FRENCH SOCIAL AND POLITICAL
HISTORY, 1851-1901, REVEALED

IN THE NOVELS OF EMILE ZOLA

Thesis for the Degree of M. A.
MICHIGAN STATE COLLEGE

Elaine Lanfia Beardslee
I949

 

 

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FRENCH SOCIAL AND POLITICAL HIS'IORI, 1851-1é01,
REVEALED IN THE NOVELS 0F
MILE ZOLA

presented by

Elaine Lantta Beardslee

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FRENCH SOCIAL AND POLITICAL HISTORY, 1851-1901,
REVEALED IN THE NOVELS OF

EMILE ZOLA

By
Elaine Lantta Beardslee

A THESIS

submitted to the School of Graduate Studies of Michigan
State College of Agriculture and Applied Science
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of

NMSTER OF ARTS

Department of History and Political Science

19h9

j THESIS

 

Acknowledgement

The writer of this essay wishes to express
her appreciation to Professor John B. Harrison
for his personal interest in this study as well
as his helpful guidance and constructive criticism
given during the writing of the paper. my gratitude
is also expressed to Professor Adrian Jaffe of the
English Department who gave many valuable suggestions

for the literary background involved in the study.

216853

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter Page
(‘E’Q'xlntroductionooooooooooooooooooo 1

II. A Brief Historical Survey of the Years
Covered by 2013.8 Novels 0 o o o o o o o o o 0 11‘

III. Political Attitudes and Opinions in
2013's Novels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

IV. Religious and Educational Attitudes in
ZOla'SNovebooooooooooooocoo Sh

V. Scientific and Intellectual Attitudes in
Zola's Novels . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65.

VI. Social Pictures in Zolals Novels . . . .-. . . . . -8q

VII. Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9O

I. Introduction

The novel as a valuable adjunct to the study of political, social,
and economic history has been inadequately utilized by students of
history. This has been unfortunate, for the novel as a literary instrus
ment possesses certain unique features which enable it to reveal accurately
the spirit of a particular age. Other literary forms are restricted in
numerous ways and consequently are unable to present the panorama of
life as completely and colorfully as the novel can.

The methods by which social and intellectual atmosphere is presented
in the novel vary according to the novelist's personal tastes. There are
of course many prose techniques available to all novelists including
narration, analysis, author or character comment, pure description, and
dialogue, most of which are used at one time or another in any novel.
Besides the various methods of presentation of his ideas, the novelist
is also at an advantage in that he is working with a loose form which
permits any number of setting, characters, and varieties of action.

There is no restriction of the length of the novel, for it is rarely

read at one sitting. This absence of restriction on length permits the
writer to encompass a long period of years or only a short time in his
story. 'When the novel does extend over a long period of years, the
novelist can exhibit gradual growth of character and development of
personality taking place in a definite social atmosphere. This historical

atmosphere can be achieved by overt methods of portraying the dress of

people, their manners, their literary and entertainment tastes, their
conversations on issues of the time. Or it can be revealed indirectly,
for often the absence of any direct reference to certain ideas or the
emphasis of particular attitudes in preference to others shows how
peonle were thinking at a particular time.

The novelist, no matter how empirical he endeavors to he, cannot
escape looking at the world through a set background of certain /><
religious, political, and social ideas. He may express his own ideas
through analytical comment or through the more subtle means of emphasi-
zing thoughts or actions which concur with his own. He may have the
characters discourse on his own and conflicting ideas. Regardless of
the technique of a particular author, in.the final essence, all writers
create a world in story form which is a representation of the real world.
The finished novel is then a personal direct impression of life; there-
fore, whether or not the reader agrees with the completed picture, it
is significant in revealing how one or a number of peeple did think,
feel, and act at a certain time in history. This adaptability of the
novel for telling a story taking place in a definite milieu renders it
a natural device for revealing the history of the times.

The student of history who decides to use novels as a supplementary
source in his study must be discerning in his selection and cautious
in his treatment. First, of course, the student should be familiar
with the general historical period with which the novel deals. At all
times some consideration of the author as a person must be made, for
the student should be able to detect those attitudes in the novel which

are the author's own and those which belong to the characters. The

student must recognize the particular biases an author may have in
order to evaluate their importance in relation to the weight the author
gives them. Finally the student should not accept the novel as a final
source for historical study. He must always remember that the novelist
by intention is first an author dealing with fictitious material and
only secondarily and indirectly a social historian. The novelist as

an artist deals with contemporary material which may and most often

has to be revised and adapted to fit his story, which after all is the
main purpose of a novel.

Not all novels, but an astounding number may be used as valuable
historical aids. Many, including some of the category highly advertised
as "historical novels" are nothing more than romances, which at the
height of their success, may form the basis for inferior Hollywood
pictures. The better ones, however, do act as a legitimate source for
gaining historical insight into Specific periods and frequently incite
the reader to further study of the period narrated. One such work is

Hawthorne's Scarlet Letter which probably depicts the moral austerity

 

of New England Puritan life more impressively than any number of
documentary works on the same subject. The book as well as displaying
the external life of the Puritans probes into the spiritual foundations
and religious atmosphere of Puritanism, while at the same time revealing
Hawthorne's mental attitude toward the New England heritage.

Balzac's Human Comedy was envisioned to paint the picture of all

 

of French society in the first half of the nineteenth century. Almost

-

any one of the novels in this gigantic series is another example of the

type of novel which reveals social manners. In Pbre Goriot we see a

 

JrHEClG

 

young lad from the provinces finding his place in Paris. The devasta-
ting effect of the city life on the country person is revealed in a
manner which shows the author's intense feelings on the social relation-
ship of the French city, particularly Paris, to the individual. The
Russian writers, Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, have shown a unique
capacity for revealing in literature the social, religious, and political
life of nineteenth century Russia. Anyone of Dostoyevsky's novels, Th2.

Brothers Karamazov or Crime and Punishment, despite the author's personal

 

 

interest in studying the human soul, is invaluable in portraying the
social temper of the period as well as the author's philosophy. Likewise,

Anna Karenina, primarily the story of a woman's passions, at the same

 

time is artistic in its display of the social life of higher levels of

Russian society. Turgenev's Fathers and Children is another example

 

of the searching of contemporary life, in this case the study of an
intellectual movement, nihilism.
Charles Dickens' novels of social protest in early nineteenth-cen-

tury England, the work houses in Oliver TWist, the debtor's problems in

 

ngid Cppperfield; Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice; Victor Hugo's ESE

 

Miserables; Margaret Mitchell's moving story of southern society in the

 

Civil'War, Gone with the'Wind, are only a few of the innumerable examples

 

in the literature of the world which reflect the ideas of their times.
The contemporary novel has shown a tendency to probe social issues and
current philOSOphies: the harsh life of the southern sharecropper inter-
twined with the problems of land tenure and conservation and.the eternal

problem of human rights in John Steinbeck's The Grapes giJWrath;

 

l

quSIS _.

v-waav-vv a..——-- .

 

 

 

revolutionary China in the late 1920's in André'Malraux's Man's Fate;
a grappling with one of the vital phiIOSOphies of today, communism, in
Arthur Koestler's Darkness 32.3222t

As the above examples illustrate, there are as many types of novels,
romantic, realistic, stream-of-consciousness, the so—called naturalistic,
sociological, as there are approaChes to life. The so-called naturalisticil
novel attempts a scientific investigation of the facts of life and should I
therefore be highly suitable for a survey of social and political history. I
Other types of novels may also be valuable in the study of history, but
the "naturalistic" novel was the first which consciously attempted to
picture life as it appeared. French authors were among the first to
make extended use of this type of novel, and a study of the naturalistic
novel in France should reveal historical atmosphere in that country. I
have chosen to study the*work of Emile Zola as an addition to historical
knowledge of France for various reasons. Zola has been considered by
many to be the leader as well as the most representative member of the
naturalistic writers. The quantity of his literary work, the diverse
subject matter, as well as the availability of his work in translation
to the American student all contribute to making a study of his works as
one approach to a survey of French political and social history in the
latter half of the nineteenth century.

There have been many misunderstandings of the naturalistic novel
as conceived by the French writers as well as by writers of other countries.
A large amount of hostility toward the novels of Zola, the Goncourt

brothers, De Maupassant, and Alphonse Daudet resulted in.part because of

misunderstandings of readers as to the purposes of this type of novel.

It was thought that these novelists deliberately drew on unpleasant
subjects with an ulterior motive of making their works as pessimistic
and sordid as possible. The writers themselves considered their work
pessimistic only insofaras the society around them was depressing;
optimistic in that they hoped the portrayal of the sores of society
would hasten reform. An article in the Atlantic Monthly illustrates one
critical attitude toward the French naturalists:

Only it is to be feared that with their close Chinese life, their
tendency to study the warts rather than the beauties of many their
neglect of large classes of contemporary life, and above all their
absorbing care for foray the modern French novelists are not getting
hold of that large humanity which is alone eternally interesting.
Another critical view held by many was that only a very select mature
audience could read the French novels, for while they might have a
serious purpose, in the final event they were dangerous. This opinion
is illustrated in an editorial article of the Literary'WOrld:

...The danger is that, like the bottle of carbolic acid whose contents
got by mistake into a boy's stomach near Boston the other day, and
killed him, such books will fall into the hands of readers to whom they
will prove poison and death. If books could be prescribed by authority,
and taken in doses under regulation like other powerful agents, tbs
dangerous among them could be circulated with far greater safety.

Among the serious students of literature, there are varied inter-

pretations of naturalism. 'William Nitze and E. Preston Dargan consider

 

lAnon., Selection in "The Contributors Club," the Atlantic Monthly,
VOL-33' (May, 1881;), p. 727.

2Anon., "Concord Philosophy and Zola," the Literary world, Vol. 17
(August 7, 1886), p. 26h.

it an excessive form of realism possessing the following characteristics:
First, it allows a still larger variety of subjects, emphasizing the

lower and coarser forms of life; it presents this material in a fashion
which is often revolting ... it magnifies the study of the industries

and seeks to apply to fiction the processes of the natural sciences;

from these, taken.in their application to heredity and environment, it
draws its confieption of life — deterministic, fatalistic, essentially
pessimistic.

The renowned English critic of French letters, George Saintsbury, considers
the aims of the naturalists twofold: first, "exact and almost photographic
delineation of the accidents of modern life" and second "uncompromising
non-suppression of the essential features and functions of that life
which are usually supressed." h A more recent analysis of naturalism,

nevertheless akin to the above comments, is seen in Jean—Albert 3636‘s

article in.the Columbia Dictionary_2£ Modern European Literature which

 

seeks to discuss naturalism in negative terms:

It is a revolt - a bourgeois revolt, by the way, long immune from any
trace of Marxism - against the bourgeoisie as it had emerged from half
a century of growing prosperity, as it was going to appear at the time
of the Dreyfus affair, dull and,self¥seeking, vain and hypocritical,
full of these ready—made ideas which Flaubert had so mercilessly
satirized, socially conservative and reactionary in politics. ...Against
this ... naturalism hurls itself, a minority movement, ... curiously
conscious, because of this fact, of its affinities with other "vane
guard" manifestations, such as positivism in philosophy, Darwinian or
Spencerian evolutionism in science,ssymbolism.in poetry, realism or
impressionism in the fine arts. ...

3WilliamA. Nitze and E. Preston Dargan, §_Historv ganrench
Literature (New York, 1922), p. 623.

 

hGeorge Saintsbury, Frengh Literature and its Masters, edited by
Huntington Cairns (“ew York, 19h5): P. 29?.

5Jean Albert Bede, "French Naturalism," Columbia Dictionary of Modern
EurOpean Literature, Horatio Smith, General Editor, (New York, 19h77,

P. 2900

 

Zola's primary theories on the novel are found in his essay, The

Experimental Novel in which he borrowed heavily from the book of the

 

famed French physician, Claude Bernard, Introduction a l'étude dg l2_

medicine experimentale. Zola felt that the experimental method of file

 

physician could also be applied by the literary artist. As the doctor
employs the method in his science, so could the artist employ it in

his study of life. By showing man's social action under various
environments and under the influence of heredity, the novelist would be
able to find the best social condition for man. In such a way he could
construct a practical sociology which would be a valuable aid to the
political and economic sciences. 6 The novelist is both an observer
and an experimenter; the observer finds the facts and the experimentalist
arranges them.for his story. Throughout the essay, the importance of
the scientific attitude for the writer is emphasized:

In one word, we should operate on the characters, the passions, on the
human and social data, in the same way that the chemist and the
physicist operate on inanimate beings, and as the physiologist operates
on living begins. ...It is scientific investigation, it is experimental
reasoning, which combats one by one the hypotheses of the idealists,
and which replaces purely imaginary novels by novels of Observation
and experiment.

Heredity and environmenteare two of the main influences acting upon
man which the novelist must portray in his novels. While the novelist
should aim at picturing society just as it is, he is at some liberty to
bring in these influences and to show their effect upon man in society.

6Emile Zola, The Experimgntal Novel and Other Essays, translated by
Belle M. Sherman (New York, 1893), pp. 5?:26i'

 

7Ibid., o. 18.

The task of the noveliSt in portraying the evils of society to all
the world is a noble one for in so doing he opens the way for legisla-
tors and informed people to correct the maladies in society:

...To be master of good and evil, to regulate society, to solve in
time all the problems of socialism, above all, to give justice a solid
foundation by solving through experiment the questions of criminality
-— is not this bging the most useful and the most moral workers in the
human‘workshop?

Despite the criticism of "pessimistic" made upon the naturalists, as
Bédé’affirms, they actually were optimistic:

Yet theciepressingly materialist atmosphere of this type of novel ...
should not hide the fact that it conveys a broadly humanitarian message.
It has a political, democratic tinge — one is reminded of Zola's
pronouncement, "The Republic will.be naturalist, or it will not pg";
it is Optimistic, yes, Optimistic as it reveals an almost childish
confidence in the possibility of immediate reform and progress.

The important part of Zola's life and his ideas are a personifica-
tion of the Third Republic and its indomitable faith in science,

10
evolution, positivism, and materialism. Born on April 2, 18h0, of
a father part Italian and part Greek, and of a French mother, Zola's
early years until the age of eighteen were spent at Aix. His formal
education here consisted of training at the Collége Bourbon in Aix, the
main influence of which seems to have been the beginning of his friend-

ship with the future artist, Paul Cezanne. After his arrival in Paris

in lBSB‘Wlth his mother, he attended the Lycée St. Louis where he

 

8Ibide ’ p. 260
93535; pp; cit., p. 289.

10This general biographical information on Zola is obtained from
Eatthew Josephson, Zola and His Time (New York, 1928).

 

apparently was not an exceptional student but was a devout reader of
romantic literature. Until he began work at Hachette's Publishing House
in 1862, his years in Paris had been.spent in the Latin Quarter, writing
unsuccessfully. His first publication, a group of short stories, Contes
é Nipgp, written in the rowentic vein, appeared in 186h.

This publication created no immediate success, and for the next
three years, Zola was occupied in studying Balzac and Flaubert, writing
as a literary critic fer Parisian new3papers, and forming a circle of
friends including many young painters, Edouard Manet, Claude Monet,
Renoir. The experimental work in physiology by Dr. Claude Bernard and
the work in philosophy and literature by Hippolyte Taine symbolized in
his statement "Vice and Virtue are (chemical) products like sugar and
vitriol" inspired the young writer to begin a study of a family under
the Sedond Empire, picturing their life in totality and showing the
effects of heredity and.environment upon a number of individuals
living in a definite social atmosphere. This group of some twenty novels

entitled the "Rougon—Macquart" series saw its first novel, £5 Fortune des

 

Rou on, published in 1871 and the final novel, Lg Docteur Pascal in

 

1893. The series as a whole was enormously successful if one may judge
by the sale of the works and their rapid translation into many tongues.
There was criticism over the author's technique and literary methods
including such comments as "a pessimist epic of human animalism" 11 but
most critics seems to agree with the statement of Henrvaames on the

series:

 

11
Jules Lemaitre, Literary Impressions (London, 1921), translated by
A. W. EVans, p. 153.

 

No finer act of courage and confidence, I think, is recorded in the
history of letters. The critic in sympathy with him returns again and
again to the great wonder of it, in which something so strange is mixed
with something so august ... the high project, the work of a lifetime,
announces beforehand its inevitable weakness and yet Speaks in tpg

same voice for its admirable, its almost unimaginable strength.

These novels of the Rougon-Macquart series show various phases of life
during the Second Empire — the mines, the railways, the peasantry, the
large shone of Paris, the markets of Paris, various levels of society.
While each novel may be read separately, they are united by the heredity
factor which Zola studies throughout the group. This interest of Zola

. O O O O /\
1n heredity had preVlously been shown in two earlier novels, Therese

Raquin and Madeleine Fergt.

 

The later works of Zola, the 'Triology of the Three Cities' -

Lourdes, Rome, and Paris were symbolical of Faith, Hope, and Charity, and

 

as a unit personify the struggles of Man between Religion (in this
instance, the Roman Catholic Church) and Reason and Life. The last
novels Zola planned were to embody his principles of human life: Fruit-

fulness, work, Truth, and Justice. The latter of these, Justice, which

 

was to deal with the idea of universal peace was never finished due to
Zola's untimely death in 1902. 222 p was to be a fictional story
involving the primary elements of the Dreyfus Affair. Had Zola been
unknown for his literary merit, his role in the Dreyfus affair alone
would have reserved a place for him in history, not to be disputed even
by his harshest literary critics. In 1898 his letter J'accuse declaring
the innocence of Dreyfus and accusing the military authorities for
concealing the real criminal was published in Clemenceau's paper £25233.

Dreyfus was declared guilty in the first trial and Zola himself was

 

12Henry James, The Art 2; Fiction and Other Essays (New York, l9h8),

p. 157.
- 11 -

convicted of libeling the military authorities. He was sentenced to

a year of imprisonment but exiled himself to England, returning to
France again.in 1899. The justice Zola had so eagerly sought in the
affair was not meted until 1906, but Zola meanwhile had been found dead
in his bedroom in 1902, a victim of asphyxiation. Anatole France, in an
oration at the grave of Zola paid his tribute to the man who had become
his friend during the Dreyfus affair:

...He sought to divine and to foresee a better society. This sincere
realist was an ardent idealist.

...He has honored his country and the world through an immense work

and through a great action. Envy him his destiny and his heart, which
made hisllot that of the greatest: he gas a mgment'g£_the conscience of
mankind.

Although Zola had never been admitted to the French Academy, his remains
'were transferred to the Pantheon in 1908 and in this posthumous gesture
France seemed to pay tribute to one of her sons.

As a man, Zola was highly regarded by his friends, and as a
literary worker his sincerity of purpose was not doubted even by his
strongest critics. All of his life would have been quite peaceful had
he not become involved in the Dreyfus Affair. As a man of ideas, he
like many others, personified the faith of the Third Republic. His
optimistic belief in science is illustrated in his own words in a
passage in a "Letter to the Young People of France":
we are the true patriots - we who wiSh to see France scientific, rid of
Lyrical<ieclamations, strengthened by the culture of truth, applying

the scientific formula in all things,lfin politics as in literature, in
social economy as in the art of war.

 

13Josephson, 22; cit., pp. 509-10.

1hEmile Zola, "A Letter to the Young People of France" included in
The Experimental Novel and Other Essays, op. cit., pp. 100-1.

-12..

In the latter part of the nineteenth century there was a reaction
against naturalism, the downfall of it being attributed by one student
of literature, Denis Saurat, to the failure of scientific materialism
itself. 15 Despite this temporary reaction to naturalism, the influence
of Zola has extended both in France and abroad to an.extent unknown
to most French writers. One of the major contributions he made to
novel writing was the belief that the whole area of modern life may
serve as material for the novelist. John.Galswnrthy, the American
"naturalists" Frank Norris and Stephen Crane, Sinclair Lewis, and the
proletarian and sociological novelists of today are only a few of the

literary artists indebted to the experimental work of Emile Zola.

 

 

15Denis Saurat, Modern Frengh_Literature (New York, l9h6), p. 3b.

- 13 -

II. A Brief Historical Survey of the Years
Covered by Zola's Novels

The period of years encompassed by the novels of Emile Zola
covers approximately a half century, 1851-1901. Within these years
there were a number of significant developments in French history,
not only in the realm of politics but in the social and intellectual
Spheres as well. The social and cultural tendencies of a particular
nation may be similar to such tendencies predominant in other nations
at the same time, but in the field of politics, more often the inci-
dents are related to a particular country. Such was the case in
France of the latter half of the nineteenth century, a period in
which a number of dates important primarily to French history occur:
1851, the dying year of the Second Republic; 1852, the birth of the
Second Empire; 1871, the death of the Empire and the revival of
Republican France, officially recognized in 1875 with the passage
of the Constitutional Laws.

The year 1851 - a coup d'état - and France awoke to find another
Napoleon in control. The homage France had paid in myth since 1815
to the first Napoleon was now to be realized in actuality to his
nephew, Louis Napoleon III. 1 Born in 1808, the son of Louis Bona-
parte, King of Holland and Hortense—Eugenie, daughter of Josephine,

this Napoleon hardly seemed French except for the fact that he was born

 

1This general information on Louis Napoleon is obtained
from Philip Guedella, The Second Empire (New York, 1922).

-111-

in Paris. Until his achievement of power Louis Napoleon had spent
his youth traveling on the continent and in England. After partaking
in the Italian revolutions of 1830-31, he further publicized the name
of Bonaparte by writing various political and military pamphlets.
Two unsuccessful military attempts to recapture France were made in
1836 and 18h0, the latter resulting in his imprisonment at the fortress
of Ham. Although Louis Napoleon had not yet achieved power, as Philip
Guedella states, it was becoming increasingly difficult for the
government of Louis Philippe to censor the romantic appeal of the
Man of Destiny to the French nation. 2

After escaping from Ham, Napoleon arrived in France after the
bourgeois revolution of 18h8 which had declared France a Republic
and which called for a president to be elected on terms of manhood
suffrage. Although elected by four Departments to be a member of the
National Assembly, he did not take his seat until September at which
time he announced his candidacy for the presidential election. An
overwhelming vote gave him this office, but he found himself with-
out a majority in the Assembly. Desirous of perpetuating his power,
Napoleon directed a coup d'état for December 1, 1851, which resulted
in the dissolving of the Assembly and the submitting of a new consti-
tution providing a ten-year presidential term to thepeople. When
on December 20, 1851, this constitution was voted upon affirmatively
by the French people, the Empire was not far distant. Indeed, before

its official proclamation on December 2, 1852, France was already

 

ZGuedella, 92; cit., p. 110.

_ 15 _

The Credit Mobilier serving investment banking and the Credit
Foncier serving real estate interests were evidences of the growing
influence of capital in the business world. With the aid of such
resources the French railway system was carried to completion during
these years. New financial enterprises were also attended with Specu-
lation, and as Flathe observes, an entirely new group of adventurers
developed, "consisting of Speculators, wire-pullers, and the like,
suddenly arrived at wealth, who shared among themselves the spoils of

the coup_d'état." S The capital city itself was being transformed

 

under the direction of Baron Hausmann, spacious avenues replacing the
narrow streets of barricade days. The commercial and industrial
development of the Empire caused a further increase in numbers and
influence of the working classes which had already exerted their
importance in the July Monarchy and particularly in the June days of
18118.

The exnositions of the Empire displayed its industrial progress
to all of the world. In 1867, when the Empire was already on its
downward trend, another Paris Exposition seemed to bring back for a
moment the Splendour of its early years. Paris and the Empire were
hosts to all the royalty of EurOpe, and one June afternoon, the Emperor
and several royal guests watched a troop review:
...The little brass guns went clanking past behind their gun-teams, and
the Emperor sat in the sunshine with his great moustache between the
tall Czar and the narrow eyes of Prussia. ...The troops marched off

through the June dust, and the Longchamps had seen in the blgze and
jingle of the great review the Indian summer of the Empire.

5Ibid., p. 107.

6Guedella, 22;.Cit°’ p. 37h.

_ 17 _

The early years of the Empire had been successful both on the domestic
and foreign scenes: the expositions revealing the material prOSperity

of the rule of the Bonapartist, and the autocratic silencing of any
political dissatisfaction displaying on the surface a France well-
pleased with her Man of Destiny. French participation in the Crimean
'War of 185h-6, desoite heavy losses, seemed glorious for here was a
fighting France; here was compensation for the losses in Russia of the
first Napoleon; here was France protecting the historic rights of the
Roman Catholics in Turkey; here was the first major move of the Empire
to enhance its prestige in continental affairs. The seCond major
undertaking, French aid to the Italian states, was not so glorious. The
venture proved ill-fated for Louis Napoleon found himself in the
distressful position of alienating the French Catholics, who formerly
had been among his most faithful supporters, by aiding the Italian
states in their fight against the papal power. He also alienated the
Italian patriots who felt that they were being betrayed by this "so-
called lover of self-determination" who abandoned them before the task
was finished. French imperial activity fared somewhat better; the African
and Far Eastern undertakings, to be completed under the Third Republic,
now received their start. One of these ventures in the western Hemisphere,
the Mexican Expedition, was, however, a fiasco. After establishing in
a temporary successful manner, Maximilian, brother of Franz Joseph of
Austria, on the Mexican throne, the Emperor deserted him at the time

the United States refused recognition of the new kingdom and left his

protegé'to the mercy of the irate Mexicans.

-18..

This was 1867, and the Emperor being occupied with European affairs
was unable to give much further thought to the Mexican kingdom. ‘When
Napoleon had sat with the King of Prussia and the Czar of Russia viewing
the 1867 exhibition, he hardly realized that on one side was the
representative of the new master of Europe who had Shortly put an end to
Austria and would soon settle with the Second Empire. Otto Eduard
Le0pold von Bismarck-Sch6nhausen - an impressive title which appeared
not to impress Louis Napoleon until too late. It is ironical that
Napoleon the Third's dreams of national unification for all people, when
carried to their ultimate by the Iron Chancellor, were to mean his
political death. The Franco-Prussian war, ostensibly a result of the
controversy over the accession to the Spanish throne, was actually
another logical step in Bismarck's plans for the unification of Germany.
After gaining control over Schleswig-Holstein in 1863-h and Austria
afterIthe lightning effect of Sadowa in 1866, onLy France remained an
obstacle in the German march. The German military machine under the
leadership of the war minister, Von Room, and the great general Von
Moltke, had already dazzled Europe, but its full impact was not to be
felt until the defeat of France. After diplomatic efforts failed to
solve the controversy, the German army marched\into Alsace in August of
1870; by the end of the month Napoleon with Mcmahon had surrendered
at Sedan. Moltke proceeded to march to Paris where extraordinary
resistance was being manifested by the Parisians and where Gambetta,
later to figure so prominently in the Third Republic, was endeavouring
to subscribe provincial help for the capital city. In the meantime

marshal Bazaine who was blocked in Metz had surrendered to Bismarck,

- 19 _

thereby relieving the German trapps surrounding Metz. Within a matter
of months, France was on her knees before the superior German military
machine, and on Nay 10, 1871, the Treaty of Frankfurt was signed.

On January 18, 1871, in the palace at Versailles, the German Empire
was officially proclaimed; as one Empire rose in fame, so another died
in infamy; France had been compelled to give up Alsace-Lorraine, and
her grief at this loss and subsequent desire to revenge it were to be
constant factors in the Third Republic; sometimes playing a dynamic
role in French politics when Sponsored by nationalist organizations
such as the League of Patriots; more often remaining a mere undercurrent
of patriotism for all good Frenchmen. Yet this feeling of revenge
remained prominent enough so that it could achieve its proper place
in the foreground when the war of l9lh broke out. Out of the ruins
of the Second Empire a new republic, which was as disturbed by the old
Empire and Napoleon as it was humiliated by the Fall of France, was to
arise. The lessons of the new republic were to come not so mush from
its antecedent as from the conqueror. A strong Germany united under
Prussian leadership had shortly dominated all of central EurOpe and was
now the continental power of late nineteenth century Europe. Its
victory appeared to have resulted from the use of force and science,
and the Third Republic was soon to adopt similar mass armies, general
state education, and a superb devotion to science.

The Republic was not an abrupt change for the last years of the
Empire had Shown a growing tendency toward liberalization. Beginning

in 1860 numerous\changes were being effected; chamber debates were

- 20 -

published in full, and the chambers were permitted to discuss and

vote upon throne addresses. In 1863 the opposition which only a few
years before had consisted of some five members had risen to thirty-two
deputies, a majority of whom were Republicans who would figure
prominently in the Third Republic - Jules Favre, Jules Simon, Adolphe
Thiers. Just before the fatal year of 1870 the last imperial prime
minister Rouher had been replaced by Emile Ollivier:

New men, new names, new nations seemed to come crowding on the scene,
and the stiff outlines of autocracy were melting in the rebirth of

the Empire liberal into the simpler, younger form of a modern monarchy.
One could see, like shadows on the blind of a lighted room, the

Emperor's tired, gracious gesture of surrender and M. Ollivier stand-
ing erect to take up, in the name of France, the burden of the Empire.

 

Despite these growing signs of liberalization in the Second
Empire, the liberal Republic was not immediately considered to be the
Saviour of France. 8 The Assembly which had set itself up at Bordeaux
in 1871 had accepted the Republic as a temporary necessity, but its
membership came chiefly from monarchist groups who later would accept
the Republic not so much because of a fondness for it but rather be-
cause of their failure to agree on a monarchical candidate to head
France. Early in 1871, another group, this time from the left, con-
fronted the Republic. The dissatisfactions of the working classes

‘were manifested in the uprisings of the Paris commune whose quelching

 

71bido, p. 3970

8This general information on the Third Republic in the remaining
pages of this chapter may be found in any of the histories of the
period. Among those I have used are: Baron Pierre de Coubertin, The
Evolution of France under the Third Republic, translated by Isabel F.
Hapgood (New8York, 1897); Emile Bourgeois, History 9f Modern France,
Volume II, 1852-1913, (I ndon, 1922); D. W. Brogan, France under the
Republic (New York, n.d. . Specific quotations are paginated.

-21...

‘was one of the first tasks of the old statesman Adolphe Thiers as first
president of the new Republic.

In one aspect the Second Empire adopts itself more readily to a
brief survey, for in the empire, one central figure dominates the scene
whereas in the Republic countless personalities can be observed, Thiers,
Gambetta, MacMahon, Jules Simon, Alfred Dreyfus, General Boulanger. The
personnel of both governments was ixlthe main bourgeois, for in.the
Republic the working classes had not yet assumed high governmental
positions. The economic prosperity of France which had surged during
the Empire continued into the Republic. There is probably no better
manifestation of it than to witness the:rapidity with which the war
indemnity of one billion dollars was paid to Germany in three years. By
1872 the consumption of coal had risen to 23,000,000 tons; the production
of smelting works to a million tons; the sugar trade was growing; the
general activity of the merchant marine, ports, and railways greatly

9 AS the expositions of the Empire had served their purpose,

increased.
so the EXposition of 1878 furnished dazzling proof of the rapid recovery
of France Since the war. The material prosperity of the republic, like
the empire, was not achieved without speculation, and the Panama Canal
scandals and trials in the eighties were a match for any of the frauds
of the Empire.

Mere political changes do not kill the growth of ideas. The impact

of socialism is the manifestation of only one of the ideas continued from

its natural course under the Second Empire. Gradually socialists who had

 

9Bourgeois, pp; cit., pp. 229-30.

- 22 -

lost power at the time of the commune were again asserting influence in
French workingmen's circle, and French representatives could again be
found in the congresses meeting at Vienna, Philadelphia, and Paris.
Exceptional leaders were found in men like Jules Guesde, Jean Jaures,
Alexandre Millerand. Disagreement within socialist ranks prohibited
the formation of a united socialist party, thereby resulting in various
socialist factions in France, two prominent ones being the Marxist group
under Guesde, and the anti-Marxists or workers' Revolutionary Socialist
Party. A Split within the anti-Marxists occurred in 1890 at which time
the Allemanist group set forth a strict class doctrine maintaining that
only theiworkers could liberate the workers; their leaders must be
leaders who knew the worker's lot at first hand, not "bourgeois on the
make, or even bourgeois sentimentally affected by woes they had not
experienced."10 Generally significant in the French socialist movement
'were its insistence on separation of working movements from politics,
its militant Spirit, its emphasis on worker control, and often its
tendencies toward anarchism.

One of the major problems facing the Republic was the reorganization
of the army. The Republic which felt it apprOpriate to curb the power
of the military in politics at the same time considered a strong army
a pre—requisite if France were not/:Sffer another Sedan. Universal
military service with a five-year period of service was passed, and
various requests to reduce the period to three years failed until 1889.
The continual fear in France of an unhealthy military influence in

government was recognized by the Boulanger crisis. General Boulanger,

 

10Brogan, 9p;_cit., p. 296.

-23..

an unknown, suddenly seized the public eye in the eighties, and with
varying support from Paul Déroulede's League of Patriots, the radicals,
royalists, the church, he eventually sat in the Assembly and even

became minister of war. Whether Boulanger was a real threat to the
democratic Republic is not known, but it can be affirmatively stated that
he served notice to the Republic that the army could still be a

dangerous usurper in the sphere of politics, and to Germany a reminder
that colorful military men might be able to capitalize on "revenge".

The episode further showed the dissatisfaction of many groups, apparently
not at all similar, with the Republic. The failure of either the right
or left to unite behind the blond general, the fact that France had
known too many coup d'états and their subsequent results, and the
recognition of "revenge" as a living idea but not a very practical one
were all contributory to the downfall of Boulangism.

The educational changes in the Third Republic were one manifesta-
tion of the whole movement of science and are inextricably associated
with the role of the church in French affairs. The main characteris-
tics of the new education were its extensiveness, its separation from
the church, and its emphasis on nationalism. By the various laws
passed in the eighties, the church for all practical purposes had lost
control over the majority of French education. Education for the
elementary-age students became compulsory as well as free in the public

primary schools. Each village or town was required to maintain a public

 

llWilliam Curt Buthman, The Rise g£_Integral Nationalism ip France

*~

(New Yark, 1939), pp. 23-hO passim.

 

primary school. The main objection of the Church was to the abolition

of religious training in the schools. While the Church still controlled
much of secondary education, the state education probably reached a greater
number of Frenchmen who were only able to go through the lower grades.

In 1880 Jules Ferry, the educational minister, succeeded in closing

the Jesuit schools although 200 Catholic lay-officers resigned in

protest. The educational changes also included more advantages than
previously for women.students. More libraries and laboratories were

being built; and technical and farm.schools were founded to aid in the
promotion of new methods for agriculture. 12 Education was not the only
area in.which the Republic and the Roman Catholic Churdh were in disagree-
ment, but it was one of the most important. The Church in its alliance
with the royalists and the army, witnessed by its participation in the
Boulanger and Dreyfus affairs, had further gained the enmity of
Republicans. These points of friction between the religious and civil
authorities were to culminate in the Statute of December 1905 which
ordained a peaceful separation of the Church and State in France.

The Dreyfus affair has become a symbol for the trials and tribula-
tions of the Third Republic. The case itself was simple: a Jewish
officer falsely accused arm.sentenced as a military Spy while the guilty
person, another French officer, dielded by the army authorities, remained
free. The case would no doubt have remained behind the headlines had
it not been publicized by men sudi as Clemenceau, Zola, and Anatole

France. Soon the whole French nation was divided into Dreyfusards and

Bourgeois, op. cit., p. 273.

-25..

anti-Dreyfusards. In the first two trials of Dreyfus, the military was
victorious, and it was not until 1906 that the innocence of Captain
Dreyfus was declared. A majority of the Catholic churchmen were on

the side of the military in the affair and again tangled with many
republicans. Regardless of the personalities or dramatics of the case,
underneath it all was a more serious problem. ‘Was France to let the
military authorities be scandalized in order to satisfy hypothetical
justice for the sake of an unknown army captain? 'Was France to support
by silence such racial.discriminatory attacks as those made by Edouard
Drumont and Maurice Barres? The answer to the affair was decided when
many honest, sincere Frenchmen rose in protest, not letting the matter
rest until the captain's innocence had been declared.

Under the Empire flie industrial activity of the nineteenth century
was already under progress, but it remained for the Third Republic to
prOpagate a philosophy for the new age. If it could be symbolized in
one word, the choice would be "Science". The French intellectuals "had
gone in search of the new Grail, and.had brought it back to their native
land. It is to them that France is indebted for'being able rapidly to
regain lost ground and time, and to escape an intellectual Sedan." 1h

One of these leaders, both by virtue of his genius and because of his

13Most histories of the Republic devote considerable time to the
Dreyfus case; an excellent treatment of it may be found in Brogan,
92; cit., 329-357. nassim.

1h

Coubertin, pp;_cit., p. 375.

-26-—

influence on contemporaries was Hippolyte Taine who considered man as
the product of his race, surroundings, ard.the moment. As Thomas
Huxley in Britain had prOpagated Darwinian.theories, so Ernest Renan
was to present‘the new science to the French public, carrying Taine's
evaluation of man to the ultimate in his analysis of Christ in the L§£g_
gf'flgggg, Parallel with the emphasis on scientific ideas was the rise
of new sciences, anthrOpology and sociology in the foreground, and
psychology. (The sociologist would soon take notice of the declining
pOpulation of France and seek to discover its causes in either immorality,
alcoholism, the law of inheritance. 15 The influence of the scientific
viewnoint and method, and the positivistic philosophy which had.been
formulated by Auguste Comte were to affect all the social science
areas - history, economics, political science. Another manifestation
of the effect of the scientific philosophy was the warfare between
science and theology. The scientific attitude affected the fine arts;
in literature, able practioners of observation, experiment, reliance on
the everyday-worlduwere found in Ibsen, Thomas Hardy, Zola, Swinburne,
and Whitman; in art, CéZanne, Manet, Monet. Upon examination of the
latter nineteenth century, it appears that here is a period which presents
years of thought and action in which one unifying factor, the scientific
spirit, seems to pervade.

By 1900 France had gone a long way from 1870 both in material

progress and in intellectual growth. Political democracy was embodied

 

lSCoubertin, 99; cit., 375-90, passim.

-27...

in the Constitutional Laws of 1875 providing a ministry directly
responsible to a Chamber elected by universal manhood suffrage. France
had again found herself in the family of nations, witnessed by her
alliance in l89h'with Russia. Material prosperity was continuing; the
religious problem despite clerical agitation was on its way to a
settlement; the Dreyfus affair would soon be cleared; Boulanger had
been disposed of; indeed, the Third Republic could face the new century
with an unwarranted degree of self-satisfaction and Optimism.

It must be noted that this abrupt outline of events in France
from 1851-1901 is not a complete story in itself, but must be viewed
with reference to those events preceding and following it.. This
chronological division is occasioned by the fact that Zola's novels
happen to cover this particular period. Had Zola not died in 1902,
undoubtedly the years covered by his writings would extend considerably
into the twentieth century. In studying such a mass of material as is
to be found in Zola's work one must arbitrarily select a method of
approach. I have chosen to Show the reflection of the period in
Zola's novels by illustrating various attitudes and social pictures
found in them. In addition to showing opinion upon politics, education,
religion, science, intellectual movements, these novels should present
social pictures peculiar to the Frenchsscene and thus of value to the
student of history. Some of the novels by nature of the material
included are of more value than others to the hisbarical student and

will naturally require more emphasis in the following chapters.

-28..

III. Political Attitudes and Opinions
in Zola's Novels

The political views expressed in the novels of Zola fall into
several broad categories: pro-Napoleon III and the Second Empire;
anti-Napoleon, anti-Republican but pro-Monarchist, symbolized by
support of the Bourbon heir, the Count de Chambord; anti—Napoleon,
anti-monarchist but pro-Republican. In addition to views on the
particular governments in control during these years, this chapter
will treat some of the attitudes toward social movements, such as
socialism, which of course are associated with politics.

a Fortune des Rougon, the first of the Rougon-Macquart series,

 

is to a great extent a political novel and may well serve as a starting
point for discussion as it places the historical background for the
series. This novel is the story of the effect of the coup d'etat of
1851 in a small town, Plassans, (Aix) an event which "retained the
fortune of the Bonapartes, and also laid the foundation for that of
the Rougons." 1 Thus, the story is representative of some of the
varied feelings with which Louis Napoleon was received by France.

While Eugene, the eldest son of Felicite’ and Pierre Rougon, was gaining
a name for himself in the political arena of Paris, his parents had
retired from their oil business and were leading a quiet bourgeois life.

lEndle Zola, La Fortune des Rougon, edited with an introduction by
Ernest A. Vizetefiy—(Icndon, 1898), p. 3147.

-29-

Eugene, who'becomes involved in the coup d'état, informs his father of
the events to take place and directs his parents to prepare Plassans
for the political stroke which is about to take place in Paris.‘ By
the end of 1851, Pierre is awarded for hiS‘WOTk by way of a government
post of receiver of taxes and the ribbon of the Legion of Honor. His
wdfe and accomplice, Félicite, finds her social aspirations immeasurably
enhanced when she realized that she will no longer have to entertain
in her shabby drawing room with its broken-down First Empire furniture
covered with.yellowish velvet with satin.flowers, the orange-hued
'wallpaper splashed with large flowers, and the carpet which covers but
the middle of the floor. 2 She too can now have a house like the
former tax receiver's which she has regarded as her Tuilleries.

In this story the Rougons, like most of their bourgeois friends
in Plassans, are pro-monarchist until their son Eugéne informs them
of the changed political view they'wmst assume if they wish to enhance

their personal.fortune. The people who habited the Rougon's drawing
room at the time of Napoleon's election to the presidency in 18h8 were
disdainful of Napoleon, regarding him.as a dreamer incapable of using
authority, and as a person.to be used only as a tool who would clear
the way for them until the rightful pretender, the Count de Chambord

should show himself. h Even after the Rougons began their subtle

 

21bid., p. 71.

31bid., p. 10h.

thido, p. 780

campaign to charge opinion toward Napoleon, the monarchical element

would say in answer to Rougon's assertion that Napoleon was needed to

save France: "Let him save it, then, as quickly as possible, and let

him then understand his duty by restoring it to its legitimate masters."5
The few peOple in the town who remained true to republican princi-

ples were some thousand workmen who still saluted the tree of liberty

planted in the middle of the square in front of the Sub-Prefecture.

Finally, even the tree, which had slowly been decaying, had to be

removed. None of the republicans could understand this decay although

it was rumoured that Fe’licite’ sprinkled the poplar with vitriol every

night when the town was asleep. 6 The anti-Napoleon element in the

town is most pathetically shown by a young republican, Silvere, a youth-

ful dreamer of some seventeen years who Spent his time dreaming of

humanitarian Utopias and reading all the books on republicanism that

he could find in the brokers' shops in the Faubourg. 7 Silvére had

become a firm believer in the Republic and Liberty, and though he

would not have killed a fly, he was always talking of taking up arms

if necessary to defend his passion for Liberty. Thus, when the news

of the coup d'etat reached the provinces, this lad was ready to join

the insurgents of neighbouring towns to fight the government troops

which had been sent forth to combat this expected disorder. He was

 

SIbido’ p0 9’40
6Ibid., p. 96.

7Ibid., p. 201.

-31-

was later caught, am while he was being shot, the bourgeois of
Plassans gathered in Fe’licité's old drawing room to celebrate the
newly found fortune of the Rougors. As Silvere's blood flows in a
nearby graveyard, Commander Sicardot, an old soldier of Napoleon who
thinks that none but soldiers have a right to the ribbon, compromises
his belief for the gaiety of the occasion to take the pink satin bow
from Felicité's hair and fasten it in Rougon's button—hole as a
temporary substitute for the real ribbon. 8

The above story has been used as an example of the effect of
national politics in the provinces and as an illustration of how many
persons did make their personal fortunes because of aiding or supporting
the coup d'etat in one way or another. ggn Excellence Eugene Rougon,
which related the adventures of Rougon as deputy and prime minister
gives further pictures of the working of the Second Empire once it
had been established. 9 Rougon begins his career as an autocrat
in politics and later, after losing his ministerial position because
of excessive deSpotic measures, makes concessions to the Liberal Ehnpire
which had been shaping since 1860. One of the repressive measures which
the Empire utilized was a strict censorship over literary material.
In this particular novel the reader is given numerous examples of
how this censorship probably worked. At one time, during Rougon's
office as Minister of the Interior, an associate of his is shotving‘him

a newspaper and remarking to him:

 

81bido? p0 31-1-70

9Emile Zola, §9_n Excellence Eugéne Rougon, sole authorized English
version with a preface by Ernest A. Vizetelly (New York, 1897).

-32...

Have you read this? There is a leading article here appealing to the
basest passions. ..."The hand that punishes should be impeccable, for,
if justice miscarries, the very bonds which unite society loosen of
their own accord." You understand the insinuation, eh? And, here
again, ...there's a story about a Countess eloping with the son of a
corn-factor. The papers ought not to be allowed to publish such
things. it tends to destroy the people's reSpect for the upper
classes. 10
Later in the story, Rougpn himself discusses this problem with
the editor of the paper, finding such objectionable articles on the
government even more abominable because the newspaper is supposed to
be one of the nationalist press. After berating the editor for
political inferences against the government appearing in the paper's
columm, Rougon attacks a novel which the newspaper is publishing
serially. (Many novels of the time, including some of Zola's, were
published serially in the newspapers before they were published in
book form.) A well-bred woman in the mentioned novel betrays her
husband, and this, states Rougon, supplies a detestable argument against
good education. The editor upon revealing that he had read the story
and after replying 'no' to Rougon's question as to whether the lady
felt remorse at the end hurries out of the room with the minister's
' shouts in the background: "It is absolutely necessary that she should
feel remorse! Insist upon the author filling her with remorse!" 11
Rougon's criticism of certain publications was to contribute to
his fall from office. In a discussion of "Friend Jacques's Eyening
Chats" it was revealed that Delestang, a rapid growing friend of the

Emperor as well as the Liberal Empire, held Opinions contrary to Rougon.

 

10mm. , p. 209.

llIbido, pp. 231‘20

-33..

In a private conversation, Rougon sums up the volume as a mixture of
socialism, witchcraft, and agriculture, with a particularly distressing
chapter on the advantages of trades' unions; indeed, in his estimation,
it could very likely create a harmful effect upon the peasant and
working classes where it was being circulated. Delestang protests this
indictment of the book and calls the chapter on the advantages of the
association of labour 'very good' and full of ideas with which the
Emperor might agree. At a ministerial council, Delestang's opinion
of the book as 'not harmful' was upheld rather than Rougon's desire to
ban the book.

While on the one hand the Empire endeavoured to censor what it
considered oppositional propaganda, it also produced literature
favourable to itself. In _1_.a_ _'I_‘e_r_I_'_e, a group of peasants are shown
completing a social evening by listening to one. of them read from a
pamphlet, "The Misfortune and Triumph of Jacques Bonhomme", in which
the trials and ultimate prOSperity of the peasant under Napoleon III
are related. 12

Much attention has been devoted by historiam to Napoleon's
humanitarian ideals and such works of his as the Extinction g
Paupe’risme. Delestang, as minister of agriculture and a man of liberal
ideas, is often pictured talking with Napoleon in this novel. In one
instance, Napoleon shows approval of a model farm of Dele stang's where
farm hands lived in common, shared certain profits, ani became entitled

13
to old-age pensions. At another event in the story, when the

 

12
13

Emile Zola, _L_a Terre, no translator stated (London, 1888), p. 65.

Son Excellence Eugene Rougon, p. 159.

-31“.

imperial family is entertaining at Compiegne, Rougon, one of the week-
end guests, sees a light late at night in the Emperor's bedroom and
thinks to hire elf that perhaps the Emperor is considering his scheme

for founding an industrial centre where the extinction of pauperism
might be attempted on a large scale. Whether Napoleon's humanitarian
ideals were sincere or not has always been a disputed point among
historians. From the illustrations given by Zola in his novels regard-
ing the Emperor's ideas (and certainly Zola had no reason to present

the Emperor in a favourable light) it is apparent that Zola at least felt
the Emperor was sincere in his bliefs.

The wife of the Delestang referred to above is one of those French
women who play an ardent role in politics, reigning from their drawing
rooms. Madame Delestang, who prior to her marriage had been a
supporter of Rougon, transferred her support to her husband and at her
receptions a group of peeple could now be found who dream of a demo-
cratic empire. They talk of drawing up odes of rules for trades
unions, building cheap workmen's houses, and in general discussing the
democratic part the Bonapartists are to play in the new society. 1h

While there were followers of the Emperor like the Delestangs who
were willing to liberalize it in order to save it, there was also great
Opposition by the republicans who wished to see an entire change of
government. Zola seems to have used the actual speeches of Opposition
members, for one is shown calling the second of December (1851) a

"crime" in words and tone that appear suggestingly like Gambetta‘s

lthidu p. 307.
_ 35 ..

speech in the Assembly. (This is the period where the Empire has made
some concessions to liberal government, one of them being the right of
deputies to question the governmental policies on the house floor).
Another made a long Speech, parts Of which will be quoted for they show
very well the tone of the opposition:

We are still far away from the principles of '89 which are so
ostentatiously inscribed at the head of the Imperial Constitution.

If the government persists in arming itself with exceptional laws,

if it continues to force its own candidates upon the country, if it
refuses to free the press from arbitrary control, if in a word, it still
keeps France at its mercy, all the seeming concessiors which it may
make will be lying ones ---

...Yes, we are revolutionists, if by revolutionists you mean men of
progress, resolved upon wiming libertyS Refuse the peOple liberty,

and one day the peOple will seize it!

Rougon, who in order to retain some semblance of power, had
become a follower of the Liberal Empire. In answer to the above speech
of the Opposition Rougon set forth the views of the Liberal Empire:

We too are revolutionists, if by that term is meant men of progress,
who are resolved to restore to the country, piece by piece, every
reasonable liberty--

...It will be sufficient to prove to you that the Emperor with his
genius and noble heart has forestalled the demands of the most
bitter opponents of his rule. ...Consult your own consciences, gentle-
men, and ask yourselves whether you do not feel that you are free.
...Doubtless the government recommends its candidates. But does
not the revolutionary party support its own with shameless audacity?
We are attacked, and we defend ourselves. .. .The revolutionary
party must settle the matter with the nation, for it is the nation
that supports the Empire by overwhelming majorities...l6

The statement of Rougon's that the nation supported the liberal Empire '

was true, for when the people in May of 1870 voted their approval of

 

lglbide, pp. 3h9’351, 223311“.

”

16Ib1de, pp. 352-6, BaSSime

-36-

the liberal reforms, despite the attempts of the republicans to make
the vote adverse to the Empire, the great peasant majority Of France
again revealed their liking for Napoleons.

Besides the formal Opposition in the chamber, throughout Zola's
novels there are references to particular acts of the Empire. The
CObden commercial treaty of 1860 with England was being criticized in
the late sixties. One country landowner states that the empire had
gone too far with commercial freedom:

Wheat, which is at fifty-two francs a quarter, costs fortybsix to
produce. If it falls any lower it means ruin. And every year, folks
say, America is increasing her exportation of cereals. we are
threatened with a regular glut of the market. ...What will become

of us then? See here: I've always been in favour of prOgress, science,
and liberty. 'we11, I'm.shaken in my creed, upon my word. Yes, indeed.
we can't starve to death; let's have Protection. 1

The two deputy candidates for this farmer's district were basing their
platforms for the coming election.upon protection, one being for it

and the other for free trade.

In Une Page d'Amour which takes place at the time of the Crimean

 

war, we have a reference to foreign policy of the Empire. One Madame
Deberle, a society lady, had for days before the declaration of war,
devoted herself solely to.foreign politics as "any woman must who
pretended to any position." She explains the necessity of neutralizing
the Black Sea to her sister Pauline who advocated the cause of Russia

18
in opposition to France. At the time of the Italian wars for

 

17E Terre, p3. 12,4-50

18Emile Zola, 222 Page d'AmOur (n.p., n.d.) p. 333.

- 37 -

unification, expression in favour of giving Rome up to the King of
’ Italy is shown by persons like Dr. Juillerat, an atheist and a
republican, and Opposition to this view is frequently shown by clergy- -
men, such as Abbe’ Mauduit, an ultramontane, who prophesies the
catastrophy of France if she does not shed the last drop of her blood
to protect the temporal power of the Popes;9 Many of the bourgeois
who had formerly sided with Napoleon are shown changing their support,
quite often because of the imperial foreign policy pursued in Italy
and in Mexico.

There are occasional characters in Zola's novels who express a
not uncommon indifference to politics. They might be called the chameleons
of the political world, ready to change their support to any government
provided they are personally happy under it. One of thcse who best
expresses this viewpoint is Coupeau, a zinc-worker, who interrupts a
political discussion Of his friends to tell them how silly they are to
Spent their time quarreling about politics. As for him, either a king,
an emperor, or nothing, so long as he can earn his five francs a day
and continue eating and sleeping. 20 Similar views are well-expressed
by Lisa, the pork-butcher's wife in .11? 29.1129 d_e_ Pal-is. Lis is grate-
ful to the government when business prospers, and when she can eat her

meals in peace and comfort without being awakened by the firing of guns.

 

19Emile Zola, P9}; Bouille, translated by Percy Pinkerton (New York,
192,4), p. 980

2OEmile Zola, L'Assowmoir, edited by Ernest A. Vizetelly (London,
1902), p. 80.

 

-38-

After recalling the days of 'h8 and her uncle's losing finances in the
pork-butchery business that year, she declares that everything is more
prosperous under the Empire. Lisa seems to be one of those persons
Theodor Flathe mentions who are bound to the empire by material
prOSperity. (see page 16, Chapter Two) In a discussion with her
husband Lisa's Opinions are given to the reader:

For my part, I'm in favour Of‘neking hay while the sun.shines, and
supporting a Government which promotes trade. If it does dishonourable
things, I prefer to know nothing of them. ...At the time of the last
elections, you remember, Gavard said that the Emperor's candidate had
been bankrupt, and was mixed up in all sorts Of'scandalous matters.
Well, perhaps that was true, I don't deny it; but all the same, you
acted wisely in voting for him, for all that was not in question;

you were not asked to lend the man any money or to transact any
business with him, but merely to show the Covergpent that you were
pleased with the prosperity of the pork trade.

The support of the bourgeois toward Napoleon III during the early
years of the Empire almost entirely because of their enriched personal
fortunes is also affirmed by the historian Emile Bourgeois. 22 There are
also rather amusing Characters like Gavard, also of LgtVentre d§_Paris
who had found fault with Charies X, Louis Philippe, Napoleon III, and
who seems to exist to make himself as disagreeable as possible to any
23

existing government.

Many persons' lives were changed by the coup d'état. One of these,

Florent, a character in Le Ventre de Paris, symbolizes a type Of

 

21Emile Zola, L§_Ventre d2 Paris, translated by Ernest A. Vizetelly
(London, 1908), pp. 158:9.

22
Bourgeois, pp; cit., p. 17.

23-1—09; Ventre 99- Paris’ p. 660

 

- 39 -

republican under the Second Empire. Florent, walking the streets dur-
ing those December days of 1851, had the misfortune to stumble over a
dead young woman who had been shot in the street fighting in Paris.
He was picked up by the gendarmes, and the blood on his hands from the
young woman caused him to be regarded as a serious suspect. Florent
was wrongly accused of belonging to a secret society and consequently
was exiled. (According to Bourgeois, a m1mber (approximately 100,000
for all of France )'of persons were exiled or imprisoned in the days
following the coup d'eftat, many of whom had not committed any obvious
crime.2h) Years later Florent escaped and returned to live in the city
markets of Paris with his brother Quenu, the pork-butcher and the
latter's handsome buxom wife, Lisa. Lisa, anxious to avoid any political
disturbance because of Florent's exile, introduced him to the neighbour-
hood as her cousin and secures a respectable position for him as fish
impector in the markets.
Florent who under ordinary circumstances might have been a
schoolmaster had suffered too much from politics not to make them
his life work. Working in the markets, he soon sees them as symbolical
of a gluttonous Empire. To him, the markets with their ever-abundant
display of food are like the stomach of the shop-keeping classes, the
stomach of those who declare that everything is for the best since
pe0p1e have never before grown so beautifully fat. 25 Florent soon
becomes a friend of a group in the neighbourhood who Spend their time
discussing the hateful Empire, republican ideals, and various forms of
"511"
Bourgeois, 22:- gifi.” pp. 3—6.
2522. m <12. Earls: 1». 11:3.
.. ho ..

socialism and cormmmism. Florent's Opinion is that the political
revolution has already taken place and now a social movement is needed
which will recognize the claims of the pe0p1e. 26 After many political
discussions the group around Florent plan for an insurrection of Paris,
but before the plans can be realized, the police have been informed of
the republican plot in the cit‘.r markets and once more Florent is
exiled.

The Republic which Florent and friends dreamed about was to come
with the war of 1870, but not without grief for all of France. When
news of the war broke out, most of France, regardless of specific
criticism of Napoleon III, was ready to unite against the invader,
and most everyone like Jean, the peasant of _I:_a_ Era? and the soldier
of La Déba‘cle felt that the Prwssians like the Austrians a few years
ago would get a good hiding from the French. 27 I3 Dé’bé‘cle, the story
of the Franco-Prussian war is one of the most moving of Zola's works.
The part in the war played by a corporal Jean and his friend Maurice,

a private, form the basis of the personal element of the story, but
the greater part of the novel centers on the movement of troops from
Rheims to Sedan, the collapse of Sedan, the seige of Paris, and the
conmmne. 28 This novel depicts all the horror and pathos of war - the

brutally slain on the battlefield, the maimed in the hospitals, the ruined

 

26 .
Ibldo? pp. 158-9.

2'?
_1.§_ Terre, p. 389.

28Emile Zola, la Debacle, translated by Ernest A. Vizetelly (New
York, 1925).

-ul-

homes and personal lives of civilians, the catastrOphe in which France
nearly perished. Coming at a time when many persons were participating
in world movements against war, it was heralded as a great social
document. In France its reception.was quite mixed. The partisans
of the army denounced the book and thrust accusations of "traitor" and
"treason" upon its author while politicians like Jean Jaures and
Clemenceau were beginning to recognize the social character of Zola's
literary action. 29

'When war was announced the country was inflamed by the military
Spirit and shouts of 'A Berlin! A Berlin! A Berlin! could be heard on
all the streets mingled with thersinging of the Marsellaise. MOst of
France, like Jean, was optimistic in believing that the Prussians
'would soon be routed. A serious aniysis of the real situation is provided
by the brother-inelaw of maurice, an.unassuming bourgeois shOpkeeper
living near Sedan. It may be suSpected this his Opinions are the
views of Zola and they do coincide with fine views of many historians
who have analyzed the causes of the lightning defeat of France. Zola's
narrative of‘Weiss's explanation of the real situation to maurice
follows:
...the victory of Sadowa had brought Prussia increased power, a national
movement was placing her at the head of the other German States, a vast
Empire was in progress of formation. ...Thanks to the system of
compulsory military service the whole nation.was up in arms, fully
instructed, well disciplined, provided with a powerful war material,
trained also to European warfare, and still flushed with the glory of
its triumph over Austria. ...the Empire greatly aged, ... but still
acclaimed, as witness the Plebiscitum but rotten at the basis, having

‘weakened love of country by destroying liberty, and having reverted to
liberal courses when these could be of no avail ...[:the army was

 

29Josephson, gp;_cit.3hO-h, passim.

—h2-

weakened by the system of evading service by pecuniary payment and
because of inefficient Officerél ...and at the head of them.there
'was the nmperor, ailing, and hesitating, deceived by others and
deceiving hinself'as to die outcome of the frightful adventure,
into which they all plunged like blind men, without any attempt at
serious preparation, and amid universal bewilderment and confusion.

30
A workman in the army "who had badly digested some scraps of speeches
heard at public meetings, and who mingled revolutionary clap-trap
with the great principles of equality and liberty" also had an
Opinion about the war:
If Badinguet Ca nickname applied to Napoleon III] and Bismarck have
a row together let them settle it between them with their fists,
amtmmmm an “1°
: g .
Jean, like most of the men in the army, sees it his natural patriotic
duty to fight while Maurice, a cultured and educated person, sees war
as a natural thing, inevitable to the existence of nations, in
conformity'with his beliefs of evolution. 32
Throughout the course of events in the war, the impression of

both soldiers and ordinary folk regarding the Emperor is a pathetic
one. Haurice pictures the Emperor, "deprived of his imperial authority
which he had confided to the Empress—Regent, and divested of the supreme
command of the army which he had entrusted to Marshal Bazaine, so that
he now had become a mere nothing - a vague, undefined shadow of an
Emperor, a nameless and cumbersome inutility whom no one knew'longer

Boga Debacle, pp. lh-S.

31%, p. 39.

32

Ibido , p. 80

-113-

what to do with, whom.Paris rejected... ."33 One of the rich

bourgeois manufacturers of Sedan, a Monsieur Delaherdhe, who in may
of 1870 had vigorously stirred up the local vote for the Emperor, now
has a different Opinion of Louis Napoleon. Speaking to the corporal
Jean, he affirms this changed attitude:
Ah! monsieur, yes, I can.indeed say that the Emperor has greatly
deceived me. ...NO, pe0p1e mustn't try to make us pity his fate,
by telling us that he was deceived by others, and that the Opposition
refused him the necessary credits. It is he who has deceived us,
whose vices and blunders hfive plunged us into the frightful mess in
which we find ourselves. 3

Yet when the Republic was proclaimed in 1870, many who had come
to disapprove of the Empire were not yet sympathetic to the Republic.
There were those like Jean who felt it was all right if it would help
to lick the Prussians. A change was needed, but was it the Republic?
This soldier, who during his peasant life had heard'bad things about
the Republic, did not feel in a position to judge its merits. The
manufacturer Delaherche also felt some doubts, but the main thing he
wanted was peace:
No, no; we cannot be on the side of the furious madmen£fireferring to
Gambetta and associates who wished to continue the'wafi) It's becoming
a massacre - I for my part side with Monsieur Thiers, who wishes the
elections to take place. As for their Republic, well, that doesn't

inconvenignce me; we'll keep it if necessary, till we get something
better. 3

33

3h
Ibido , pp. 33%.
35

Ibido’ p. ’45.

Ibido ’ p0 1‘67.

In the story Maurice has to leave his friend Jean behind in Sedan
‘while he goes on to Paris. After fighting to keep Paris from the Germans
before the signing of the armistice, Maurice then joins the commune.
Seized by the insantiy which had taken possession of Paris, Maurice
felt it his duty to fight with the commune and to punish both.traitors
and cowards to save the Republic. Jean who has recovered from wounds
also comes to Paris, and fighting for the government forces, accidentally
shoots his old comrade Haurice. Zola pictures the veritable state of
anarchy in Paris during these days, FrenChmen fighting Frenchmen,
hundred of people killed, and finally Paris being'burned by the
communards. And in the midst of the burning of Paris by the insurrec-
tionaries, a Prussian officer gazes on the scene with a certain satis-
faction:

Paris was burning in punishment of its centuries of evil life, its

long career of crime and lust. Once again the Teutons save the world,
sweeping.away'the final specks of Latin corruption.

at.

The novels of Zola which have as their background the Third
Republic devote little attention to particular political events of
these years, such as the debate over the Constitutional Laws of 1875,
the defeat of the monarchical element with the fall of McMahon's
ministry in 1878, the Boulanger crisis. None of the novels of this
later period are primarily political like La Fortune des Rougon or

Son Excellence Eugene Rougon. This is the case because there are only

 

some six novels which have the Third Republic as their historical

background. It is also true because Zola seems to stress ideas such

m

36Ibid., p. 508.

-15-

as science, socialism, religion, education rather than events in his
later novels. One of these predominant ideas is spcialism:,\

In the Rougon-Macquart series there are several novels which
consider socialism; while written to portray the Second Empire, these
particular novels actually show some of the attitudes toward.socialism
which were most prominent after the Empire, and show the influence of
the times upon Zola at the time of his actual writing. One of these is
Germinal, published in 1885.37 Etienne, the central figure in the story,
is a young mannwho comes to a mining town in the north of France and
there lives and works under the harshest conditions along with other
people of the community. Although without formal education, he soon
finds himself becoming interested in working-class problems. A fellow
lodger Souvarine, a Russia and somewhat of a nhilist and anarchist,
lends Etienne many books and pamphlets on political economy. His
extensive and unplanned.reading, including works describing the diseases
which fall upon collier pOpulations, anarchist pamphlets, and books on
collective societies, finally form some semblance of order in his mind
and he dreams of a "universal association for mutual exchange which
should abolish all monetary traffic and make labour the sole basis of
social life." 38

Upon reading of an International Association of Labour (Zola probably

means to infer the Marxian International) and hearing it Spoken of by

a member of the group from Paris, Etienne gets the miners in the village

 

37Emile Zola, Germinal, edited with a Preface by Ernest A. Vizetelly
(Lomon’ 191,4) 0

8
3 Ibid., pp. lBh-S.

-h6-

to combine and to join the International. Etienne thinks this can
be very beneficial and visualizes this organization in glowing terms:
At the base 'the section' representing the parish; then 'the federation'
uniting the sections of a province; higher up still, the nation; and at
the very tOp, humanity, personified by a general council, in which each
nation would be represented by a correspondingssecretary. Before six
months were over the world would.be conquered, and the workmen would
dictate laws to their employers if the latter should prove refractory. 39

Etienne represents an opinion which held.faith that the working
class would come into its own before the end of the century. After
reading Marx, Proudhon, and Lassalle he gradually arrived at his theory
of collectivisnmimlwhich all the instruments of labour would be

, ho

collectively held by one and all. Etienne soon has a chance to be a
leader in the strike which the miners of the Voreau pit commence in
order to gain better working conditions and wages. For a long period
the miners and their families remain loyal to their cause and refuse to
go back to work despite the personal privation they suffer. After the
strike has been on for a period, a mass meeting of workers and their
families is held to decide upon further action. The fervent words of
their leader Etienne sway the crowd to the decision of continuing:
The wage systenlis only a new form.of slavery. The mine should belong
to the miner, like the sea belongs to the fisherman, like the soil
belongs to the peasant. Do you hear? The mine belongs to you, to

you all who, for a century past, have paid for it with so much blood
and misery.

39Ibido, p. 1160

no
Ibido? pp. 198-9.

Ibido? p. 2380

- 57 -

Inspired by Etienne's words and reacting to mob Spirit, the crowd
marches upon the homes of the nine managers, crying for food and the
settlement of their demands. Their shouts of "Long Live Socialism!
Death to the bourgeois! death to them! " are reminiscent of the March
Of'WOmen to Versailles in October of 1789. The rioting is quieted by
government trOOps and the men are told they must await the decision of
the stockholders, a vague incomprehensible force to these starving work-
men who are unable to understand why their demands cannot be met.
Finally, after having despaired of the International for not aiding
them sufficiently, the strikers succumb to the demands of their
stomachs and return to the mines. Etienne, their sincere but rather
sketchily inforrred and indecisive leader, leaves town still optimistic,
however, in his hOpeS for the workmen feeling that:

They must quietly combine, learn to know each other, gather together
in unions, when the laws mould allow it. E Trade unions were not
formally legalized in France until 18%.] Then on the day when they
felt themselves elbow to elbow, when they found themselves millions

of workmen confronting a few thousands of lazy ddlers, they would
seize upon power andhsecome the masters. Ah! what an awakening of
truth and justice!

Germinal, more than just an example of the ideas of socialism prevalent
during these years, is a dramatic poem of all the aspects of life in a
mining town in the late nineteenth century, the miners' work, their
homes, their social life, their poverty, their hOpeS and fears.

When the government troops had been sent to dispel the rioting of

the strikers, Etienne cherished the hope that the army might possibly

 

hzIbid., p. hhz.

- h8 -

declare itself for the working classes and then how easy their task
would be. But of course that did not happen. In another novel Travail
an army captain stat es his view of socialism, calling it a stupendous
farce, a mere idea. Why, a sabre could at any rate be seen, but who
had seen the Idea, that pretended Queen of the Earth. ’43 There is also
occasional evidence of the bourgeois attitude toward the working classes
in Zola's novels. One common view is presented by Deneulin, one of
the mine managers in Germinal who blames the middle classes for their
frantic fury for Liberalism and their 'obsequious flattery of the peOple'
which only leads to such events as the strike. In @neral the bourgeois
in this novel are shown as being very troubled by the strike and aware
of the fact that it is probably one Sign of further blows that would
come from the working classes. M In Travail another bourgeois
attitude is exemplified in the views of an engineer of an iron works,
Deleveau. While he admits the desirability of relief and pension funds
and even of OOOperative societies, thus recognizing that the workman
is not to be forbidden to have his position improved, at the same
time he violently condemns syndicates and class groupings designed for
dollective action. 115
In L'Argent which was written after Gerninal the nessage of
socialism was again transmitted via the novel. ’46 The story concerns

mEnile Zola, Travail, translated by Ernest A. Vizetelly (London,
1901), p. 930

MGerminal, p. tn.

hSTravail, p o 37 o

héfiknile Zola, L'Argent, tramlated by Ernest A. Vizetelly (London,
1923), Po 910

-149-

the adventures of a financier Aristide Saccard on the Bourse, his
promotion and managing of a Universal Bank and his final ruin as well
as that of many of his subscribers through over-Speculation. The
socialist doctrine is proclaimed by a young Sigismund Busch, well-
educated in the doctrines of Karl Marx as well as being a linguist.
Sigismund has spent his life working out plans fOr an actual socialist
community and after Saccard has been bitterly ruined, Busch's ideas
stand forth as hOpe for a future society that will prevent such
financial catastrophes:

...The nation is simply an immense co-Operative society, the
appliances'become the property of all, the products are centralised in
vast general warehouses. ...The hour's work is the common measure;

an article is worth what it has cost in hours; ... No more money, and
therefore no more speculation, no more robbery, no more abominable
trafficking, no more of those crimes which cupidity prompts, girls
married for their dowry's sake, aged parents strangled for their prOpery
ty ... . No more hostile classes, employers, and'wageaworkers,
proletarians and bourgeois, and therefore no more restrictive laws or
courts, no armed orce protecting the iniquitous monOpOlies of the '
few against the mad hunger of the many! No more idlefig of any sort,
and therefore no more landlords living on rents, ...

In the later novels of Zola, there appears to be a change from
stress upon a Marxian type of:socialism to emphasis upon a type of
collectivism, dominated by Fourierist ideas. In Paris, the story of a
man Who leaves the priesthood for a.secular life, happiness is found

in a society which has as its foundation, Science and Rationalism.and

' 8
a social philosophy of peaceful collectivism. h This departure from

 

h7L'Argen'b’ p. ’4210

hBEmile Zola, Paris, translated by Ernest A. Vizetelly (London,
1925).

Marxian socialism.is carried to its ultimate in Travail, the gospel of
work. Luc Froment, thesecond:3on of the former priest Pierre of BEBE?
establishes a model industrial town on Fourieristic principles, in which
there are a common school, bright clean dwellings with garden plots,
clean workshops, a general store. In this village with a.ste1 foundry
as its central industry, luc sets up a type of collectivism.which
succeeds very well. Though these two novels prOpagate a different
type of collectivism.not particularly predominant in these years, they
are isgnificant to the historian for various reasons. First, they
reveal that Zola as a person was conscious of a need for some reform
in the industrial.society of his pe0p1e. In his writings, he seems to
have evolved from a Narxian socialistic viewpoint to a peaceful
collectivism. Second, this new type of society envisioned by Zola in
Egg g and Travail suggests that man by his reason and the aid of science
can establish a life on earth which can truly be a Utopia. This
discarding of religion (in Travail, the priest has a church which is
depicted as usually being empty; at the end of the story, the church
roof collapses, as if symbolic of the<iownfall of Roman Catholicism
in France) in the building of a new society will be discussed further
in following chapters.

Another one of the provacative attitudes which Zola illustrates
is anarchism. Souvarine, a Russian character in Germinal, who wishes
to have "no more nations, no more governments, no more prOperty, no God,
no religion", represents a kind of'anarchist thought prevalent at the

time in his attacks on the French workers:

- 51 -

Yes, that is the idea of all of you - of every French workman - to
unearth some treasure or other SO as to live on it afterwards in
egotism and laziness. You may shout as much as you like against the
rich, you lack the courage to hand over to the poor the money which
fortune may send you. You will never be worthy of happiness while

you have something belonging to yourselves, and while your hatred of
the bourgeois proceeds from your mad wish to be bourgeois in their
stead.

This type of worker criticized by Souvarine actually appears ina
characterization in Travail:

He E a worker named Raguj cried out at times against capitalist rule,
he was enraged by the strain of the labour imposed on him, and was even
capable of a short rebellion. But prolonged atavism had bent him; he
really had the soul of a Slave, respecting established traditions and
envying the employer ... and the only covert ambition that he nourished
was that of taking the employer's place some fine morning in order to
possess and enjoy life in his turn.

In the novel Paris the anarchist outrages in Paris during the
nineties are shown. Pierre Froment's brother, Guillaume, is a chemist
who has invented a powerful explosive. He has also become involved with
a group of anarchists and in carrying out their plans almost blows up
the Cathedral of the Sacred Heart as it is filled with thousands of
pilgrims. Pierre, the rational brother who has found peace in his
humanitarian ideas, prevents such a useless action just in time.
Guillaume, swayed by his brother‘s ideas, has a change of views and
diverts his explosive to be used for motive power that will benefit
mankind rather than destroy it.

Another interesting view toward socialism and politics in general

is expressed by scientists in Zola's works. One of the best characteriza-

 

1‘9Germinal, p. 336.

50 Travail, p. 56.

-52..

tions of this viewpoint is given by the scientist Bertheroy of Paris.
Because of his belief in science as the only revolutionary, he has a
contempt for the agitators of politics, telling Guillaume after the
latter had diverted the purpose of his explosive:

...And how many times already have I not told you that science alone
is the*world's:revolutionarv force, the only force which far above all
paltry political incidents, the vain agitation of despots, priests,
sectarians, and ambitious people of all kinds, works for the benefit
of those who will come after us, and prepares the triumph of truth,
justice and peace. ...Ah, ... in it, you have only to remain in

your laboratory here, for giman happiness can only spring from the
furnace of the scientist.

The preceding pages have given examples of some of the political
attitudes as well as expressed views toward social reform which are
revealed in the novels of Zola. It is naturally impossible to
separate politics from all other areas of thought and action. There-
fore, the following chapters in addition to showing Specific attitudes

in other areas may also add to political understanding of the period

represented in this chapter.

 

51Paris, pp. h85-6.

-53..

IV. Religious and Educational Attitudes
in 2013's Novels

The attitudes toward religion and education in the novels of
Zola may be related in one chapter because most often they are
associated in the treatment they receive in the novels. Before
showing these attitudes, it may be revealing to say something of
Zola's treatment of them. His works reveal a hostile attitude
toward organized religion, particularly Roman Catholicism, for no
apparent reason except the fact that he had succeeded in convincing
himself that science and education could take the place of religion
in man's life. 'While there are intense pictures unfavourable to
religion in Zola's novels, it should be remembered that this is
also a manifestation of the prevailing secular spirit of the age.
Matthew Josephson in his biography of Zola quotes Pope Leo XIII as
saying: "Zola was an enemy of the Church, but he was a frank and
straightforward enemy. may his soul repose in heaven!" 1 And Zola
‘was straightforward! 'When he had something to say of religion or
the Roman Catholic Church, he minced no words.

Few of 2013's secular characters are persons of sincere religious
beliefs, and a great many are persons who profess to religion apparently

because of social pressure or prestige. One such example is Pauline,

 

1Josephson, pp; cit., p. 38h.

-51“.

a young girl in I_.a_ 9213 de m who has come from Paris to a small

town to live with relatives. In Paris, where she received no religious

training, she had frequently heard priests scoffed and sneered at as

hypocrites whose black robes concealed sins and wickedness. When she

came to the village of Bonneville, her aunt Madame Chanteau saw to it

that she received her delayed religious training. Madame Chanteau's

religion had never been anything more than a matter of appearance

and respectability, but she regarded it as part of a polite education

for a young lady, as necessary as the art of deportment. 2 Pauline

soon evolved a religion in her mind which pictured the Deity as a

"very powerful, very wise ruler, who directed everything upon earth

in accordance with the principles of strict justice." This conception

was sufficient to satisfy the requirements of the kindly village priest,

Abbe’ Horteur. 3
Another non-religious character is Helene in [J33 Page d'Amour.

Although she has no Christian tendencies, one of the best friends of

this young lady and her daughter is the Abbe’ Rambaud who frequently would

say, with good-natured indulgence, that good hearts carve out their

own salvation by deeds of loving kindness and charity. God would know

when and how to touch his friend Héléne.h One of Helene's friends is a

doctor's wife, Madame Deberle, who finds a certain emotional and social

 

2Emile Zola, l3 Joie d_e_ Vivre, no translator given (London, 1889), p. 53.
3Ibid., pp. 55-6.

h_U_r_1_e_ Page d'Amour, p. 150.

-55..

pleasure in presenting flowers to the church, giving alms, coming to
church attired in her best. All the more so does madame Deberle enjoy
her religion because her husband has no interest in it, thus her
devotions have all the sweetness of forbidden fruit. 5 In the following
wmmfib of Zola, religion for her was:

... different from evening dances, concerts, and first nights... .

The store of religion which she had acquired in her school-days now
found new life in her giddy brain, taking shape in all sorts of

trivial obzervances, as though she were reviving the games of her
childhood.

Again in L'Assommoir, when it came to the question of christening the

 

baby of Gervaise and the workman Coupeau, Coupeau saw no reason.for
it. It certainly would not procure her an income and she might catch
a cold from it. 7

Among the persons who are nonproligious there are a number of
them who do see religion as a necessity for others. Savin, a clerk
serving a local tax-collecter in.zg§itéfis one such person who states:
I am an anti-clerical as I am.a Republican. But I hasten to add that
in my opinion a religion is necessary fer women and children, and that
as long as the Catholic religion fig that of the country, why, we may
as well have that one as another!
Lisa, the porkébutcher's wife, already introduced to the reader in
Chapter II, has similar views with respect to religion in that she
looks upon it as a sort of police force that helps to maintain order

and without which no government would be possible. She herself did

 

SIbid., p. 155.

6Ibid. 3 p. 160.

7L'Assommoir, p. 95.

8Emile Zola, Verité, translated by Ernest A. Vizetelly (New York,
1903), po 59.

-56-

not observe the ordinances of the Church but disliked to hear religion
spoken ill of and often she silenced the family friend Gavard who
talked of turning out the priests by saying:
A great deal of good that would do! Why, before a month was over the
people would be murdering one another in the streets, and you would
be compelled to invent another God. That was just what happened in '93.
YOu know very well that I'm not given to mixing with the priests, but
for all that I say that they are necessary, as we couldn't do without
them. 9

The position of religion in reference to social issues most
frequently is discussed in Zola's novels along with education. These
are, however, occasional examples of a clerical attitude toward social
reform. The village priest in Germinal, the story of the strike,
censured the higher dignitaries of the Church and the bourgeois,
believing that deliverance for the pe0p1e would come from.the country
priests who would restore the reign of Christ. He apparently was in
sympathy with the workmen but had no immediate earthly salvation for
them. 10 In 3223 Zola, does present a Roman Catholic Viscount who is
a proponent of Roman Catholic Socialism in France. He had established
model farms where he put his ideas of Christian Socialism.into practice. 11

The above examples are some of the occasional references to
religion which can.be found in Zola's novels. Several of the novels
deal entirely with the religious prOblem.(primarin as Zola sees it)

and can.be best presented by summarization. One of these, £a_Conquete

g9 Plassans, is the story of the role of a priest working for the

 

93,3 Ventre 93 Paris, p. 220.
loGerminal, p. 327.

11Emile Zola, Rome, translated by Ernest A. Vizetelly (New York, 1925),
p. 13.

- 57 -

Second Empire. 12 The Abbe/Faujas is sent to Plassans by the govern-
ment in order to combat the Vatican element in the town which has been
in Opposition to the Empire. Making himself a friend of the community
by starting a home for young girls and a young men's club, the Abbe,
first establishes a social relationship in the community. Then.he
proceeds to artfully suggest an imperial candidate in the town for the
Office of deputy. In addition to the political role of the priest,
Zola makes another of his religious attacks. Abbe’Faujas and his
mother take a room with Eartha and Frances Mburet. Madame MOuret,
who has never been a religious person, finds herself becoming zealously
religious under the influence of the Abbe; to the extent of neglecting
her home and driving her husband to insanity. In.much the same manner,
Zola writes another full book, L§_§aute'de_11§bb§_hburet to attack
celibacy in the Roman Catholic Church. 13 The Abbe’Mouret falls in
love with a lovely young girl, the niece of a staunch nonAbeliever
who lives in Paradou, a fantastic old estate of crumbling ruins and
flower gardens. After becoming seriously ill, the priest is taken
by his friend Dr. Pascal to Paradou to recuperate. It is here that he
falls in love with Albine, but he is able to recover from.this temporary
transgression and returns to the Church.

These two novels are examples of Zola's early portrayals of
religion,‘but it was in his later works Lourdes, EEEE? and Paris

that the attack upon Roman Catholicism was completed. In Lourdes,1h

 

lemile Zola, La,Conqu3te_ de Plassans, edited by Ernest A. Vizetelly,
(London, 1900).

(London, 1911).

lL’Emile Zola, Lourdes, translated by Ernest A. Vizetelly (London, 1913).
- 58 -

Abbe/Pierre Froment is shown as a priest who doubts his religious
convictions and makes the annual pilgrimage to Lourdes with a friend
of his (a young lady whom Pierre loved but who became a cripple, for
life, as the doctors thought, at which time Pierre entered the priest-
hood) who is seeking to be cured. In seeing all the diseased and
maimed, who have despaired of medical science and are seeking a
miracle, Abbe’Pierre hopes that he too can receive a miracle which
will renew his faith. Zola sincerely tries, I believe, to make the
miracles at Lourdes understood, but neither he nor his Character the
Abbé’succeeds. In Rgme, Abbe’Froment who has been discouraged by
the animal faith diaplayed at Lourdes hopes to find a new religion..
Froment, believing this new religion is in Roman Catholic socialism,
writes a book on it which he takes to Rome where it is refused by
the POpe. The outcome of Abbe’ Pierre's struggle is found in £93.13.
in which novel he forsakes the Church to lead a secular life. These
latter novels of Zola are not actually faithful representations of
the period. Inasmuch as Pierre's struggles for truth could be the
struggles of any man, they are legitdnate material for the novel. But
the student of history realizes that Zola, in his ardent desire to
kill Roman Catholicism, has not presented a fair picture of the liberal
position within the Roman Catholic Church, particularly that of Leo XIII,
toward social issues of the time.

Roman Catholicism in the novels under survey is usually represented
as being in Opposition to the secular education of the Third Republic.

Various illustrations of the educational attitudes prevailing in these

- 59 -

years nay be found in the novels. Most of the Opinions on education
will be found in Vgiitg; although in the earlier novel Travail, educa-
tion is also discussed. Luc Froment, the organizer of the collectivist
town sets forth his view of teaching as follows:

The master should have no other duty than that of awakening energy

and encouraging the child's aptitude in one or another’respect by
provoking questions from.him and enabling him to develop his
personality. Deep in the human race there is an immense insatiable
desire to learn and know, and this should belEhe one incentive to study
without need of any rewards or punishments.

A schoolmaster (not of Luc's communal school) believes in a different
type of education. He feels it necessary to subject children to the
discipline Of liberty and to instill republican principles in them by
force if necessary. 16 This schoolmaster Hermeline represents one

of the educational views whichwwere regarded as practical by avid
nationalists during the Third Republic. He felt that Luc's dreams of
educating free men were useles. How could the:3tate make soldiers of
free men Mao had not the discipline of a training to make them citizens
of a glorious state? 17 In the communal school of Luc's village girls
and boys were trained together with good results for both. It is true
that education laws of the eighties provided for more extended coeduca-
tion than had previously been the case.

In varité, which is Zola's powerful novel with the elements of the

Dreyfus case in the background, further reflections on education are

 

15Travail, p. 1h?.

16
Ibid., p. 1h5.

17Ib1d., pp. 2&5-6.

presented. In the town of Maillebois, Zephirin, the nephew of the Jewish
communal schoolmaster, is murdered on the day'he takes his First
Communion. Zephirin has gone to the school of the Capuchin Brothers

in the town. Simon, the Jewish schoolmaster, is accused of the murder
and sentenced to years of hard labor. Marc Froment, schoolmaster in
the neighbouring town of Jonville, believes Simon innocent and along
with Simon's brother David and other’supporters devotes himself to
seeking justice for the condemned man. After two trials (similar to
the Dreyfus case) Simon is again.declared guilty. In the Dreyfus case,
justice was finally decreed by the courts in 1906. In this novel, a
new generation of youth, trained in truth and justice, compensate for
the sins of their grandparents by presenting a house to the school-
master Simon who has returned from years of imprisonment. In the
Dreyfus affair the army, supported by the Church, was the main obstacle
to justice. In Vgiitefthe Church is the bogeyman. A Brother from the
Capuchin school finally confesses his guilt in the slaying of zephirin,
in a public confession in which he also condemns his fellow churchmen
for their part in the crime by shielding his guilt.

The anti-semitism attacked in Verité'is also revealed in earlier
novels of Zola, particularly L'Argent. Saccard, a speculator, reflects
one type of anti-semitic feeling:

'Did anyone ever see a Jew working with his fingers?‘ he would ask. 'were
there any Jewish peasants and working men? 'No' he would say, 'labour

disgraces, their religion almost forbids it, exalting only Rae
exploitation of the labour of the otherS. Ah! the rogues!’

 

18L'Argent, p. 910

-51..

After Saccard is financially ruined, he seeks to blame his personal
misfortune upon other Jewish financiers in the Bourse, saying that they
seek for financial rule of the entire world. Savin, a clerk for a
local tax-collector in Viritgis another example or a prejudicial

mind:

Although the Jews prey on our land Of France, I have nothing to say
against that Monsieur Simon, unless it be that a Jew ought never to
be allowed to be a schoolmaster. I hope that Le; Petit Beaumontais
Ca newSpaper in this town which never ceased declaring the guilt
of Simon and attacking the Jews, similar to the type of journalism
carried on by mam French newspapers during the Dreyfus Affaifl
will start a campaign on that subject. ...Liberty and justice for
all - such ought to be the watchwords of 1 good Republican. But
the country alone must be considered ... 9

 

When Marc and David sought the aid of a wealthy Jewish baron, they
found him of an Opinion like that of many Jews in France during the
Dreyfus affair. The Baron Nathan advised David and Marc to let the
wretched affair alone for after all it should be "France before every-
thing else with her glorious ;ast, and the Unsemble of her traditions.
We cannot hand her over to the Freemasons and the Cosmopolites ..."

It was the hOpe of Marc to destroy such feelings of prejudice
in the minds of the new generation. This could be done by education,
especially in the elementary schools. Marc hoped to train the young
people in such a way that they might:

discharge their duty as freed citizens, possessed of knowledge and
will power, released from all the absurd dogmas, errors, and super—

19 I

Verite’, p. 60.
20

Ibid., p. 870

-62..

stitions which destroy human liberty and dignity. " 21
This task of teaching the youthflalso included the erasing of the
"errors and impostures of the Church and.eetting in their place truth
as proclaimed by science, and human peace, based upon knowledge ..." 22
Marc's wife, who had temporarily been estranged from him because
of the Simon affair and her susceptibility tb her religiously fanatic
grandmother who was an anti-Simonite, returns to him when she knows
the full facts of the case and realizes the innocence of Simon. The
couple spend the remainder of their days happy in their teaching, Marc
being in charge of the boys' school and Genevieve of the girls' school
at Jonville. They dream of having both boys and girls together in one
school as many of the neighbouring towns already have. Their two
children, like many of their former pupils, become elementary school-
teachers in turn. Thus Nero's hOpes for new generations of French
youth trained in reason and science without religion are on the way to
being achieved.
Zola predicts thesseparation of the Church and State which was
to come in 1905. He shows that the money, formerly paid to priests, is
now doubling the salaries of elementary schoolmasters. With not so

much accuracy in relation to actual events, Zola also shows the churches

as practically empty, as:

 

21Ihid. , pp. 155-6.

22Ibid. , p. 55

-53-

...theatres run on commercial lines, subsisting on the payments made
by the spectators, the last admirers Of the cermonies performed in
theme 2

The primary objection of the Church to the new education was
its disregard of religion.and emphasis on secular philosophies. Educa-
tion was of course only one aspect of the secular philoSOphy with which
the Church was confronted. The clerical attitude toward Science is
shown in the thought of Abbé’Marle of Travail:
...he clung strictly to the letter of the Church's dogmas, feeling
certain that the whole of the ancient edifice would be swept away
should science nd the:3pirit of free examination.ever effect a
breach in it.
In fairness to the Roman Catholic Church and the Protestant Church
as well, it should be noted that this opinion of Fundamentalism was
only one answer to the whole prOblem of the conflict between Religion
and Science, and that there were others. The philosophical and

scientific tendencies of the age which the Church challenged will be

discussed in the following chapter.

 

231bid., p. 523.

Zhh'avail, p. 860

- 6h -

V. Scientific and Intellectual Attitudes
in Zola's Novels

'Science' with its attendant philosophies was the intellectual
keynote of the nineteenth century, Officially recognized by the world
perhaps in 1859 with the publication of Charles Darwin's m 3f
Species. The next few decades saw the deveIOpment Of the natural _
sciences, mathematics, biology, chemistry, physiology to an extent
hitherto unknown. The application of the scientific method by
historians, economists, political scientists, sociologists, resulted
in a classification of "social sciences ". The materialistic approach
toward life influenced the fine arts, particularly literature and
painting. Applied science gave rise to countless inventions for
modern living - steam railways, telegraphic communications, the bicycle,
chemical inventions, the utilization of electricity in homes and facto-
ries. Industry was mechanized with the advent of the Diesel engine
and new methods of dis covering and employing natural resources such
as iron and OOpper. Agriculture was revolutionized by the introduction
Of farm machinery such as the reaper and binder and by methods of
large scale farming and crOp rotation. Attendant with «the rise of the
theoretical and practical sciences was the emphasis on the philosophy
of positivism with its belief that everything of value in life could be
gained by man with the proper use of his reason and the aid of science.

Religion was found to be a cumbersome feature of man' a life. Rather than

-55-

to a divinity in heaven, man would DOW'bOW to his material idols on
earth. This period of years, glossed in the climate of positivism and
pragmatism, was exuberant in its optimism. With the natural and physical
scientist and the social scientist proclaiming to the world all the
known facts of the material world and humanity, it was believed that
man surely could make his heaven upon earth. In France from 1855 to
1900 there were at least eight expositions which were dazzling displays
of the results of science in practical areas. In the decade of the
nineties, there was somewhat of a departure from realism in literature.
Generally speaking, however, the whole scientific attitude and Optimistic
material philoSOphy has not been seriously questioned until the present
century, and to a greater extent, only within the last ten years.

Zola's writings reflect this entire movement in.several ways.
First, his literary approach was one of Observation and experiment.
In addition to merely picturing the world about him, he sought to
experiment with it by studying the physiological effects of heredity
on his RougoneMacquart family. As well as displaying an interest
in heredity, Zola attempted sociological studies, the effects of

drunkenness in L'Assommoir; the life of a courtesan in Nana; the

 

prOblem of a decreasing birth rate in Féconditei Second, Zola draws
characters who represent the philOSOphy of the time.

Before looking at the personal interest Of Zola in science, a
few illustrations of characters who are imbued with the new philosophy

may be of value. In one of Zola's earliest novels, Madeleine Ferat,

 

he illustrates a scientist who has made science his mistress. This

- 66 -

man shut himself up in his 1aboratory with his science, refusing
himself any social life. 'When he died, his laboratory was found in
ruins, destroyed from a desire to let no one else have his mistress.
Scientists in later novels, however, are men who are giving their
knowledge to humanity. The scientist Bertheroy 2 of Paris is one of
Zola's best characterizations of the attitude of the scientist toward
life about him. Bertheroy in conversation with his anarchist friends
explains the superiority of science to political action:
...I feel only contempt for the vain agitation of politics, whether
they be revolutionary or conservative. Does not science suffice?
'Why hasten the times when one single step of’science brings humanity
nearer to the goal of truth and justice than do a hundred years of
politics and social revolt? 'Why, it is science alone which sweeps
away dogmas, casts down gods, and creates light and happiness. And
I, Member of the Institute as I am.decorated and possessed of means,
I am the only true “evolutionistlz

Most of Zola's scientist characters are non—political like
Bertheroy. In Travail the scientist Jordan.has views similar to
Bertheroy:
...he closed his ears to the contemporary battle, and shut himself up
in his laboratory, where, as he expressed it, he manufactured
happiness for tO-morrow.
Jordan, who has experimented with electrical power all his life,

succeeds in utilizing it for Luc's’model.village. Luc, another firm

believer in.science, tells Jordan in conversation:

 

2see page 53, chapter three.
3Pal‘is, p0 1160
hTravail, p. 117.

* 1 Emile Zola, Madeleine Férat, no translator given (London, 1888), p. 97.
-67-

 

Science remains the great revolutionary.[:these words are almost a
refrain in Zola's passages on.science] ...WOuld our town of Beauclair,
now all comfort and solidarity, have been possible as yet if you had
not placed at its disposal that electric power which has become the
necessary agent of all work, all social life. Science, truth, will
alone emancipate man, wake him master of his destiny, and give him
sovereignty over the world bygreducing the natural forces to the
status of obedient servants.

Ideas on evolution also play a part in Zola's novels. Two of
the best examples may be found in the characters of Etienne in
Germinal and Maurice in La Debacle. Etienne, it will be remembered,
was acquiring a smattering of knowledge on social systems and prOb-
lems. In his reading it was inevitable that he should get to Darwin.
Then he evolved a new revolutionary idea of the struggle for life "the
lean devouring the fat, the muscular multitude devouring the flabby

bpurgeoisie":

 

'Suppose,’ said he, 'that present society should no longer exist,

that the very dregs of it'were swept away. ...Was it not more than
likely that the new society which would spring up would be spoiled

by the same injustice that prevailed already: that some would be
diseased, others in good health, some, more skillful and intelligent,
fattening upon everything, and the remainder, stupid and lazy, reduced
to slavery again?‘

In Etienne's analysis of society, the reader can.Observe the biological
theory of evolution transferred to social life. Maurice, the soldier
of La Debacle has also accepted the application of biological evolution
to life in totality. He sees war as inevitable and necessary to the

existence of nations thinking in terms of the following passage:

 

5lbid., pp. h75—6.

6Germinal, pp. 376-7.

Is not life itself an incessant battle, which does not flag, even for
a second? Continuous fighting, the victory of the fittest, the
maintenance and renewal of strength by action, and the resuscitation
of juvenescent life fronideath itself - are not these the very essence
of the natural law? 7

In addition to showing such views as the above which are favourable
to science, Zola exhibits attitudes of ordinary folk in Opposition to
the scientific attitude. In La Terre, the village schoolmaster harangues
the peasants for their failure to advance with the ideas of the time.
His words suggest a possible reluctance of the peasants to accept new
methods of agriculture as well as the French peasant's love for his

land:

You are a.perishing and worn-out race. Your imbecile love of the soil
has eaten you up. ...For centuries past you.have been wedded to the
soil, and it has always betrayed you. Look at America! There the
agriculturist is master of the soil. He isnlt bound to it by any
family ties, aim sentimental considerations; as soon as one plot is
exhausted, he goes further on.and takes another. ...

In the words of Fouan, an old peasant, the reader views the reaction

of’some peasants to new ways:

Come, hang you and your science! The more a man knows the worse he

gets on. I tell you the land gave a better yeidl fifty years ago.

It gets angry at being worried so, and never gives more than it chooses,
the beggar! 9

In.Lg Joie d2 Vivre a young man is portrayed who has dabbled in

 

music, medicine and chemistry. In.answer to Lazare's statement showing

7?; Debacle, p. 9.
8E Terre, p. hat.

9Ibido’ pp. 72-30

-69-

his discouragement with science, the village doctor tells him:

Ah! I recognize in that remark of yours the young man of to-day, who
has nibbled at the sciences and filled himself with dis content because
they have not enabled him to satisfy his old ideas of the absolute.
...You want to discover in the sciences, at the first attempt and all
alone, all the truths, while we are content to go on painfully and
slowly deciphering them, recognizing that it will take an eternity
before they are thoroughly mastered. ... 10

In Le; Docteur Pascal, the final novel of the Rougon—Macquart

 

series, Dr. Pascal (like Zola) has studied the entire RougonéMacquart
family. Pascal is one of the three sons of Fe’licité and Pierre Rougon

who have been introduced to the reader in La; Fortune des Rougon, discussed

 

 

in chapter three. In Le; Docteur Pascal, Fe’licite’ makes a visit to her
son's home and tries to obtain the documents he has collected on the
family in order that she may destroy them. In conversation with Pascal's
niece who lives with him‘, Fe’licite’ tells her:

No, no such thing as a family would be possible should pe0p1e begin
dissecting and anlyzing this and that - the nerves of one, and the
muscles of another. It would disgust one with life. ...They the
fiffimfi destroy respect, they destroy family ties, they destroy
While Fe’licté.e"s comments show an antagonism to Pascal's work because

of her family being involved they also suggest a common criticism of
science, i_._e_._, 'the dissection of human life to a mere mechanism reduces
its dignity and humanity'. Pascal's niece Clotilde, becomes his helpmate
and later has a child by him. Pascal finally trains her young mind

to believe in his science but not without objection from her in the

learning process. The following statement of Clotilde is another example

1013; Joie 513 Vivre, p. 221.

 

11Emile Zola, Lg Docteur Pascal, translated by Ernest A. Vizetelly
(London, 1925), p. 18?

-70..

of an argument against science:

At all events, science has swept everything away, the earth is bare,
the heavens are empty, and so what is to become of me, even supposing
that science be not responsible for the hopes I have conceived. ...
Where am I to find a firm foundation on which I may build my house,
since the Old world has been demolished and such little Speed is shown
in forming the new one? ... Since science is too slow ... we prefer
to turn back - yes, to plunge anew into the beliefs of former times,
which dfiing long, long centuries sufficed for the happiness of the
world.

The book Le; Docteur Pascal personifies Zola's purpose in writing

 

the Rougon-Macquart series. The family, of which Pascal is a part

and which is the externally uniting factor in the twenty nolumes,

has been studied by Pascal in the particular novel and by Zola in

the whole series. Adelaide Fouque, Aund Dide, who was married in
1786 to Rougon, a gardener, had one son by him (Pierre Rougon). After
her husband's death, she had two children by a lover Macquart, who was
a smuggler addiCted to drink as well as being mentally unbalanced.

These characters are introduced in La Fortune des Rougon and from the

 

original family some thirty-two major characters generate whose
various fortunes are traced in the later novels Of the series. Aunt
Dide, the original source, who is committed to an asylum in _I_a Fortune

993 Rougon dies in the novel _l_.e;_ Docteur Pascal at the age of 105. The

 

characters who spring from this family are a combination of neurotics,
alcoholics, consmtives, gamblers, cripples such as Gervaise Macquart

of L'Assommoir who was conceived in a mood of drunkenness by her parents

 

and consequently is lame. Nearly all the family with few exceptions are

possesses with some physical imperfections. In this paper, a historical

 

12Ibid., p. 91.

-71-

essay, it would be superfluous to relate the physica1.degeneracies of
this family. It is important to mention themh however, for they show
that Zola was greatly influenced by doctrines of science, particularly
heredity. His attempt to show the effects of heredity upon several
generations also implies the belief that the novelist may use science
as his domain in addition to other features of modern life. (The type
of study Zola attempted on this large scale was earlier manifested in

Therese Raquin. 13 In this novel, a married woman and.her lover brutally

 

drowned the husband and succeeded in making the death appear to be
accidental. Later the couple marry‘but are unable to find happiness
being Obsessed.with the vision of the drowning man. In the Preface
to this novel Zola had stated:
I have selected persons absolutely swayed by their nerves and blood,
deprived of free will, impelled in every action of life,bby'the
fatal lusts Of the fleSh. I have sought to follow these brutes, step
by step, in the secret labour of their passions, in the impulsion of
their instincts, in the ffirebral disorder resulting from the excessive
strain on their nerves.
I repeat that the primary purpose of an illustration like the above to
the historian is that it reveals the impact of the new sciences upon
one literary representative of the age.

Several novels in the RougonPMacquart series, in addition to

presenting physiological tendencies, show a sociological interest. One

of these is L'Assommoir, a study of drunkenness. "Assommoir" literally

 

neans a heavy‘bludgeon but may be applied to any weapon.that will fell,

 

13Emile Zola, Therese Raquin, translated by Edward Vizetelly
(London, 1910) o

 

1hIbid., ix, Preface.

-72-

15

stun, or kill. As Zola used the term, it came to mean drink itself.
Gervaise Macquart of the story is a laundry worker who has had two
children.by a lover. When he deserts her, she marries a workman
Coupeau. For a time their fortunes reach a point enabling Gervaise

to set up her own laundry shop and become a businesswoman with girls
'working for her. Coupeau, who is a roof worker, has a bad fall from a
roof and during his recuperation, by gradual degrees, becomes a drunkard
who loses all his orderly habits and sense of respectability. The
bntire family life disintegrates; the lover comes back and moves in
with Gervaise and Coupeau; the daughter Nana roams the streets selling
flowers and later herself; GerVaise, whose father had been.anh1coholic
succumbs to "assommoir" and loses her Shop; Coupeau becomes mentally
ill and is committed to a hospital where he dies of delirium tremens;
finally Gervaise, ruined'by drink, dies. There is no doubt that Zola
has brutally pictured the ill effects of drink/insincere attempt, I
believe, to dramatize the ill-effects of excessive drinking. 7

Into the atmosphere of L'Assommoir, Nana was born to Gervaise and

 

Coupeau. 16 She later becomes the central figure of the novel Nana.

 

15The translator stat s (vavi, Introduction) that the name "assommoir"
was first given to a‘fauéourg in Paris. The idea was that the drama
consumed at this tavern would deal one a knockdown.blow. In time,
states Vizetelly, among the working classes of Paris any low drinking
haunt noted for its spirits became known as anmassommoir. Josephson (page
220) asserts that taverns in the poor quarters were called "zinc? "bouge",
"bistro" but probably were not commonly known.as "assommoir" until after
the publication of Zola's novel. I am inclined to agree with the latter
evaluation. It is an interesting point for it.reveals Zola's desire to
use words which are impressive and make an impact, a not unromantic effort
on the part of this striving realist.

16Emile Zola, Nana, no translator given (Cleveland, l9h6)

-73..

Heredity of alcoholism developed into mental and physical perversion

are Nana's characteristics and she becomes a notorious prostitute,

an example of Vice. This girl, who progresses through countless

lovers, apparently has no explanation for her actions and no recognition
of any immorality in her behavior. The book sold rapidly and was also
severely criticized, but in the author's impression, it was merely a
picture of another sore of society, and not a pornographic novel.

In a later novel, not of the series, Zola probes another social
prOblem. This is FéEondité, the first of his social gOSpel works which
has as its theme the glory of birth and large families. 17 The declining
population of France has been a source of study fOr many historians and

sociologists. France which stood second among the nations of EurOpe
at the beginning of the nineteenth century had dropped to fifth place
in the 1890's. For three years, 1890, 1891, and 1892 the deaths
exceeded births by 38,000, 10,000, and 20,000. After that time, the
excess of births reappeared but to a small extent. 18 Zola's novel
suggests the problem and the solution set forth by some of his characters
is unrestricted procreation, this being one of the rare instancesin
which Zola agreed with the Catholic Church. Mathieu Froment, an
educated draughtsman, leaves his job in a Parisian factory to retire
to the country and live upon.the soil. Hathieu and Marianne, his wife,
continue rearing and bearing their’twelve children who in turn.marny
and raise families until at the end of the story, some three hundred

17Emile Zola, Fecondite, translated by Ernest A. Vizetelly (London, 1925).

IBCOUbertin’ 22:- Cite, p0 3850

-71.-

living descendants of Hathieu and Marianne participate in a great
celebration of their seventieth wedding anniversary.

The book is actually a poem of life with countless refrains
glorifyirg fruitfulness. Each time a child is born to Mathieu and
Marianne, one such refrain enters the story:

And 'twas ever the great work, the good work, the work of f ruitfulness
spreading, thanks to the earth and thanks to woman, both fictorious
over destruction, offering fresh means of subsistence each time a
fresh child was born, and loving, willing, battling, toiling even
amidst suj‘igering, and ever tending to increase of life and increase
of hope.

Along with the arrival of each child, Mathieu and Marianne increase
their land holdings until they own a huge estate.
Mathieu and his friend Dr. Boutan are the exponents of fruitfulness.

Dr. Boutan tries in vain to explain to Beauche‘ne, a factory owner, that
the Malthusian theories were shattered, that "the calculations had been
based on a possible, not a real , increase of population; in vain did

he prove that the present-day economic crisis, the evil distribution of
wealth under the capitalist system, was the one hateful cause of pover-
ty." 20 In reply to Boutan's arguments for children, Beauchene states:

People pretend that we are not patriots because we don't leave troops
of children behind us. But that is simply ridiculous; each serves the
country in his own way. If the poor folks give it soldiers, we give it
our capital - all the proceeds of our commerce and industry. A fine
lot of good would it do the country if we were to ruin ourselves with
big families, which would hamper us, prevent us from getting rich, and
afterwards destroy whatever we create by subdividing it. With out laws
and customs there can be no substantial fortune unless a family is
limited to one son. 21 '

 

19Fecondite’, p. 181.

2°Ibid., p. 12.
21
Ibid., pp. 298-90

-75..

In France the inheritance laws required the subdivision of property
among all the heirs, thus the reader can understand why Beauchéne
wished to have only one son who could inherit his entire fortune
intact. Beauché‘ne's attitude that only the working classes had many
children is shown in an earlier novel in which a woman of the middle

class makes the following statement:

It's only the working classes that beget children as a hen lays
eggs, regardless of what it will cost them. It's true, they turn
them loose into the street like so many flocks of sheep. I
declare it makes one sick. 2

Another view in Opposition to those held by Boutan and Mathieu
is illustrated in the words of a novelist character, Santerre:

No, no; Paris simply wishes to remain stationary, and it wishes this
precisely because it is the most intelligent, most highly civilized
city in the world. The more nations advance in civilization the
smaller becomes their birth—rate. We are simply giving the world an
example of high culture, superior intelligence, and other nations
will certainly follow that? example when in turn they also attain to
our state of perfection. 3

Dr. Boutan also criticizes the custom among mothers of the upper
classes of giving their children to wet-nurses until they are weaned.
His remarks suggest that one reason for the falling birth rate might

have been the absence of desire by women to have children and to care

for them:

But how would you have a Parisienne of the wealthy bourgeoisie under-
take the duty, the long brave task of mirsing a child, when she leads
the life she does, what with receptions and diggers and soirees, and
absences and social obligations of all sorts?

 

22333 Bouille, p. 7h. '

23Fe'condite’, p. 36.

2thid., p. :23.

-75..

These preceding examples of a 'psuudo—sociological' approach
in some of the novels reflect an awareness of social problems on
the part of their author as well as an awareness of their existence
in France. Particularly, the illustration from Fécondite' appear
to elaborate very well on a problem in France of these years and give
Opinions which are very often found in any discussion of the decreasing
population of France.

In the area of intellectual attitudes, most of such material in
the novels pertains to science. There are occasional references to the
new ideas of art. L'Oeuvre is a novel dealing with artists and writers
in Paris and is also autobiographical of Zola's early days in the Latin

Quarter. 2 5

Besides drawing upon his own life, Zola used material
concerning many of his friends of those early years in Paris - Paul
Alexis, Philippe Solari, Manet, Guillemet, Paul Cézanne. This novel
centers on the efforts of its main character, Claude Lantier, to paint
a masterpiece, his despair in not being able to achieve perfection,
and consequent suicide. Lantier is first introduced to the reader of
the Rougon-Macquart series in _I_.e_ 1,339.59. de Paris, where he is shown
working on many of his early paintings in the city markets. The new
approach in art is suggested by the following picture describing one
of Iantier‘s ambitions:

For a long time he dreamt of a colossal picture which should represent
the loves of Cadine and Marjolin f two wayward youths of the marketplace]
in the central markets, amidst the vegetables, the fish, and the meat.

...In this conception he saw a manifesto proclaiming Elge positivism
of art - modern art, experimental and materialistict.

 

.aK
zslntfle Zola, L'Oeuvre, translated by Katherine Woods (1:53} 19746)

26% Ventre de Paris, 187-8.

-77-

In L'Oeuvre, at one time, Claude is working on a picture for the Salon,

In the 933 iii, and finds hinself unable to get the exact lighting,

exclaiming to his novelist friend Sandoz (Zola):

Damn it all, the thing's still dark, I've got that cursed Delacroix

in my eye! And'then there — that hand, that's Cogrbet. Damn, we

keep drenching everyfliing with a romantic sauce! 7

In sympathy with the artist, Sandoz shrugs his shoulders hopelessly for

he too regrets having been born at the confluence of Hugo and Balzac.

Claude's picture named above was refused by the jury of the Salon but
actually

itnwas exhibited in the Salon des Refuses. This wasncreated'by

Napoleon III in 1863 as an outlet for exhibition by those painters who

were refused.by the Salon. In 1866 Zola wrote a series of articles

called Egg;Salon in L'Evenemegt attacking the jury of the Salon for

 

refusing the paintings of the young artists, particularly of Manet and
of the whole "Open Air" school. The painting of Claude Lantier mentioned
above depicts a nude on the grass surrounded by fully clothed men; the
description is most similar to Manet's 13932 33 2'12 Mwhich shows
the two picknicking couples, one of the women being unclothed.

Every week the group of artists and writers of this navel gather
in.Sandoz' apartment to have supper and discuss their theories of
art. One evening Sandoz expresses his ideas which are actually those
Zola came to proclaim in regard to literature:
Physiology, psychology - the words mean nothing; for the one has
penetrated the other; today the two are one; the mechanism of man
ends by being the sum total of all his functions. Oh, there is the

formula; and it is the sole basis for our modern revolution; it
is the death of the old society 31d the birth of the new; and it is

 

27L'Oeuvre, p. 67.

-78-

the growth of a new art, in this new soil. They'll see} They'll
see the literature that will be the offsrping of'science and
democracy, in this coming age!

In the novels fliere are a few excellent references to the type
of literature that the novelist Sandoz Speaks of in the above
passage. In 3'}. Bouille a lady is shown who likes to read romantic
tales. One day her neighbour from whom she borrows books gives her
a BalZac novel and Marie tells him: "You're giving me another one
of Balzac's. No, take it back; his tales are too much like real
life!" 29 In Son Excellence Eugene Rougan, Eugene Rougon, alluding
to Flaubert's Madame Bovarv, states to a friend of his:

But our present-day novelists have adOpted a style which is full
of suggestiveness, a manner of describing things which makes it
appear as if thewaere actually going on before you. They call 3
that art. To me it seems to be simply indecency and bad taste.
Balzac and Flaubert are considered precursors of the 'naturalists'
and these remarks are suggestive of the type of criticism that

would be made of most all of Zola's works as well as the writings of

other naturalists.

 

28Ibid., p. 103.
29

Pot Bouille, p. 2h9.

 

O .
3 Son Excellence Eugene Rougon, p. 103.

-79..

VI. Social Pictures in Zola's Novels

In addition to illustrations of prevailing ideas of the last half
of the nineteenth century portrayed in Zola's novels, the student of
history will find many pictures of society which cannot be obtained
from general history books of the period. The novelist must always
present his story in a material setting - homes, cities, shops, or
wherever the action is taking place. Zola's novels have long detailed
descriptions of the material setting of his stories. Such social pic-
tures could very well provide material for a study in themselves. Because
of the abundance of material of this type in fine novels, I have chosen
to present a few of those pictures which are peculiar to the French
scene and which would appear to add to the understanding of the student
of history. Because Zola's novels involve many types of people as well
as locales, a variety of social pictures are available.

One of the interesting areas of social life is the entertainment
patterns of different groups of pe0p1e. In the home of madame Raquin, a
Parisian small shopkeeper (the mother-in—law of Ihe’rese Raquin) the
readernsees one form of social entertainment. Once a week four or five
friends of the neighbourhood come to Madame Raquin's home for a social
evening. The following description depicts one of these evenings:

At:3even o'clock madame Raquin lit the fire, set the lamp in the centre
of the table, placed a box of dominoes beside it, and wiped the tea

-80..

service in the sideboard.[:precisely at eight o'clock, the guests
arrived] When the party was complete, Madame Raquin poured out the
tea, Camille emptied the box of dominoes on the Americanecloth
table cover, and every one became ddeply interested in their hands.
Henceforth nothing could be heard but the jingle of the dominoes.
At the end of each game, the players quarrelled for two or three
minutes, then mournful silence was resumed, broken by the sharp
clanks of the dominoes. Cat precisely 11 o'clock the guests left]

In the country town of Bonneville, at the home of the Chanteaus,
every Saturday afternoon the village doctor and the village priest come
to luncheon. After the meal, the doctor and priest play draughts with
old Chanteau who is usually in his wheel-chair since he suffers from
the gout. 2 In the mining village portrayed in Germinal the people
spend many social evenings in the "Jolly Good Fellow", a combination
tavern and ballroom. Along the walls of the ballroom are hung the
shields bearing the names of various corporation saints - Saint Eloi,
the patron of the iron puddlers, Saint Crépin, the patron of the

cobblers, Saint Barbe, the patronness of the miners.

L'Assommoir contains vivid pictures of the social life of the

 

working classes of Paris. The day Gervaise and Coupeau are married
is full of celebration. After a civil ceremony in the morning, the
witnesses are treated to bread, ham, and wine at a wine shop. Then
the other guests who have been invited to the celebration arrive. In

order to entertain themselves before the dinner, one member of the

lThe’I‘ése Raquin, pp. 23-110

2_L_a_ Joie g3 Vivre, p. 217.

 

3
Germinal, p. 1290

-81-

group suggests that they visit the art museum. The entire party

walks through the streets of Paris to a museum where they spend several
hours. Then, after climbing the tower of the Place Vendome they return
to a restaurant, the "Silver‘Windmill" where an evening of feasting is
enjoyed. The feast consists of vermicelli soup, meat pie, rabbit stew,
frosted eggs, cheeses, fruits, and wines. . Later in the story, after
Gervaise and Coupeau have saved enough money to buy the ShOp where
Gervaise sets up her laundry, they display their newly found wealth and
respectability to the neighbourhood in a celebration on Gervaise's
saint's day. The laundry is turned into a party room and the evening
of gaiety begins when each of the guests arrive bringing either bouquets
or potted plants for Gervaise. A huge dinner of a fat roast goose,

veal blanquettes (" veal chopped into small pieces, stewed with onions,

 

with a light yellow sauce coloured with egg yolks, thickened with flour,
garnished.with mushrooms"), green peas and bacon, fruits and wine,
leaves all of the guests in a satisfied and merry mood and the evening
is concluded with singing of songs.

A more elaborate display of French food is described in a huge.
supper party Nana has, after having "arrived" in the Paris theatrical
world. From about ten in the evening until five a.m. the next morning,

the guests enjoy asparagus soup, clear soup, rissoles of young rabbit

 

hL'Assommoir, pp. 56-87, passim.

SIbid., pp. 182-5, passim.

-82...

with truffles, "niokys", powdered cheese, pullets a la Mare’chale,
fillets of sole with shallot sauce, escalopes of Strasbourg pate,
hot and cold roasts, and for dessert, if the reader is still with me,
pineapple fritters a la Pomm dour, cepes é l'Italienne. 6

Associated with entertairment are the receptions given by the
various women in Zola's novels. Almost every mistress of a house has
a day of entertaining every week whether it be her "Tuesdays, Thursdays,
or Fridays ". Many of the women are "at home" to their lady friends
on certain afternoons and to mixed company on certain evenings. In

Pot Bouille Madame Josserand is one who entertaim one evening a week.

 

Her husband who is merely a cashier has to write addresses for periodi-
cals at night in order that his wife may have her Tuesdays. One of
her main objectives in this entertaining is to try to get her two
daughters married. The guests mingle and are then forced to listen
to daughter Berthe play the piano and to say the proper things about
the paintings of daughter Hortense. The tea consists of a brioche
Ca bun or cake from the baker's] sandwiches, little cakes, biscuits
and butter, tea and red currant syrup. 7 Madame Duveyrier who lives
in the same apartment house as the Josserands also has her evenings.
Being a music enthusiast, she always gathers all the young men with
voices around the piano and the evenings frequently end with choruses

8
by the group.

 

6Nana, pp. 96-108, passim.

7Pot Bouille, p. 60.

8Ibid., p. 1:39 for a description of one such evening of Madame
Duveyrier.

-83-

In £§_Curée the upper classes are frequently pictured at fancy
dress balls. At many Of them the ladies enact plays as part of the
evening's entertainment. Descriptions of Paris during the 1867
Exhibition are presented in L'Argent:

The banners of the Exhibition flapping in the sunlight, the

illuminations and orchestras of the Champ de mars, the crowds from

all over the world which streamed along the streets, completed the

intoxications of the Parisians, made them dream alike of inexhaustible

wealth.and sovereign dominion.

All of Paris was welcoming the majesties of Russia, Austria, Turkey,

Prussia, while the dense crowd at the Exhibition made a "pOpular success
10

of the huge, sombre Krupp guns, which Germany exhibited there." This

same Paris was so changed in.appearance only a few years later with the

advent of the war that Zola could write in.£a.Débahle of the seige:

Then another long week went by. Paris was suffering uncomplainingly.

The Shops were no longer Opened, the few foot passengers no longer

met a single vehicle in the deserted.streets. Forty thousand horses

had.been eaten; dogs, cats, and rats were fetching high prices. Since

the dearth of wheat had set in, the bread, partially compounded ofll

rice and oats, was black, viscous, and difficult of digestion ...

One of the necessities of daily life is the washing. In the
novels the reader is given.colorfu1 pictures of this custom before the
days of automatic laundries. In L'Assommoir there is a wash house in

the neighbourhood to which Gervaise takes her wash. On either side

of a central alley, there are 'batteries' or washing places where

9L'Argent, p. 2hO. A
0
1 Ibid., p. 267.

1;Ea Debacle, p. h83.

-31”

the‘womenmstand‘with their sleeves rolled, and skirts tucked up
showing their coloured stockings and heavy shoes. The woman who
manages the shop sits in a small closet partition surrounded with
account books, bars Of soap, balls of blue in glass jars, and pounds
of soda in packets. As Gervaise comes in, she gets a beetle (a wooden
hammer-like device used to beat the clothes), soap, and soda and pays
the woman in charge according to the number of buckets of hot water she
uses. 12 In.£g.§§23, the story of a young girl who has been adOpted
by two embroiderép Of church vestments, the reader is given another
picture Of the washing ritual, this time occuring in a small town.
Every fourth months the Hubertines lay aside all embroidery for four
days or so in order to do the wash. After Madame Hubertine has
prepared the lye, Angelique soaps and rinses the linen in the river and
then lays it on the grass covered with small stones to dry in the
Open.sun1ight. 13 A similar process is seen in the washing of the
linen in a farm home described in La; 2313:

The sisters had scoured it on the evening before, and since the
morning the ash liquor, scented with orris root, had been boiling

in a cauldron hanging from the pot-hook over a clear, pOplar wood
fire. With bare arms, and her skirts tucked up, Lise, with the

aid of a yellow earthen jug, was drawing the water off and wetting

the linen, with which the bucking-tub was filled - the sheets at

the bottom, then the house-clotifi, then the body linen, and, at the
top of all, some other sheets.

 

2
L'ASSOTTUHOir, p. 120

 

13Emile Zola, E§_R§ve, translated by Eliza E. Chase (London,
1893), p. 950

Germinal, p. 21.

-85..

In Germinal, the mining story, many pictures Of collier life are
presented. Every morning, one by one the lights in the'village disappear
and doors bang as the miners leave the lifeless village to go to the
Voreaux pit. The mine itself assumes the prOportions of a personality
as noted in the following description of the cage taking miners down:
It plunged again, and in.another four minutes reappeared for a fresh
load. And so things went on for more than half an hour, during which
the shaft continued swallowing its human prey, in more or less
gluttonous fashion.according to the depth of the junction to which the
cage descended. Every famished, like some giant who was capable of
digesting a whole nation, it swallowed and swallowed, while the gloom
remained lifeless and the cagg kept reappearing from.the abyss amid
the same voracious silence.

Child and woman labor in the mine is also depicted. One such
example is a young girl, Catherine, aged fifteen, who works underground:
She also perspired and panted, and at times her joints cracked, but she
uttered no complaint. She had become callous from habit, as if it
were the common loflt of all to live like this, bent in twtin[:she has
been shown with her back arched and her hands low, getting through
a narrow passageway, that she seemed almost like a dwarf animal] 16
The village itself consists of identical brick houses with thin walls,
each with its garden plot, a company store, school, church, and several
inns.

A common picture the reader meets throughout the novels is that

of country churches where quite often a woman has charge of keeping

the church clean and ringing the bell. One such example is the church

 

lsGerminal’ P. 21 0

16Ibid., p. 35.

-86-

Of Abbé'Mouret whose housekeeper La Teuse cleans the church every
morning, has charge of the altar linens, and rings the bell for
services:

The bare, worn bell-rOpe dangled from the ceiling near the confessional
and ended in a big knot greasy from.handling. Again and again, with
regular jumps, she hung herself upon it; and then let her whole bulky
figure go with it, whirling in her petticoats, her cap awry, and her
blood rushing to her broad face.

Among the social scenes in Zola's novels are various types of
shops. One type of "assommoir" which has been introduced in chapter
five is described as follows:

On either side of the doorway, planted in the two halves of a barrel,
were some dusty Oleanders.[:a kind of evergreen.Shrub with flowers].The
huge bar, with its rows of classes, its filter and pewter measures,
stretched away to the left on intering. ...Bottles of liquers, glass
jars full of preserved fruits, all Egnds of phials neatly arranged

on shelves, covered the walls, ...

In Le Ventre d§_Paris, the novel with its locale in the city markets,
an interesting description of the front of the pork-butcher's shop,
one of the many businesses in the market, is found:

On two panels, one on each side of the Shop-front, and both, like the
board above, covered with glass, were paintings representing various
chubby little cupids playing amidst boars' heads, pork chops, and strings
of sausages. ...Down‘below, quite close to the window, jars of preserved
sausage - meat were interspersed with pots of mustard. Above these

were some small, plump, boned hams, golden with their dressings of
toasted bread-crumbs. ...Next ... some containing preserved.Strasburg
tongues, enclosed in bladders coloured a bright red and varnished ...
then there were black-puddings ... Lyons sausage ...

AE_Bonheur des Dames is one of Zola's novels which deals entirely

 

with the large commercial shops which were being built during the second

17L“; Faute €12 l'Abbe’ Mouret, p. l.

 

18L'Assommoir, p. 29.

1993 Ventre g3 Paris, pp. 37-8.

 

-37-

2O

half of the nineteenth century. This story depicts very well the
large departmentsstore replacing smaller specialized shops, the
impersonality of the large establishment, the bitterness Of the old
shopkeepers. Octave Mouret, manager of the Ladies' Paradise bugy out
all the small stores in the neighbourhood until his store occupies an
entire city block. Every time the Ladies' Paradise adds a new department,
the shOpkeepers of the district received a new blow:
Mademoiselle Tatin, at the lender-linen shop in the Passage Choiseul,
had just been<ieclared.bankrupt. Quinette, the glover, could hardly
hold out another six months; the furriers ... were obliged to sub-
let a part of their premises; and if the Bedores, brother and sister,
the hosiers, still kept on in the Rue Gaillon, they were evidently
living on money saved formerly ...
The opinion of one of the old shOpkeepers, Baudu, a yardgoods
proprietor, who though losing money in business, refused to sell to
Mouret follows:
Had any one ever seen.such a thing? A draper's shOp selling everyb
thing! Why not call it a bazaar at once? And the employees: a
nice set they were too - a lot of puppies, who did their work like
porters at a railway station, treating good and customers like so
many parcSls; leaving the shop or getting the sack at a moment's
notice. 2

The modern power of advertising and Special sales were two

methods used by Octave in building up his store. Once after the

store was entirely prepared for a summer, sale, Octave ordered.every~

 

20Emile Zola, £2 Bonheur des Dames, no trans1ator given (London,

1886).

211bid., p. 19h.

22Ibid., p. 23.

- 88 -

thing to be disarranged so that the buyers in looking for their
necessary purchases would fall prey to other bargains. Elevators were
installed, a refreshment'bar, a children's department, a reading room -
all the conveniences which we take for granted in any large department
store - but they made the Ladies' Paradise the Showplace of the Parisian
shops.

The preceding pages have presented but a few of the illustrations
from the array of social pictures given in Zola's novels. Had Zola
been less interested in the physiological makeup of his characters, I
believe that the student would.be able to find more information on fine
social lives of the peasants, the working classes, the middle classes of
these years. Unfortunately because of this undue emphasis on physiology
and heredity (in my estimation) the peasants of L§_T§£re, the workers

of I'Assommoig, the middle classes of Pot Bouille, to select the outstanding

 

 

example of this 'error', are shown as persons living in immorality and
guided only by base physical passions. I do not believe that such
analyses of people were true to contemporary life and therefore feel
they are of little value to the student of history. However, the type
Of social picture examined in this chapter and the material surroundings

which Zola portrays do~give a valid insight for the historian.

-89...

VII. Conclusions

After completing this study, I have come to several major
conclusions. First, I believe it has been shown.that the historian
can add significantly to his knowledge by making use of novels in
addition to standard historical works. Second, the novels Of Emile
Zola have proved a fruitful source for this type of study.

This study has been.valuable as well as interesting to pursue.

I believe that I have gained much deeper insight into the French
scene of the latter half of the nineteenth century. The novels

have accentuated a peculiar feature of the political arena of France.
It would appear that personalities like either of the Napoleons are
able to capture the government Of France primarily through the
peasant majority, and by the wavering support.of the bourgeois.
Another unique element which has been shown and which I believe
contributes to a fuller understanding of French history is the part
of the radicals or extreme left in French politics. While many of
the bourgeois were satisfied under either Napoleon III or the Republic,
the:radicals never gave their support to either government. This is,
I feel, associated with the entire program of the radical in French
politics and his distrust in politics and governmental procedure, as

respresented by many of the labor groups in France.

- 90 -

The novels have revealed that the years of the Empire were
synonymous with pleasure, gaiety, scandals, material prosperity. \
While the material prosperity carried over to the Republic, the free
type of government permitted a degree of thought and speculation
barely known during the reign of its predecessor. This study has
led to a strengthening Of a belief on my part that the last years of
the century, despite their surface display of faith in Science, Truth,
Reason, and their reliance upon material progress were really not
exceptional years in the parade of history. This whole intellectual
movement with its keynote of science was imbued with Optimism, but I {
at the same time I believe it reveals an uncertainty with modern- L6
day living. It suggests an attempt to find a philOSOth’to balance
the material world which suddenly seems to have sprung full force upon
man. The culmination of this conflicting period was brought to the
peoples of the world in'WOrld'War I. This war as well as Wbrld war
II are in some measure representative of the failure of present-day
civilization to cOpe with itself.

There has been much criticism of the writings of Emile Zola,
and naturally this study has been concluded with some personal impressions
in regard to his literary merit. I wish to make it clear that my
primary interest has not'been in the literary quality of his work, but
only in Observation of how he has treated contemporary material in
which the histOrian may be interested. Zola's novels have proved
successful for this study fbr several reasons. The scope of his

interests touched many aspects of modern life, and thus his novels

-91...

present a varied picture of French society. The great quantity of
his work used has been exceptionally valuable, for the student has
had many examples to draw from. Also, the personality of Zola himself
as a representative figure of his age has been an interesting side-
light.

As there is much material of use in Zola's works, so is there a
great deal which is of barren value to the student of history. This
is not a general criticism, it should be noted, but only one which I
make in relation to the purpose I had in studying the novels. The
pseudo-scientific physiological study purported to be carried out
in the Rougon-masquart series is not of primary use to the historian,
except insomuch as it reveals the influence Of scientific developments
upon the author. This poses an interesting problem in Zola himself.
I discovered that the early novels present Zola's portrayals of man
entirely in his physiological aspects and many of them are consequently
morbid, and Often, sordid studies. It was in these novels that heredity
played a dominant role. The aim of Zola to also portray environment
seems to be lacking in the series. In the later works, however, man
is shown in a much more favourable light. In these works the environ-
mental factor achieves more prOportion. In the earlier works the
characters appear to be moved only by physical needs and desires, their
inherited physiological characteristics making them what they are
and preventing them.from.adieving any stature. The later works, on the
other hand, reveal that the heredity factor may be subordinate to the

influence Of environment. In these, man is seen attempting to do

- 92 _

something to improve his life. They also suggest the 'romantic' in
the supposedly realist Zola, for many of the later works are really
Utopian novels, presenting man in a society of the future. I would
suggest that a strict adherence to both heredity and environment is
to a certain extent incompatible. Zola seems to have shown this in
his departure from the former. In this struggling for a philOSOphy,
I believe that Zola represents the time in which he lived, which
despite its dependence upon new philosophies, was actually very
uncertain.

Another limitation in the use of Zola's novels for the student
of history is his treatment of religion. Rather than a limitation,
this should be called a qualification. I do not mean to infer that
all of the author's statements on religion should be either accepted or
rejected, but they should be understood in relation.to the fact ‘
that Zola had an extraordinary anti-Roman Catholic attitude as well as
a strong secular mind. 'With the exceptionpof these primary limitations,
I believe that the novels have served a useful purpose.

‘With regard to the literary quality of Zola, I do not think he
was a great artist but nevertheless a very powerful and energetic one.
His pre—occupation in the early novels with a physiological study
imposed upon his stories and his pre-occupation.in the later works with
proclaiming a message contribute to his weakness as a literary artist.
For in being so involved with an external covering for his stories, they
often read like passages from either a textbook on science or on political

economy. Consequently, I believe they are utterly lacking in humor and

- 93 -

the many manifestations of everybday living which a novelist is at
liberty to portray. my appreciation for the talent which Zola
undoubtedly had is, however, challenged upon reading a statement

like the following; and I am compelled to reject it and question the
merit of a historian who treats of Zola in this manner:

Zola set the pace during the three decades after 1871 by relentlessly
pursuing, through no fewer than twenty beefy tomes, the pathological
case history of several generations of a sorry and degenerating French
family, and by dashing off, in:spells of perverted recreation, a
somber novel on.supposed Malthusian laws of population, a lugubrious
one on labor ionditions, and a.very melodramatic one on hereditary
drunkenness.

Such an indictment completely‘denies any understanding of either the
man or the period in which he lived. Anatole France's statement

of Zola: "He was a moment of the conscience of mankind" is by far

the most fitting I have yet found to describe this controversial

Frenchman.

 

lCarlton J. H. Hayes, A Generation of Materialism: 1871-1900
(New York, 19141), p. 1530-

 

 

-911-

BIBLIOGRAPHY
Literary‘WOrks Used in this Study:

Anon., "Concord Philosophy and Zola," in the literary World, vol. 17
(August 7, 1886), 26h.

 

Anon., Selection in "The Contributors Club," in.the Atlantic Monthly
*vol. 53 (may, 188h), 721-727.

 

Bede, Jean.A1bert, "French Naturalism," in the Columbia Dictionary of
Modern Eurgpean.Literature (New York, l9h7), 288-291.

 

 

James, Henry, The Art of Fiction and Other Essays (New York, l9h8), pages
lSh-IBO concern _Emile Zola.

Josephson, Hatthew, Zola and his Time (New York, 1928).

Jules
Iemaitre, Literary Impressions, translated by A. w. Evans (London,
1921), pages 108-133 concern Emile Zola.

 

Nitze, William.A. and Dargan, E. Preston, 5 Histogy gf French Literature
(New Ybrk, 1922).

Saintsbury, George, French Literature and its masters, edited.by
Huntington Cairns (New York, 1956):*

Saurat, Denis, Modern French Literature (New York, l9h6)
Historical'works Used in this Study;

Bourgeois, Emile, Histogy g£_Modern France, 2 vols., vol. 2 used (London, 1922).
Brogan, n. w., France under _t}le_ ReEblic (New York, n.d.).

Buthman, William Curt, T_h_e_ Rise o_f_ Integal Nationalism in France (New
York, 1939).

Coubertin, Baron Pierre de, The Evolution of France under the Third
Republic, translated by’IEabe I F. Hapgood (NeW'York,l l897).

 

Flathe, Theodor, The Reconstruction of Eurone, translated under supervision
of John Henry wright, Vol. 19 of A History_ of All Nations (Philadelp
phia and NeW'Ycrk, 902).

 

 

Guedella, Philip, The Second Empire (New York, 1922).

Hayes, Carlton J. H., §_Generation g£_Materialism 1871-1900 (NGW'YOrk, 19hl).

The Works of Emile Zola Used in this Study:

Therese Raquin, translated by Edward Vizetelly (London, 1910).

 

Madeleine Ferat, no translator given (London, 1888).

 

E Fortune des Rou on, edited with an introduction by Ernest A. Vize—
telly (London, 1 98).

 

_1_.a_ Cure/e, translated by Alexander Teixeira de Mattos (New York, 1921;).
L3 Ventre _de_ Paris, translated by Ernest A. Vizetelly (London, 1908).
La: Conquéte d_e_ Plassans, edited by Ernest A. Vizetelly (London, 1900).

La Faute d3 l'Abbe’ Mouret, edited by Ernest A. Vizetelly (London, 1911).

 

Son Excellence Eugene Rougon, sole authorized English version with a
preface by Ernest A. Vizetelly (New York, 1897).

 

L'Assommoir, edited by Ernest A. Vizetelly (London, 1992).

 

Une Page d'Amour, no translator given (n.p., n.d.)

 

Nana, no translator given (The Living Library, World Publishing 00.,
Cleveland, 1916).

Pot Bouille, translated by Percy Pinkerton (New York, 1921;).

 

A3 Bonheur des Dames, no translator given (London, 1886).

 

La Joie d3 Vivre, no translator given (London, 1889).

 

Germinal, edited with a preface by Ernest A. Vizetelly (London, 1911;).
L'Oeuvre, translated by Katherine Woods (New York, 19h6).

La Terre, no translator stated (London, 1888).

Le; Rive, translated by Eliza E. Chase (London, 1893).

L'Ar ent, translated by Ernest A. Vizetelly (London, 1923).

La Débé'cle, translated by Ernest A. Vizetelly (New York, 192 5).

_L_e_ Docteur Pascal, translated by Ernest A. Vizetelly (London, 1925).

 

Lourdes, translated by Ernest A. Vizetelly (London, 1913).
Rome, translated by Ernest A. Vizetelly (New York, 1925).

Paris, translated by Ernest A. Vizetelly (London, 1925).

The Werks of Emile Zola Used in this Studyig (continued)

Fecondité, translated by Ernest A. Vizetelly (London, 1925).

Travail, translated by Ernest A. Vizetelly (London, 1901).

Xéritg; translated by Ernest A. Vizetelly (New York, 1903).

The Experimental Nevel and Other Essays, translated by Belle M. Sherman

(New York, 1393).

The Ernest Vizetelly who translated most of Zola's works was the
son of an English publisher and journalist. He was educated in France
arm was a newspaper correspondent at the time of the Franco-Prussian
War. The father as well as another son, Edward, also translated.some
of Zola's works. The New International Encyclopedia, second edition
(New York, 1930), states: "Most of Zola's works can'be had in an
excellent English translation by Vizetelly." The general nature
of Vizetelly's translation, while slightly Victorian in style, has
proved satisfactory for this type of study. Newer translations such
as that by Katherine'Wbods of L'Oeuvre would be an invaluable asset

to students of literature.

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