By Lechi Eke
So we turn our focus on the fictions of French naturalist novelist, Emilé Zola. Zola was born in 1840 and died in 1902. He earned a living from journalism and is said to be the “best known practitioner of the literary school of naturalism (which emphasizes observing and recording everyday life like a scientist or a reporter – writing totally void of subjectivism), and an important contributor to the development of theatrical naturalism” (playwright).
Nominated for the first and second Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901/02, for apparently, his best known work, the monumental 20-novel series titled, Les Rougon Macquart, but unfortunately he did not win. Zola was also very active in the political liberation of France, and was famous for the renowned newspaper headline – J’Accuse…! – written in exoneration of the falsely accused and convicted French army officer, Alfred Drefus.
Zola failed his Baccalaureate examination, and this made it impossible for him to pursue a law career which his mother really desired for him. So, he became a writer, first as a journalist then literary writing. Early in life, he worked as a clerk in a shipping company, then in the sales department of a publishing house called Hachette; also writing literary and art reviews for newspapers. Zola did not hide his disdain for Napoleon III as a political journalist. Napoleon III incurred Zola’s ire when he, despite winning the presidential race in the French 2nd Republic, misused his position to carry out a coup that made him emperor.
The French author’s 20 novel-series has the first book of the series written in 1870 while he finished the last novel in 1893. Les Rougon Macquart which is the title of the 20 novel-series followed a family; each novel focusing on different members of the family.
Zola wrote a total of 77 books which include Dead Men Tell no Tales, The Rush for the Spoil, Pot Luck, The Belly of Paris or The Fat and the Thin, Piping Hot, For a Night of Love, The Beast Within, Nana (the story of Gervaise Macquart’s daughter with Coupeau), Germinal – Zola’s thirteenth soul-touching story in his 20 novel series.
Germinal is Zola’s most famous novel boasting of 448 pages in six chapters, and depicting the lives of the starving wretched people of the French 19th century working class. The story revolves around Etienne Lantier (one of the two sons of Gervaise (you will meet her in L’Assommoir reviewed below)) who experiences the miserable life of coal miners in northern France and enters the struggle between capital and labour where labour, as represented by the miners, had little bargaining power as management can cut their wages for any ridiculous reason. The brutality of life for the extremely impoverished is depicted in this story as the author showed the powerlessness of the scum of the earth especially, in the scene where the miners called for a strike, but do not achieve their aim.), etc.
Zola’s work shows that he did a lot of researches for his stories. His work is generally depressing depicting the low working class and the evils that befell them. This is shown in the review below of Zola’s 7th novel in his collection of novels, Rougon-Macquart series, titled L’Assommoir, (first published in 1877made up of 67 pages), set in the working class area of 19th century Paris.
The novel explores the problems of alcoholism and poverty in Paris at that time. The story examines the low lifestyle of working people, and how life pushes them further down the drain without restraints. Through the character of an abandoned woman, a single mother of two sons (Etienne and Claude), the author showcased the effects of poverty and alcoholism as the main character, Gervaise Macquart, is forced to fend for her family, as well as protect it from the ugly behaviour of her new found alcoholic lover.
Zola used the life of Gervaise Macquant to showcase the trauma of poverty. She’s a poor laundress, and has been from the age of ten. Migrating to a big city, Paris, from a provincial town, does not improve her lot. Although the author wants the reader to know that what happens to Gervaise is by no fault of hers, rather, consequence of poverty, well the reader can still establish different points of error or misconduct in the chief character.
It seems to be Gervaise’s lot in life to go from one bad lover to another. In this story, she runs away to Paris with her shiftless sponge of a lover, Latier, who never considers doing anything for himself. She finds a job as a laundry woman in the worst squalid part of Paris. The story opens when Latier runs away from her leaving her with two young sons. She swears not to have anything to do with men again, only to give in to the advances of responsible teetotal roofer named Coupeau. They marry, and things go well for them. Gervaise is able to raise money for her personal business, a laundry business of her own. They have a baby girl named Anna, who is nicknamed Nana. Life seems good for the family, and they are happy.
However, in line with naturalistic fiction, this happy life soon comes to an end as Coupeau falls down from a roof in a hospital building he is roofing. Unable to go to work for a long time, lethargy creeps into Coupeau’s life as he convalescences. He becomes listless, loving idleness, and gradually acquires a lifestyle of gorging. From gluttony, his life takes a downward spiral to drinking, and wife battery. He no longer cares to look for work to support his family, and begins to give his wife living hell on earth.
Gervaise struggles to keep house and home together, but series of mistakes due to her pride drive her into unredeemable failures that made things deteriorate fast for her. What bit her husband seems to bite her too as she becomes lazy and in her bid to keep up with the Joneses, she throws money away on feasts, and incurs debts.
Things get from bad to worse when Latier who spends his life abandoning one woman after another, returns, and is surprisingly welcomed by Coupeau who seems clearly to have lost interest in both his wife and in life itself. Coupeau falls ill and ends life in a madhouse. At this juncture, life becomes really chaotic as Latier sponges on Gervaise causing her to give up her laundry. Gervaise loses her laundry shop. She goes further into debt and despair. The only solace now for Gervaise becomes alcohol. She reaches out to it, and becomes overwhelmed by it.
For Nana, their daughter, this becomes the final straw. She has been suffering the onslaught at home, now, she runs away from home to become a prostitute.
Other characters in the story whose lifestyles are well etched into the dreary narrative, fair not better; one of them being a young blacksmith named Goujet, who is in love with Gervaise. He gives Gervaise money to start a laundry business, but is never paid, and never consummate that love. L’Assommoir characters are full of their own depravity and eccentricity.
Debt, hunger and alcohol finally drive Gervaise and her husband, Coupeau, to death in their hovel of a home for Gervaise; in the sanatorium for Coupeau. In the case of Gervaise, she dies under the stairs, and nobody notices for two days before being discovered by her scornful neighbours!
L’Assommoir is a French word that has to do with drinking. The closest translation in English should be ‘hammered’ or ‘plastered’, an equivalent of what could be ‘stoned’ for drug use.
The language of L’Assommoir is salacious. We all know that the lower class tends to use lots of profanity, and when you have a drunken lower class, profane language use becomes superlative. So language use in the novel is appropriate. Zola’s critics condemned the novel as being too coarse and vulgar, but that’s the life of the lower class – coarse and vulgar – they also condemned his portrayal of the working people as indolent drunks as misrepresentation.
This is one of the most realistic novels (describing life as it appears) with the author capturing authentic Parisian streets’ ambiance, argot, slang words, curses, etc. Zola’s detailed descriptions of 19th century Parisian working peoples’ conditions drew a lot of admiration at the time, and even now. Temperance workers across the world applauded the novel as a tract (a pamphlet of lower class lifestyle in Paris at the time) against alcoholism.
