concept
The Gudgeon (social type)
Gudgeon
also: Пескарь
In "A Fishy Business"'s allegory, the gudgeon -- a small, easily caught bottom-feeder -- stands for the lowest rung of clerks and petitioners: pawnshop regulars who toil to keep their social betters in fashionable furs.
Reading notes
- A Fishy Business §23 The Gudgeon
The gudgeon (peskar'), a small, easily caught bottom-feeder -- and, in Saltykov-Shchedrin's near-contemporary fable "The Wise Gudgeon" (1883), already a byword for timid conformism -- here stands for the lowest rung of clerks and petitioners: pawnshop regulars who toil to keep their social betters (the chubs) in fashionable furs.