Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress

There are several examples in Balzac and the Little Chinese Seamstress that suggest that this is a coming-of-age novel. The narrator and Lou’s work at Phoenix Mountain, relationship with the Little Seamstress, and reading of the various writings changed their character, and possibly deteriorated their innocence.
In the beginning, the boys work as bucket carriers, where they transported the village’s manure and waste up the steep mountain side to dispose of it. The narrator explains “with each step we could hear the liquid sewage sloshing in the bucket just behind our ears” (15). After a few months at Phoenix Mountain, their job changed to coal miners. At “the little coal mine,” the narrator and his friend spent hours “naked except for a harness...in a passage so low they had to get down on all fours and crawl” (28).
Lou and the narrator also saw first love in the Little Seamstress. During their first visit to her house, the narrator “noticed an untamed quality about her eyes…her eyes had the gleam of uncut gems, of unpolished metal, which was heighted by the long lashes and the delicate slant of the lids” (24).
Lastly, the books they read caused the change of the two boy’s character. After stealing books from their former friend, Four-Eyes, Lou and the narrator spent a whole month “overwhelmed, spellbound by the mystery of the outside world, especially the world of women, love and sec as revealed to us by these Western writers day after day, page after page, book after book” (109).
The work done at Phoenix Mountain, the love found in the Little Seamstress, and the books they stole clearly altered the development of Lou and the narrator. Despite their mature age of 18 and 19, life outside the city had been unknown to them. I believe the two characters did lose the majority of their innocence, even by the moment they arrived at the mountain. They took advantage of Lou’s storytelling, their knowledge of keeping time, and learned the art of winning a young girl’s heart.