“The Nose” follows a man named Collegiate Assessor Kovalev as he inexplicably loses—and tries to get back—his nose. In the time between detaching and reattaching, the nose himself has an adventure: dressing and acting like a gentleman of higher rank than his owner. Set in status-obsessed St. Petersburg during a time of widespread economic disparity, Gogol embeds a scratching critique of society within the narrator’s fashion-based descriptions of the story’s three principal characters: Kovalev, Yakovlevich, and the titular nose. As the characters in the story rely on sartorial choices as a type of language to communicate social position, Gogol implies that this behavior shows how shallow the characters are: to a fault, they are all focused on outward appearances, not the persons underneath.
Like the age-old adage “dress for the job you want, not the job you have,” Yakovlevich’s own attire—plus his observations of other peoples’ outfits—show that he aspires to be accepted by the upper crust of society and be perceived as a man of status and wealth, even though he has neither in reality. To eat breakfast in his own home, Yakovlevich pairs a dressy “tailcoat” with his “underclothes” for the “sake of propriety.” Presumably the only bit of formal wear Yakovlevich can afford is the tailcoat, marking his outfit as both comic and tragic. While Yakovlevich is perhaps not doing the best job dressing like a true upper-class man, his breakfast outfit shows that he deeply admires the elite and longs to emulate them, even if he doesn’t actually enjoy the riches and social rank that they do.
At breakfast, Yakovlevich finds a detached, lifeless nose in his breakfast, which he immediately recognizes as belonging to a man named Kovalev. To avoid any trouble with Kovalev, a man of a higher class than himself, Yakovlevich decides to dump the nose in the river. As Yakovlevich walks the napkin-wrapped nose to the river, he fears the patrolling officers. But, even as he fearfully imagines the police taking him in, his thoughts turn to the stately uniforms that the officers wear: “He could already picture the scarlet collar, beautifully embroidered with silver, the sword . . . and he trembled all over.” Yakovlevich’s admiration for the officer uniforms betrays a reverence for the power and status they hold in society. His “tremb[ling]” suggests that he finds this power awe-inspiring, fearsome, and perhaps even rousing.
While Yakovlevich is repeatedly overcome with longing to be an upper-class man, the narrator reminds the reader through another fashion-based description that in reality, Yakovlevich is simply not part of the elite. The narrator provides more details Yakovlevich’s coat, noting that it is “piebald […] black, but all dappled with brownish-yellow and gray spots. In place of three buttons there hung only threads." Through this sartorial description, the narrator presents Yakovlevich as representative of his low class—“like every decent Russian artisan, a terrible drunkard”—emphasizing that clothing can be used as a type of language to denote status, or lack thereof.
Although he’s of a higher class than Yakovlevich, Kovalev longs for people to perceive him as more elite than he really is and uses his clothing and general appearance to do so. The narrator reveals that Kovalev took the short, shady route to his current rank of collegiate assessor, and that Kovalev “could not forget it for a moment.” This establishes Kovalev as a man of lower status than he would like, setting up for the ways in which he tries to signal a higher class through his appearance. To compensate, Kovalev dresses immaculately: “The collar of his shirt front was always extremely clean and starched.” He also uses his appearance more generally to signal that he is a proper, sophisticated man: “His side-whiskers were of the sort that can still be seen on provincial and regional surveyors, architects, and regimental doctors.” Of course, Kovalev is none of these things, but he attempts to indicate through his facial hair that he belongs among this segment of the elite. Kovalev even goes as far as to pass himself off as a major, which is higher than his actual rank. He attempts explicitly to do so through clothes, overcompensating with a bloated combination of "seals, of carnelian, with crests.” Once again, clothing is a visual language that communicates status and power—even if the person in question doesn’t truly hold those things.
In the second section of the story, the nose appears as a character in his own right. But not just as any man: the nose appears as a gentleman of even higher rank than Kovalev. The nose's ability to play the status game through the clothes it wears—not to mention the fact that the nose is, indeed, a nose—exposes the absurdity of St. Petersburg society’s preoccupation with appearances. In a ridiculous turn of events, the nose passes as a “gentleman in a uniform.” He travels around in a fancy carriage, donning a “gold-embroidered uniform with a big standing collar” with a pair of “kidskin trousers” and a “plumed hat” which together signal the “rank of state councilor.” Like Kovalev and Yakovlevich, the nose attempts to propel himself into a higher class through his sumptuous clothes.
Later, lifeless and unclothed, the nose is more akin to a piece of “wood” than a person. Through the ridiculous character of the nose, Gogol deepens the idea that the story’s characters are so caught up in superficial appearances that they become blind to the people beneath the fancy clothes—like, for example, the fact that one such person was a nose. That the nose can pass as an elite member of society without a body indicates that the person wearing the clothes is inconsequential to the performance of a gentleman. Instead, it is the outward signal of wealth and power through fashion that counts. In this way, Gogol implies that in this society, being elite has little to do with actually holding any power, and that this reality is just as absurd as a nose strutting around town in a big feathered hat.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Fashion, Appearances, and Status ThemeTracker
Fashion, Appearances, and Status Quotes in The Nose
On the twenty-fifth day of March,1 an extraordinarily strange incident occurred in Petersburg. The barber Ivan Yakovlevich, who lives on Voznesensky Prospect (his family name has been lost, and even on his signboard— which portrays a gentleman with a soaped cheek along with the words “Also Bloodletting”— nothing more appears), the barber Ivan Yakovlevich woke up quite early and sensed the smell of hot bread.
Ivan Yakovlevich fell silent. The thought of the police finding the nose at his place and accusing him drove him to complete distraction. He could already picture the scarlet collar, beautifully embroidered with silver, the sword . . . and he trembled all over.
Kovalev stretched and asked for the little mirror that stood on the table. He wished to look at a pimple that had popped out on his nose the previous evening; but, to his greatest amazement, he saw that instead of a nose he had a perfectly smooth place!
“Of course, I . . . anyhow, I’m a major. For me to go around without a nose is improper, you must agree. Some peddler woman selling peeled oranges on Voskresensky Bridge can sit without a nose; but, having prospects in view . . . being acquainted, moreover, with ladies in many houses: Chekhtareva, the wife of a state councillor, and others . . .Judge for yourself. . . I don’t know, my dear sir . . .”
He called Ivan and sent him for the doctor, who occupied the best apartment on the first floor of the same building. This doctor was an imposing man, possessed of handsome, pitch-black sidewhiskers and of a fresh, robust doctress, ate fresh apples in the morning, and kept his mouth extraordinarily clean by rinsing it every morning for nearly three quarters of an hour and polishing his teeth with five different sorts of brushes.
And Major Kovalev strolled on thereafter as if nothing was wrong, on Nevsky Prospect, and in the theaters, and everywhere. And the nose also sat on his face as if nothing was wrong, not even showing a sign that it had ever gone anywhere. And after that Major Kovalev was seen eternally in a good humor, smiling, chasing after decidedly all the pretty ladies and even stopping once in front of a shop in the Merchants’ Arcade to buy some ribbon or other, no one knows for what reason, since he was not himself the bearer of any decoration.
