of landowners was small and the distribution of land ownership highly inegalitarian. At the upper end of the rural hierarchy are to be found several very wealthy landowners, such as le Fauconnet and le Boutry in La Vie d'un Simple. The middle classes and medium landowners do not have a major part to play ; it is the small landowners who preeominate, with impoverished peasants at their head. But the vast majority of the peasants were dependant smallholders : farmers, metayers (such as Tiennon), day labourers and servants. The most frequent type, metayage, helped to preserve an almost feudal relationship between landowner and tenant, all the more so as there was generally an intermediary, the feared and hated farmer general (again, le Fauconnet in La Vie d'un Simple). The malpractices of the farmer generals explain the radical behaviour of the Bourbonnais peasants. The township brought together the other professions and jobs essential to rural life, and tension between «townies» and «yokels» became very marked.