To me the story was definitely a satire about actual social problems and practices. There appears to be a great deal of importance attached to rank. Kovaliov "can never forget for a moment" that he is a collegiate assessor. He refers to himself as "Major" Kovaliov (which, I think, is the corresponding military rank). His own nose manages to pass itself off as a civil counselor (a higher rank). It would not do for Kovaliov (a man of his station) to go about without a nose. It seems to me that Gogol is making a statement about society when he says a nose (and nothing more) can easily be mistaken for a high ranking civil servant. (When the nose if finally caught, the policeman remarks that if he hadn't been wearing his glasses, he too would have mistaken the nose for a "gentleman") It's almost as if he's saying the entire structure of society is meaningless. Kovaliov dosen't come off any better than his barber who has no rank at all.
I agree, there is a strong element of social satire in this story and the upperclasses (at least as represented by Kovalev) come out looking as bad as or even worse than everyone else. I especially like the "highly aristocratic lady [who] wrote a letter to the head keeper of the gardens to ask him to show that rare phenomenon [the nose] to her children, and, if possible, with instructive and edifying explanations for young boys."
You'll notice one thing we don't get in this story are "instructive and edifying explanations," or indeed, any explanation at all for all the strange goings-on of Kovalev's nose. But more about that later.
I also like Kovalev's absurd letter to Mrs. Podtochin accusing her of witchcraft, and her equally absurd reply.
It crossed my mind that Gogol could at times be referring to some other body part. To me, Praskovia Osipovna acts like something other than a nose was found in the loaf of bread....
Of course this really changes things around once we read that the "nose" is passing itself off as a civil counselor!
You are very clever, RichC! In fact an eminent American Slavist, Simon Karlinsky, wrote an entire Freudian analysis of "The Nose," arguing that Kovalev's nose is actually a symbol for another, unmentionable body part. That's one of the interesting aspects of this story to me, that it lends itself so readily to such different interpretations.
Of course, some of this has to do with the way the narrator of the story shares (or doesn't share) information. He seems to know everything and nothing at the same time. For example, he supplies us with innumerable descriptions of people’s appearances and habits, down to the minutest detail, such as the description of the doctor who tries to reattach Kovalev’s nose:
"he was a fine figure of a man; he had wonderful pitch-black whiskers, a fresh, healthy wife, he ate fresh apples in the morning and kept his mouth quite extraordinarily clean, rinsing it every morning for nearly three-quarters of an hour and brushing his teeth with five different kinds of brushes."
But when it comes to really important information, like what happened to the nose after the policeman stopped Ivan Yakovlevich on the bridge, then suddenly our narrator knows nothing: "But here the incident is completely shrouded in a fog and absolutely nothing is known of what happened next" (end of Chapter One). Chapter Two ends exactly the same way, with another protestation of ignorance from the narrator: "After that – but here again a thick fog descends on the whole incident, and what happened after that is completely unknown." Yet at the beginning of Chapter Three we’re informed very specifically that Kovalev’s nose became reattached to his face "on the seventh of April." So we even get dates, just not the most important, basic information that would allow us to explain how Kovalev’s nose could behave in such magical and mysterious ways, even adopting the role of a State Councillor!
