We might not know where N might be, but we guess that everything we are to encounter will fit into the usual familiar hierarchy. ‘In the provincial town of N there drew up a smart britchka-a light spring-carriage of the sort affected by … all persons who rank as gentlemen of the intermediate category.’ He’s given us a list of four types of men who might fit that category including, for instance, ‘land-owners possessed of about a hundred souls,’ and that’s the point. In fact, the narrator of this novel seems determined to create a world with no distinguishing features at all. Where are we? Somewhere in Russia in the first half of the 19th Century, but Gogol is reluctant to provide any details.
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