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The Rougon-Macquart Cycle: Complete Collection - ALL 20 Novels In One Volume: Naturalism and social forces shaping a family in the Second French Empire
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Les Rougon-Macquart is the collective title given to a cycle of twenty novels by French writer Émile Zola. Subtitled “Natural and social history of a family under the Second Empire”, it follows the life of one family during the Second French Empire (1852–1870). In this tremendous work Zola first and foremost examines the impact of social environment on men and women, by varying the social, economic, political and professional milieu in which each novel takes place. It provides us with a close look at everyday life, gives us a deep insight into important social changes and it shows us the true people's history of the Second Empire.
Table of Contents:
The Fortune of the Rougons (La Fortune des Rougon)
The Kill (La Curée)
The Belly of Paris (Le Ventre de Paris)
The Conquest of Plassans (La Conquête de Plassans)
The Sin of Father Mouret (La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret)
His Excellency Eugène Rougon (Son Excellence Eugène Rougon)
The Drinking Den (L'Assommoir)
One Page of Love (Une Page d'amour)
Nana
Piping Hot (Pot-Bouille)
The Ladies' Paradise (Au Bonheur des Dames)
The Joy of Life (La Joie de vivre)
Germinal
The Masterpiece (L'Œuvre)
The Earth (La Terre)
The Dream (Le Rêve)
The Beast in Man (La Bête humaine)
Money (L'Argent)
The Downfall (La Débâcle)
Doctor Pascal (Le Docteur Pascal)
Émile Zola (1840-1902), French novelist, critic, and political activist who was the most prominent French novelist of the late 19th century. He was noted for his theories of naturalism, which underlie his monumental 20-novel series Les Rougon-Macquart, and for his intervention in the Dreyfus Affair through his famous open letter, “J'accuse.”
Les Rougon-Macquart is the collective title given to a cycle of twenty novels by French writer Émile Zola. Subtitled “Natural and social history of a family under the Second Empire”, it follows the life of one family during the Second French Empire (1852–1870). In this tremendous work Zola first and foremost examines the impact of social environment on men and women, by varying the social, economic, political and professional milieu in which each novel takes place. It provides us with a close look at everyday life, gives us a deep insight into important social changes and it shows us the true people's history of the Second Empire.
Table of Contents:
The Fortune of the Rougons (La Fortune des Rougon)
The Kill (La Curée)
The Belly of Paris (Le Ventre de Paris)
The Conquest of Plassans (La Conquête de Plassans)
The Sin of Father Mouret (La Faute de l'Abbé Mouret)
His Excellency Eugène Rougon (Son Excellence Eugène Rougon)
The Drinking Den (L'Assommoir)
One Page of Love (Une Page d'amour)
Nana
Piping Hot (Pot-Bouille)
The Ladies' Paradise (Au Bonheur des Dames)
The Joy of Life (La Joie de vivre)
Germinal
The Masterpiece (L'Œuvre)
The Earth (La Terre)
The Dream (Le Rêve)
The Beast in Man (La Bête humaine)
Money (L'Argent)
The Downfall (La Débâcle)
Doctor Pascal (Le Docteur Pascal)
Émile Zola (1840-1902), French novelist, critic, and political activist who was the most prominent French novelist of the late 19th century. He was noted for his theories of naturalism, which underlie his monumental 20-novel series Les Rougon-Macquart, and for his intervention in the Dreyfus Affair through his famous open letter, “J'accuse.”
9038 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 1871
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About the author
Émile Zola
2,690 books4,452 followersÉmile Zola was a prominent French novelist, journalist, and playwright widely regarded as a key figure in the development of literary naturalism. His work profoundly influenced both literature and society through its commitment to depicting reality with scientific objectivity and exploring the impact of environment and heredity on human behavior. Born and raised in France, Zola experienced early personal hardship following the death of his father, which deeply affected his understanding of social and economic struggles—a theme that would later permeate his writings.
Zola began his literary career working as a clerk for a publishing house, where he developed his skills and cultivated a passion for literature. His early novels, such as Thérèse Raquin, gained recognition for their intense psychological insight and frank depiction of human desires and moral conflicts. However, it was his monumental twenty-volume series, Les Rougon-Macquart, that established his lasting reputation. This cycle of novels offered a sweeping examination of life under the Second French Empire, portraying the lives of a family across generations and illustrating how hereditary traits and social conditions shape individuals’ destinies. The series embodies the naturalist commitment to exploring human behavior through a lens informed by emerging scientific thought.
Beyond his literary achievements, Zola was a committed social and political activist. His involvement in the Dreyfus Affair is one of the most notable examples of his dedication to justice. When Captain Alfred Dreyfus was wrongfully accused and convicted of treason, Zola published his famous open letter, J’Accuse…!, which condemned the French military and government for corruption and anti-Semitism. This act of courage led to his prosecution and temporary exile but played a crucial role in eventual justice for Dreyfus and exposed deep divisions in French society.
Zola’s personal life was marked by both stability and complexity. He married Éléonore-Alexandrine Meley, who managed much of his household affairs, and later had a long-term relationship with Jeanne Rozerot, with whom he fathered two children. Throughout his life, Zola remained an incredibly prolific writer, producing not only novels but also essays, plays, and critical works that investigated the intersections between literature, science, and society.
His legacy continues to resonate for its profound impact on literature and for his fearless commitment to social justice. Zola’s work remains essential reading for its rich narrative detail, social critique, and pioneering approach to the realistic portrayal of human life. His role in the Dreyfus Affair stands as a powerful example of the intellectual’s responsibility to speak truth to power.
Zola began his literary career working as a clerk for a publishing house, where he developed his skills and cultivated a passion for literature. His early novels, such as Thérèse Raquin, gained recognition for their intense psychological insight and frank depiction of human desires and moral conflicts. However, it was his monumental twenty-volume series, Les Rougon-Macquart, that established his lasting reputation. This cycle of novels offered a sweeping examination of life under the Second French Empire, portraying the lives of a family across generations and illustrating how hereditary traits and social conditions shape individuals’ destinies. The series embodies the naturalist commitment to exploring human behavior through a lens informed by emerging scientific thought.
Beyond his literary achievements, Zola was a committed social and political activist. His involvement in the Dreyfus Affair is one of the most notable examples of his dedication to justice. When Captain Alfred Dreyfus was wrongfully accused and convicted of treason, Zola published his famous open letter, J’Accuse…!, which condemned the French military and government for corruption and anti-Semitism. This act of courage led to his prosecution and temporary exile but played a crucial role in eventual justice for Dreyfus and exposed deep divisions in French society.
Zola’s personal life was marked by both stability and complexity. He married Éléonore-Alexandrine Meley, who managed much of his household affairs, and later had a long-term relationship with Jeanne Rozerot, with whom he fathered two children. Throughout his life, Zola remained an incredibly prolific writer, producing not only novels but also essays, plays, and critical works that investigated the intersections between literature, science, and society.
His legacy continues to resonate for its profound impact on literature and for his fearless commitment to social justice. Zola’s work remains essential reading for its rich narrative detail, social critique, and pioneering approach to the realistic portrayal of human life. His role in the Dreyfus Affair stands as a powerful example of the intellectual’s responsibility to speak truth to power.
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
January 16, 2024
As this book is 20 books and over 9000 pages, I am gonna try something different.
I will not wait until all books are in nor will I do 20 complete reviews. So, something in between and something that will grow as I go.
As this is already a new approach for me, I will start adding updates at the top.
Final summation. Not the absolut finest in literature, but deserving a place in the room. Many repeded themes, a love for the death scene and a willingness to restage a number of older plot lines.
Book 20
Doctor Pascal
Mostly a review of the last 19. Dr, Pascal was a less mentioned member of the earliest generation of the family. Here he fends off his mother while winning over his niece. The French seem to have had a loser concern over issues of consanguinity. Zola may have been the beginnings of naturalism, but again this is mostly a high romance. Romance about the future and romance about the power of love. Evil, in the form of the selfish and conniving Mom, but love wees past it and choses itself over mere protest and vengeance. IN the end we are to be hopeful of life.
Zola flirts with Socialism, and certainly favors its intended goal, but he never sees it as something that can be imposed, least of all by violence.
Book 19
The Downfall
Elsewhere, separately reviewed. Under La Debacle.
Book 18
Money
Again Zola is in the heart of Paris taking a naturalist view of the French investment market. His effort to make Paris’s version of Wall Street, the Paris Bourse int a character fails as compared with what he did for the super department store in The Ladies Paradice.
We walk, stepwise through a banking scandal so big as to signal the symbolic end of the 2nd empire. Saccard, our central male figure is too driven to see how he could have better handled his greed, but Zola never relents. And of cource we have the many faces of the small investors ruined for their faith in there one good investment, but Zola has to add in the destruction of the intended fall guy and his sister.
Book 17
The Human Beast
If Zola has used Shakespeare, I think this time he is writing with an awareness of the Jack the Ripper murders across the channel in England. Our fixated Rougon-Macquart is a railroad engineer who becomes blood thirsty when sexual aroused. Lease we assume he is the Human Beast, we are given more than one murder with more than one method, at least two involving sex. Earlier books have taken us into the belly of the Paris food markets, modern department stores, coal mining, and subsistence farming. Much of this book is filler about the operation of and organization of the train system. That and the several bellies of murderous beasts. Much of the plot is triggered by child abuse, that pre-dates the first pages of the novel. Not even Zola can give this crime its name.
Book 16
The Dream.
Having had a working man’s version of King Lear, this is a working woman’s version of Romeo and Juliette. If earlier works sought out tragedy in the name of naturalism, this is the most romantic thing I have read. Earlier volumes in the series are highly scandalous and severely indiscreet, this is more spiritual and entirely in the tradition of The Lives of the Saints. Miscast lovers a working girl and a very rich princeling, resisting father and more human purity than any other than, another fixated Rougon-Macquart can hold to.
My speculation, Zola’s version of the then current sainthood of Bernadette.
Book 15 The Earth
Bucolic King Lear by a very bloody-minded Shakespeare. We have had incest before, but here it is one of the more minor crimes. Imagine a classic with several trigger warnings. Our only family member is a passing through observer. The evil, so many evils will be done by people not sharing his blood line. In the end we also have the trumpets of war, to be covered in The Debacle. This may have been the most banned book of this series. Keeping mind that Nana was entirely about a woman of the streets.
Book 14 His Masterpiece
Bucolic King Lear by a very bloody-minded Shakespeare. We have had incest before, but here it is one of the more minor crimes. Imagine a classic with several trigger warnings. Our only family member is a passing through observer. The evil, so many evils will be done by people not sharing his blood line. In the end we also have the trumpets of war, to be covered in The Debacle. This may have been the most banned book of this series. Keeping mind that Nana was entirely about a woman of the streets.
Book 14 His Masterpiece
Reintroduces us to the artist of the family, Claude Lantier. Previously seen as a nice guy and friend to his neighbors, he is now obsessed with perfecting his art. At all costs. Zola appears in this book as do composites of a number of his friends in the world of emerging artists and the new anti-academic school of art. Zola garnered a lot of complaints that his artists were clearly this or that person and he had not treated many of them gently. IMHO character esp in these books are composites, and they are bent to serve the purposes of the novel.
Book 13 Germinal
Widely accepted as the masterpiece of all of Zola’s work. A complete and highly complex and nuanced view not only of the life of Coal miners and operators, it is starkly direct on the combined effects of capitalism minus any legal rights or meaningful appreciation for hard and dangerous work. Workers have only lack of education, dire poverty and pride in their work. Managers have the risk of losing it all, except their lives, and a duty only to remote , disinterested ownership.
The title always confused me. Gereminal, as in to germinate, of more exactly the seed. From Wiki: was the seventh month in the French Republican Calendar. The month was named after the Latin word Germen, "germination".
Étienne Lantier, brother to the extravagant prostitute Nana is a fired mechanic who turns to mining. There his revolutionary fervor is fed as he lives the life of a coal miner in hard times. Meaning their subsistence life is expendable in the name of strained profits. He briefly becomes their leader and attempts to gain for them a new world, absent the power of the Middle Class. The true struggle is between some kind of idealized life and the total destruction argued for by what would become the political nihilists.
Book 12 The Joy of Life
Maybe as close as a Naturalist like Zola can get to a romance, as in a romantic couple. Pauline newly an orphan comes to live with her cousins in a small coastal town. Over time her adoptive family will seduce themselves into squandering her money, even as she comes to love them , care for them and fall for their son. He carries the grandiose depressive sickness of his Rougon-Macquart genealogy further darkened by his take on Schopenhauer. He is fixated on life's futility and infused with pessimism and nihilism. A very touching take on total love, and I think a tad force fed into Zola’s own tendency to prefer the dark.
Book 11 The Ladies Paradise
Elsewhere reviewed. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... One of my favorites out of the almost 13 I have red. Zola spent years studying that new phenomena, The Department store and he makes it a living being. Zola at his best describing and judging. Not at his best in the too convenient dénouement
Book 10 Pot Luck-Pot-Bouille
Elsewhere reviewed in detail. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... The middle class can be just a immoral, and the home in which they life is a very well written warning from the very beginning.
Book 9 Nana
The rise and fall of a female sex worker. Sometimes actress and sometimes street walker. Brazenly sexual for all its lack of explicit sex. Naturalism is supposed to emphasize the gritty. Gritty it is. Rich males are highly empowered even when they decide to be powerless in the face of purchasable sex. Competitive financial runin seems too much a part of the game. And indeed there is historic evidence to the point.
A Love Episode. Properly 1 Page of Love
Book 8, Zola is supposed to be the master of naturalism. For all of it popularity this is a melodrama closer to a soap opera. No major symbolism, not much about middle class morality or politics or even religion. Religion offers that one should marry because it is good, not because there is love. It is something a woman resigns herself to. Good news it is not that long and there are a few wonderful scenes.
Drunkard (L'Assommoir)
The story of the marriage of Coupeau and Gervaise and the birth of their daughter Nana. It is a set up for the book that will center about Nana. Zola’s version of naturalism is to detail tragedy. Early on he will tell us that yet another of the Rougon-Macquart household is headed to disaster. This time we have working class people, initially centered and hard working. Fate and I guess being a child of the Rougon-Macquart’s means physical defects and bad luck. Of the books so far this one has been about the domestic life of lower class, uneducated people. As before neighbors and family are unreliable, given to outrageous rumors. People are too ready to feed on the failed lives of others and to be resentful of those who succeed.
Over 20% in to the cycle and have finished: #5 as they are ordered here, Abbe Mouret’s Transgression. Symbolic and Romanic as written with a sledge hammer rather than a pen. Two version of the complete innocent woman. One mentally challenged and therefor forcibly Innocent, but identified with flesh and Zola does not like the fat. This time the thin is a girl raised innocent and living OBVIOUSLY Very Floridly obviously in the Garden of Edan (That is shouting font). Seemed like 500 pages of how beautiful the gardens and forest are. One myogenetic, lying bullying member of the clergy and the Abbe, with the Mouret genetic weaknesses, but very deep religious values. The experts call this anti-clerical. But is it?
Book 1: The Fortune of the Rougons
Zola would have us believe that this is a science experiment. A total literary bluff. He will be "following" a family across generations not so much as an effort in genetics, a virtually unknown field (pea plant experiments excepted) but rather place characters with some chosen traits into different setting to tell stories he has mostly mapped out.
The Rougons-Marquats are, at this point born of two fathers and a mentally challenged mother. The common traits seem to be avarice, and law breaking and I am not sure where he will go with mental illness.
Family members are both politically motivated and sharp eyed for gain.
Zola already has a tendency to over describe and he will toss in all the tricks to make a sad scene melodramatically tragic.
Book 2 The La Curée or the Kill IMPORTANT The title is the term for the offal left over from a fox hunt fed to the dogs. Can we be any more clear that this is about greed and public corruption?
The entire book is sex and public corruption. Zola takes us into the then well-known scandals about how Parris was rebuilt by people determined to abuse insider knowledge and public money. Huge deals are made on the buying, selling, taking and trading both public and private lands. Mean time the wealth is used to indulge in fabulously overpriced mostly in poor taste classic neaveau riche extravagance.
Financial crime being rather dull, we are titillated by the most sensual descriptions of plants ever written. Intended to skirt the censors by telling us what an incestuous couple (Mother and Step Son) are doing under the eyes of exotic hot house flowers and atop bear skin rugs. Need I say this book has been banned?
Book 3 The Fat and The Thin Caesar:
Let me have men about me that are fat,
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights.
Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look,
He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.
Julius Caesar Act 1, scene 2, 190–195
This is a view into the huge central market of Paris. Feeding a big city as we move into the end of the 1800’s is a massively logistical and regulatory dance. We will see it very close as people live on and ruin each other based on rumor. By now we have seen the regular appearance of busy body women in black and a second hunchback.
Zola I think now gives us his central theme. Life is the struggle between Fat, middle class content people and things, relatively more noble, but certainly more thoughtful people, usually reduced to victim status.
Politics, all of it is bad, and the leftists mostly comical. The rightist mostly thieving and too heavy handed when motivated to use the police.
So to Book 4, The Conquest of Plassans What we might now call a political thriller. Absent the research, t most will miss that Zola is writing of a time when the Catholic Church was very active in French Politics, with the deliberate intention of making The Catholic Church A, or The dominant power in France. A modern reader gets little notion about why this might be a bad thing. I suppose that most of the papers on this book focus on the total symbolic defeat of the Middle class in the face of the symbolic Church Triumphant. Zola continues to emerge as a very heavy handed back and white moralist.
I will not wait until all books are in nor will I do 20 complete reviews. So, something in between and something that will grow as I go.
As this is already a new approach for me, I will start adding updates at the top.
Final summation. Not the absolut finest in literature, but deserving a place in the room. Many repeded themes, a love for the death scene and a willingness to restage a number of older plot lines.
Book 20
Doctor Pascal
Mostly a review of the last 19. Dr, Pascal was a less mentioned member of the earliest generation of the family. Here he fends off his mother while winning over his niece. The French seem to have had a loser concern over issues of consanguinity. Zola may have been the beginnings of naturalism, but again this is mostly a high romance. Romance about the future and romance about the power of love. Evil, in the form of the selfish and conniving Mom, but love wees past it and choses itself over mere protest and vengeance. IN the end we are to be hopeful of life.
Zola flirts with Socialism, and certainly favors its intended goal, but he never sees it as something that can be imposed, least of all by violence.
Book 19
The Downfall
Elsewhere, separately reviewed. Under La Debacle.
Book 18
Money
Again Zola is in the heart of Paris taking a naturalist view of the French investment market. His effort to make Paris’s version of Wall Street, the Paris Bourse int a character fails as compared with what he did for the super department store in The Ladies Paradice.
We walk, stepwise through a banking scandal so big as to signal the symbolic end of the 2nd empire. Saccard, our central male figure is too driven to see how he could have better handled his greed, but Zola never relents. And of cource we have the many faces of the small investors ruined for their faith in there one good investment, but Zola has to add in the destruction of the intended fall guy and his sister.
Book 17
The Human Beast
If Zola has used Shakespeare, I think this time he is writing with an awareness of the Jack the Ripper murders across the channel in England. Our fixated Rougon-Macquart is a railroad engineer who becomes blood thirsty when sexual aroused. Lease we assume he is the Human Beast, we are given more than one murder with more than one method, at least two involving sex. Earlier books have taken us into the belly of the Paris food markets, modern department stores, coal mining, and subsistence farming. Much of this book is filler about the operation of and organization of the train system. That and the several bellies of murderous beasts. Much of the plot is triggered by child abuse, that pre-dates the first pages of the novel. Not even Zola can give this crime its name.
Book 16
The Dream.
Having had a working man’s version of King Lear, this is a working woman’s version of Romeo and Juliette. If earlier works sought out tragedy in the name of naturalism, this is the most romantic thing I have read. Earlier volumes in the series are highly scandalous and severely indiscreet, this is more spiritual and entirely in the tradition of The Lives of the Saints. Miscast lovers a working girl and a very rich princeling, resisting father and more human purity than any other than, another fixated Rougon-Macquart can hold to.
My speculation, Zola’s version of the then current sainthood of Bernadette.
Book 15 The Earth
Bucolic King Lear by a very bloody-minded Shakespeare. We have had incest before, but here it is one of the more minor crimes. Imagine a classic with several trigger warnings. Our only family member is a passing through observer. The evil, so many evils will be done by people not sharing his blood line. In the end we also have the trumpets of war, to be covered in The Debacle. This may have been the most banned book of this series. Keeping mind that Nana was entirely about a woman of the streets.
Book 14 His Masterpiece
Bucolic King Lear by a very bloody-minded Shakespeare. We have had incest before, but here it is one of the more minor crimes. Imagine a classic with several trigger warnings. Our only family member is a passing through observer. The evil, so many evils will be done by people not sharing his blood line. In the end we also have the trumpets of war, to be covered in The Debacle. This may have been the most banned book of this series. Keeping mind that Nana was entirely about a woman of the streets.
Book 14 His Masterpiece
Reintroduces us to the artist of the family, Claude Lantier. Previously seen as a nice guy and friend to his neighbors, he is now obsessed with perfecting his art. At all costs. Zola appears in this book as do composites of a number of his friends in the world of emerging artists and the new anti-academic school of art. Zola garnered a lot of complaints that his artists were clearly this or that person and he had not treated many of them gently. IMHO character esp in these books are composites, and they are bent to serve the purposes of the novel.
Book 13 Germinal
Widely accepted as the masterpiece of all of Zola’s work. A complete and highly complex and nuanced view not only of the life of Coal miners and operators, it is starkly direct on the combined effects of capitalism minus any legal rights or meaningful appreciation for hard and dangerous work. Workers have only lack of education, dire poverty and pride in their work. Managers have the risk of losing it all, except their lives, and a duty only to remote , disinterested ownership.
The title always confused me. Gereminal, as in to germinate, of more exactly the seed. From Wiki: was the seventh month in the French Republican Calendar. The month was named after the Latin word Germen, "germination".
Étienne Lantier, brother to the extravagant prostitute Nana is a fired mechanic who turns to mining. There his revolutionary fervor is fed as he lives the life of a coal miner in hard times. Meaning their subsistence life is expendable in the name of strained profits. He briefly becomes their leader and attempts to gain for them a new world, absent the power of the Middle Class. The true struggle is between some kind of idealized life and the total destruction argued for by what would become the political nihilists.
Book 12 The Joy of Life
Maybe as close as a Naturalist like Zola can get to a romance, as in a romantic couple. Pauline newly an orphan comes to live with her cousins in a small coastal town. Over time her adoptive family will seduce themselves into squandering her money, even as she comes to love them , care for them and fall for their son. He carries the grandiose depressive sickness of his Rougon-Macquart genealogy further darkened by his take on Schopenhauer. He is fixated on life's futility and infused with pessimism and nihilism. A very touching take on total love, and I think a tad force fed into Zola’s own tendency to prefer the dark.
Book 11 The Ladies Paradise
Elsewhere reviewed. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... One of my favorites out of the almost 13 I have red. Zola spent years studying that new phenomena, The Department store and he makes it a living being. Zola at his best describing and judging. Not at his best in the too convenient dénouement
Book 10 Pot Luck-Pot-Bouille
Elsewhere reviewed in detail. https://www.goodreads.com/review/show... The middle class can be just a immoral, and the home in which they life is a very well written warning from the very beginning.
Book 9 Nana
The rise and fall of a female sex worker. Sometimes actress and sometimes street walker. Brazenly sexual for all its lack of explicit sex. Naturalism is supposed to emphasize the gritty. Gritty it is. Rich males are highly empowered even when they decide to be powerless in the face of purchasable sex. Competitive financial runin seems too much a part of the game. And indeed there is historic evidence to the point.
A Love Episode. Properly 1 Page of Love
Book 8, Zola is supposed to be the master of naturalism. For all of it popularity this is a melodrama closer to a soap opera. No major symbolism, not much about middle class morality or politics or even religion. Religion offers that one should marry because it is good, not because there is love. It is something a woman resigns herself to. Good news it is not that long and there are a few wonderful scenes.
Drunkard (L'Assommoir)
The story of the marriage of Coupeau and Gervaise and the birth of their daughter Nana. It is a set up for the book that will center about Nana. Zola’s version of naturalism is to detail tragedy. Early on he will tell us that yet another of the Rougon-Macquart household is headed to disaster. This time we have working class people, initially centered and hard working. Fate and I guess being a child of the Rougon-Macquart’s means physical defects and bad luck. Of the books so far this one has been about the domestic life of lower class, uneducated people. As before neighbors and family are unreliable, given to outrageous rumors. People are too ready to feed on the failed lives of others and to be resentful of those who succeed.
Over 20% in to the cycle and have finished: #5 as they are ordered here, Abbe Mouret’s Transgression. Symbolic and Romanic as written with a sledge hammer rather than a pen. Two version of the complete innocent woman. One mentally challenged and therefor forcibly Innocent, but identified with flesh and Zola does not like the fat. This time the thin is a girl raised innocent and living OBVIOUSLY Very Floridly obviously in the Garden of Edan (That is shouting font). Seemed like 500 pages of how beautiful the gardens and forest are. One myogenetic, lying bullying member of the clergy and the Abbe, with the Mouret genetic weaknesses, but very deep religious values. The experts call this anti-clerical. But is it?
Book 1: The Fortune of the Rougons
Zola would have us believe that this is a science experiment. A total literary bluff. He will be "following" a family across generations not so much as an effort in genetics, a virtually unknown field (pea plant experiments excepted) but rather place characters with some chosen traits into different setting to tell stories he has mostly mapped out.
The Rougons-Marquats are, at this point born of two fathers and a mentally challenged mother. The common traits seem to be avarice, and law breaking and I am not sure where he will go with mental illness.
Family members are both politically motivated and sharp eyed for gain.
Zola already has a tendency to over describe and he will toss in all the tricks to make a sad scene melodramatically tragic.
Book 2 The La Curée or the Kill IMPORTANT The title is the term for the offal left over from a fox hunt fed to the dogs. Can we be any more clear that this is about greed and public corruption?
The entire book is sex and public corruption. Zola takes us into the then well-known scandals about how Parris was rebuilt by people determined to abuse insider knowledge and public money. Huge deals are made on the buying, selling, taking and trading both public and private lands. Mean time the wealth is used to indulge in fabulously overpriced mostly in poor taste classic neaveau riche extravagance.
Financial crime being rather dull, we are titillated by the most sensual descriptions of plants ever written. Intended to skirt the censors by telling us what an incestuous couple (Mother and Step Son) are doing under the eyes of exotic hot house flowers and atop bear skin rugs. Need I say this book has been banned?
Book 3 The Fat and The Thin Caesar:
Let me have men about me that are fat,
Sleek-headed men and such as sleep a-nights.
Yon Cassius has a lean and hungry look,
He thinks too much; such men are dangerous.
Julius Caesar Act 1, scene 2, 190–195
This is a view into the huge central market of Paris. Feeding a big city as we move into the end of the 1800’s is a massively logistical and regulatory dance. We will see it very close as people live on and ruin each other based on rumor. By now we have seen the regular appearance of busy body women in black and a second hunchback.
Zola I think now gives us his central theme. Life is the struggle between Fat, middle class content people and things, relatively more noble, but certainly more thoughtful people, usually reduced to victim status.
Politics, all of it is bad, and the leftists mostly comical. The rightist mostly thieving and too heavy handed when motivated to use the police.
So to Book 4, The Conquest of Plassans What we might now call a political thriller. Absent the research, t most will miss that Zola is writing of a time when the Catholic Church was very active in French Politics, with the deliberate intention of making The Catholic Church A, or The dominant power in France. A modern reader gets little notion about why this might be a bad thing. I suppose that most of the papers on this book focus on the total symbolic defeat of the Middle class in the face of the symbolic Church Triumphant. Zola continues to emerge as a very heavy handed back and white moralist.
Currently reading
March 31, 2025October, 2024. We begin.
This is about the Rougon Macquart cycle, all of it, twenty novels-- but the Oxford World Classics paperback editions, not kindle or ebook. From what I could see, no hardback edition [Everyman, Modern, etc] published the entire cycle in modern translation. The Oxford books are deceptively good, offering a sort of Student's Minimum of basic, efficient, value-- at about $15 each, which, sigh, is where we're at even for paperbacks.
ONE The Fortune : https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I'm reading the cycle in the Zola-prescribed order, so will start with The Fortune Of The Rougons .... but the intention here is a running commentary of all things RM, and I'll be skipping back and forth to try to clarify, improve, expand the entries as I go. So this will be constantly in edit mode, and probably end up as more a journal of the process than a review.
___
First it might be good to list the Macro themes, the long-game framing by the author. By design, each book zones in on a sub-theme that is complex, but exists only to define the bigger structure. So a few (unsurprising) major themes first.
Worth saying, here at the outset, though I'd read three of the RM books before restarting at one with The Fortune, that there is a fundamental difference between Zola's effort and the omnipresent 'multi-generational saga of a splintered family melodrama'--- that THIS IS NOT what was intended here.
Those kinds of books use a splashy historical background as filler and color, for an even splashier soap-opera, amongst the stock-issue characters. The knows-better, too-stern Father, the disenchanted son, the wayward but headstrong daughter, etc. In Zola's RM world-- the characters exist only to drive the narrative along & populate the Era, which is his major concern.
Zola is a documentarist, interested in clarity, a journalistic photo of the times, which in themselves weren't unfailingly splashy. As it happened, they did lead to the crack-up of the world order in WWI, but Zola lives in preamble times. Birth of the Modern times, where no one is quite sure what will happen, but fairly sure something is happening.
___
Realized that listing "Themes" of a twenty book cycle you haven't read yet-- might be slightly premature. Okay then. What can be said at this point-- end of Eugene and five or six Zolas in-- is that all the discontents of Modernism are the focus. The automation of lives, the centralization but isolation in the cog-in-the-machine society being born. The dubious quality of plurality as culture, and its tastes over establishment ancien régime aesthetics ... smashing headlong into the disruptive, intoxicating New. A methodical Fritz Lang's 'Metropolis' in twenty discrete bottles.
Two things I've noticed. The mature documentarist voice in Zola is constantly at war with the young author's voluptuous appetite, for color, emotion, engagement. That undertow isn't far below the monochrome surface. And when Zola tells you that "it was rumored" that Count, Duke or Marquis X might have had a mistress, or might actually be the father of a character in question-- it's generally true, and he's just disinclined to go beyond rumor on the page. Helps if you remember, though.
I've decided to try to avoid the spoilers that the Oxford series includes in its Forewords --and every printed review seems to include without notice-- in a review of the cycle. But no guarantees, it might happen. Also thinking maybe it's for the best not to do individual reviews of each of the books ... Ooops no.
See below.
__________________________________
Update, March 2025. Five novels in, now reading number six, The Conquest Of Plassans.
Now realize there will have to be individual reviews. To which I'll post links at the top of this update page.
Worth saying at this point that this has been great reading, and not a slog at any point thus far. I've learned to end each novel by going back to the very informative Oxford Classics Foreword in the book, which along with the plentiful footnotes along the way-- illuminates the context and historical background of Zola's cycle. I recommend saving those till the end.
Another couple of things I've noticed .... There's generally a 'witch' character, who is a devious prognosticator or instigator behind the scenes. In fact there are generally two emblematic woman characters, one being the resourceful witch and the other being a resolutely virtuous opposite to that. As perhaps in life, the witch character is far from just hostile or harmful; in fact she's often the most useful character to the author and the novel's forward progress, positioned to know things in advance, or to impel backstage dramatic surges.
Another is what I'm calling the 'Zola Panorama' -- a literary equivalent of the 18th century visual mural, but in words. An attempt at all-encompassing view that excludes nothing, noting all specifics in a sweeping, lengthy, descriptive passage, that will immerse the reader completely in the scene. Zola does this in nearly every novel, though the sequences in The Belly Of Paris are the most memorable, most extended. This technique has been compared by lit reviewers to the Impressionism of the Second Empire, a verbal rendition of the onslaught of detail, the emotional fusion of light, color and line in the arts of the day.
_______________________________
This is about the Rougon Macquart cycle, all of it, twenty novels-- but the Oxford World Classics paperback editions, not kindle or ebook. From what I could see, no hardback edition [Everyman, Modern, etc] published the entire cycle in modern translation. The Oxford books are deceptively good, offering a sort of Student's Minimum of basic, efficient, value-- at about $15 each, which, sigh, is where we're at even for paperbacks.
ONE The Fortune : https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...
I'm reading the cycle in the Zola-prescribed order, so will start with The Fortune Of The Rougons .... but the intention here is a running commentary of all things RM, and I'll be skipping back and forth to try to clarify, improve, expand the entries as I go. So this will be constantly in edit mode, and probably end up as more a journal of the process than a review.
___
First it might be good to list the Macro themes, the long-game framing by the author. By design, each book zones in on a sub-theme that is complex, but exists only to define the bigger structure. So a few (unsurprising) major themes first.
Worth saying, here at the outset, though I'd read three of the RM books before restarting at one with The Fortune, that there is a fundamental difference between Zola's effort and the omnipresent 'multi-generational saga of a splintered family melodrama'--- that THIS IS NOT what was intended here.
Those kinds of books use a splashy historical background as filler and color, for an even splashier soap-opera, amongst the stock-issue characters. The knows-better, too-stern Father, the disenchanted son, the wayward but headstrong daughter, etc. In Zola's RM world-- the characters exist only to drive the narrative along & populate the Era, which is his major concern.
Zola is a documentarist, interested in clarity, a journalistic photo of the times, which in themselves weren't unfailingly splashy. As it happened, they did lead to the crack-up of the world order in WWI, but Zola lives in preamble times. Birth of the Modern times, where no one is quite sure what will happen, but fairly sure something is happening.
___
Realized that listing "Themes" of a twenty book cycle you haven't read yet-- might be slightly premature. Okay then. What can be said at this point-- end of Eugene and five or six Zolas in-- is that all the discontents of Modernism are the focus. The automation of lives, the centralization but isolation in the cog-in-the-machine society being born. The dubious quality of plurality as culture, and its tastes over establishment ancien régime aesthetics ... smashing headlong into the disruptive, intoxicating New. A methodical Fritz Lang's 'Metropolis' in twenty discrete bottles.
Two things I've noticed. The mature documentarist voice in Zola is constantly at war with the young author's voluptuous appetite, for color, emotion, engagement. That undertow isn't far below the monochrome surface. And when Zola tells you that "it was rumored" that Count, Duke or Marquis X might have had a mistress, or might actually be the father of a character in question-- it's generally true, and he's just disinclined to go beyond rumor on the page. Helps if you remember, though.
I've decided to try to avoid the spoilers that the Oxford series includes in its Forewords --and every printed review seems to include without notice-- in a review of the cycle. But no guarantees, it might happen. Also thinking maybe it's for the best not to do individual reviews of each of the books ... Ooops no.
See below.
__________________________________
Update, March 2025. Five novels in, now reading number six, The Conquest Of Plassans.
Now realize there will have to be individual reviews. To which I'll post links at the top of this update page.
Worth saying at this point that this has been great reading, and not a slog at any point thus far. I've learned to end each novel by going back to the very informative Oxford Classics Foreword in the book, which along with the plentiful footnotes along the way-- illuminates the context and historical background of Zola's cycle. I recommend saving those till the end.
Another couple of things I've noticed .... There's generally a 'witch' character, who is a devious prognosticator or instigator behind the scenes. In fact there are generally two emblematic woman characters, one being the resourceful witch and the other being a resolutely virtuous opposite to that. As perhaps in life, the witch character is far from just hostile or harmful; in fact she's often the most useful character to the author and the novel's forward progress, positioned to know things in advance, or to impel backstage dramatic surges.
Another is what I'm calling the 'Zola Panorama' -- a literary equivalent of the 18th century visual mural, but in words. An attempt at all-encompassing view that excludes nothing, noting all specifics in a sweeping, lengthy, descriptive passage, that will immerse the reader completely in the scene. Zola does this in nearly every novel, though the sequences in The Belly Of Paris are the most memorable, most extended. This technique has been compared by lit reviewers to the Impressionism of the Second Empire, a verbal rendition of the onslaught of detail, the emotional fusion of light, color and line in the arts of the day.
_______________________________
March 20, 2024
I started reading Zola's "The Rougon-Macquart" series, some twenty novels reading and reviewing all, ending it with a rap up in general some twenty months later, a story every month, so this family's story was indeed a wonderful read. Having read all of Balzac's "Human Comedy" prior to starting Zola's opus, I can now compare and contrast these two different but similar works of written art.
Balzac has characters that play a part in many stories as does Zola, but the family members are the ones that keep reoccurring not Biachion, Balzac's popular doctor, other newspaper characters or certain aristocracy. Balzac's France deals with the politics, money lenders, wars and different aspects of society. There are dark/good complicated characters, Zola's characters are generally very flawed, serial killers, murderers, embezzlers, crooked politicians and insanity. Each of Zola's works deal with different aspects of France society. Business, banking, agricultural, war, politics, religion, art work are just some of the themes.
A synopsis of family tree from my Delphi collection where from I read all 20 novels.
❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌Spoiler alert
❌❌❌❌
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THE ROUGON-MACQUART FAMILY TREE First Generation: 1. ADELAIDE FOUQUE, called AUNT DIDE, born in 1768, married in 1786 to Rougon, a placid, lubberly gardener; bears him a son in 1787; loses her husband in 1788; takes in 1789 a lover, Macquart, a smuggler, addicted to drink and half crazed; bears him a son in 1789, and a
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daughter in 1791; goes mad, and is sent to the Asylum of Les Tulettes in 1851; dies there of cerebral congestion in 1873 at 105 years of age. Supplies the original neurosis. Second Generation: 2. PIERRE ROUGON, born in 1787, married in 1810 to Felicite Puech, an intelligent, active and healthy woman; has five children by her; dies in 1870, on the morrow of Sedan, from cerebral congestion due to overfeeding. An equilibrious blending of characteristics, the moral average of his father and mother, resembles them physically. An oil merchant, afterwards receiver of taxes. 3. ANTOINE MACQUART, born in 1789; a soldier in 1809; married in 1829 to a market dealer, Josephine Gavaudan, a vigorous, industrious, but intemperate woman; has three children by her; loses her in 1851; dies himself in 1873 from spontaneous combustion, brought about by alcoholism. A fusion of characteristics. Moral prepotency of and physical likeness to his father. A soldier, then a basket-maker, afterwards lives idle on his income. 4. URSULE MACQUART, born in 1791; married in 1810 to a journeyman- hatter, Mouret, a healthy man with a well-balanced mind. Bears him three children, dies of consumption in 1840. An adjunction of characteristics, her mother predominating morally and physically.
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5. EUGENE ROUGON, born in 1811, married in 1857 to Veronique Beulin d’Orcheres, by whom he has no children. A fusion of characteristics. Prepotency and ambition of his mother. Physical likeness to his father. A politician, at one time Cabinet Minister. Still alive in Paris, a deputy. 6. PASCAL ROUGON, born in 1813, never marries, has a posthumous child by Clotilde Rougon in 1874; dies of heart disease on November 7, 1873. Innateness, a combination
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in which the physical and moral characteristics of the parents are so blended that nothing of them appears manifest in the offspring. A doctor. 7. ARISTIDE ROUGON, alias SACCARD, born in 1815, married in 1836 to Angele Sicardot, the calm, dreamy-minded daughter of an officer; has by her a son in 1840, a daughter in 1847; loses his wife in 1854; has a natural son in 1853 by a work-girl, Rosalie Chavaille, counting consumptives and epileptics among her forerunners; remarried in 1855 to Renee Beraud Du Chatel, who dies childless in 1864. An adjunction of characteristics, moral prepotency of his father, physical likeness to his mother. Her ambition, modified by his father’s appetites. A clerk, then a speculator. Still alive in Paris, directing a newspaper. 8. SIDONIE ROUGON, born in 1818, married at Plassans in 1838 to a solicitor’s clerk, who dies in Paris in 1850. Has, by a stranger, in
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1851, a daughter Angelique, whom she places in the foundling asylum. Prepotency of her father, physical likeness to her mother. A commission agent and procuress, dabbling in every shady calling; but eventually becomes very austere. Still alive in Paris, treasurer to the OEuvre du Sacrement. 9. MARTHE ROUGON, born in 1820, married in 1840 to her cousin Francois Mouret, bears him three children, dies in 1864 from a nervous disease. Reverting heredity,
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skipping one generation. Hysteria. Moral and physical likeness to Adelaide Fouque. Resembles her husband. 10. FRANCOIS MOURET, born in 1817, married in 1840 to Marthe Rougon, who bears him three children; dies mad in 1864 in a conflagration kindled by himself. Prepotency of his father. Physical likeness to his mother. Resembles his wife. At first a wine-merchant, then lives on his income.
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11. HELENE MOURET, born in 1824, married in 1841 to Grandjean, a puny man, inclined to phthisis, who dies in 1853; has a daughter by him in 1842; remarried in 1857 to M. Rambaud, by whom she has no children. Innateness as in Pascal Rougon’s case. Still living, at Marseilles, in retirement with her second husband. 12. SILVERE MOURET, born in 1834; shot dead by a gendarme in 1851. Prepotency of his mother. Innateness with regard to physical resemblance. 13. LISA MACQUART, born in 1827, married in 1852 to Quenu, a healthy man with a well-balanced mind. Bears him a daughter, dies in 1863 from decomposition of the blood. Prepotency of and physical likeness to her mother. Keeps a large pork-butcher’s shop at the Paris markets. 14. GERVAISE MACQUART, born in 1828, has three sons by her lover Lantier, who counts paralytics among his ancestors; is taken to Paris, and there deserted by him; is married in 1852 to a workman, Coupeau, who comes of an alcoholic stock; has a daughter by him; dies of misery and drink in 1869. Prepotency of her father. Conceived in drunkenness. Is lame. A washerwoman. 15. JEAN MACQUART, born in 1831, married in 1867 to Francoise Mouche, who dies childless in 1870; remarried in 1871 to Melanie Vial, a sturdy, healthy peasant-girl,
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by whom he has a son, and who is again enceinte. Innateness, as with Pascal and Helene. First a peasant, then a soldier, then peasant again. Still alive at Valqueyras. Fourth Generation: 16. MAXIME ROUGON, alias SACCARD, born in 1840, has a son in 1857 by a servant, Justine Megot, the chlorotic daughter of drunken parents; married in 1863 to Louise de Mareuil, who dies childless the same year; succumbs to
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ataxia in 1873. A dissemination of characteristics. Moral prepotency of his father, physical likeness to his mother. Idle, inclined to spending unearned money. 17. CLOTILDE ROUGON, alias SACCARD, born in 1847, has a son by Pascal Rougon in 1874. Prepotency of her mother. Reverting heredity, the moral and physical characteristics of her maternal grandfather preponderant. Still alive at Plassans.
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18. VICTOR ROUGON, alias SACCARD, born in 1853. Adjunction of characteristics. Physical resemblance to his father. Has disappeared. 19. ANGELIQUE ROUGON, born in 1851, married in 1869 to Felicien de Hautecoeur, and dies the same day of a complaint never determined. Innateness: no resemblance to her mother or forerunners on the maternal side. No information as to her father.
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20. OCTAVE MOURET, born in 1840, married in 1865 to Madame Hedouin, who dies the same year; remarried in 1869 to Denise Baudu, a healthy girl with a well-balanced mind, by whom he has a boy and a girl, still too young to be classified. Prepotency of his father. Physical resemblance to his uncle, Eugene Rougon. Indirect heredity. Establishes and directs “The Ladies’ Paradise.” Still alive in Paris. 21. SERGE MOURET, born in 1841. A dissemination of characteristics;
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moral and physical resemblance to his mother. Has his father’s brain, influenced by the diseased condition of his mother. Heredity of a form of neurosis developing into mysticism. A priest, still alive at St. Eutrope. 22. DESIREE MOURET, born in 1844. Prepotency of and physical likeness to her mother. Heredity of a form of neurosis developing into idiocy. Still alive at St. Eutrope with her brother Serge.
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23. JEANNE GRANDJEAN, born in 1842, dies of a nervous complaint in 1855. Reverting heredity, skipping two generations. Physical and moral resemblance to Adelaide Fouque. 24. Pauline Quenu, born in 1852, never marries. An equilibrious blending of characteristics. Moral and physical resemblance to her father and mother. An example of honesty. Still alive at Bonneville. 25. CLAUDE LANTIER, born in 1842, married in 1865 to Caroline Hallegrain, whose father succumbed to paraplegia; has by her, prior to marriage, a son, Jacques, who dies in 1869; hangs himself in 1870. A fusion of characteristics. Moral prepotency of and physical resemblance to his mother. Heredity of a form of neurosis developing into genius. A painter.
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26. JACQUES LANTIER, born in 1844, killed in an accident in 1870. Prepotency of his mother. Physical likeness to his father. Heredity of alcoholism, developing into homicidal mania. An example of crime. An engine-driver. 27. ETIENNE LANTIER, born in 1846. A dissemination of characteristics. Physical resemblance, first to his mother, afterwards to his father. A miner. Still alive, transported to Noumea, there married, with children, it is said, who cannot, however, be classified. 28. ANNA COUPEAU, alias NANA, born in 1852, gives birth to a child, Louis, in 1867, loses him in
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1870, dies herself of small-pox a few days later. A blending of characteristics. Moral prepotency of her father. Physical resemblance to her mother’s first lover, Lantier. Heredity of alcoholism developing into mental and physical perversion. An example of vice. Fifth Generation: 29. CHARLES ROUGON, alias SACCARD, born in 1857, dies of hemorrhage in 1873. Reverting heredity skipping three generations. Physical
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and moral resemblance to Adelaide Fouque. The last outcome of an exhausted stock. 30. JACQUES LOUIS LANTIER, born in 1860, a case of hydrocephalus, dies in 1869. Prepotency of his mother, whom he physically resembles. 31. LOUIS COUPEAU, called LOUISET, born in 1867, dies of small-pox in 1870. Prepotency of his mother, whom he physically resembles.
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32. THE UNKNOWN CHILD will be born in 1874. What will it be?
*** Jean Macquart, Etienne Lantier, Angelique Rougon, Silverdere Mouret, Helene Journey are some of my favorite characters. Madame Rougen amd Jacques Lantier are my least favorite.
Balzac has characters that play a part in many stories as does Zola, but the family members are the ones that keep reoccurring not Biachion, Balzac's popular doctor, other newspaper characters or certain aristocracy. Balzac's France deals with the politics, money lenders, wars and different aspects of society. There are dark/good complicated characters, Zola's characters are generally very flawed, serial killers, murderers, embezzlers, crooked politicians and insanity. Each of Zola's works deal with different aspects of France society. Business, banking, agricultural, war, politics, religion, art work are just some of the themes.
A synopsis of family tree from my Delphi collection where from I read all 20 novels.
❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌❌Spoiler alert
❌❌❌❌
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 214599
THE ROUGON-MACQUART FAMILY TREE First Generation: 1. ADELAIDE FOUQUE, called AUNT DIDE, born in 1768, married in 1786 to Rougon, a placid, lubberly gardener; bears him a son in 1787; loses her husband in 1788; takes in 1789 a lover, Macquart, a smuggler, addicted to drink and half crazed; bears him a son in 1789, and a
Highlight (Yellow) | Location 214603
daughter in 1791; goes mad, and is sent to the Asylum of Les Tulettes in 1851; dies there of cerebral congestion in 1873 at 105 years of age. Supplies the original neurosis. Second Generation: 2. PIERRE ROUGON, born in 1787, married in 1810 to Felicite Puech, an intelligent, active and healthy woman; has five children by her; dies in 1870, on the morrow of Sedan, from cerebral congestion due to overfeeding. An equilibrious blending of characteristics, the moral average of his father and mother, resembles them physically. An oil merchant, afterwards receiver of taxes. 3. ANTOINE MACQUART, born in 1789; a soldier in 1809; married in 1829 to a market dealer, Josephine Gavaudan, a vigorous, industrious, but intemperate woman; has three children by her; loses her in 1851; dies himself in 1873 from spontaneous combustion, brought about by alcoholism. A fusion of characteristics. Moral prepotency of and physical likeness to his father. A soldier, then a basket-maker, afterwards lives idle on his income. 4. URSULE MACQUART, born in 1791; married in 1810 to a journeyman- hatter, Mouret, a healthy man with a well-balanced mind. Bears him three children, dies of consumption in 1840. An adjunction of characteristics, her mother predominating morally and physically.
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5. EUGENE ROUGON, born in 1811, married in 1857 to Veronique Beulin d’Orcheres, by whom he has no children. A fusion of characteristics. Prepotency and ambition of his mother. Physical likeness to his father. A politician, at one time Cabinet Minister. Still alive in Paris, a deputy. 6. PASCAL ROUGON, born in 1813, never marries, has a posthumous child by Clotilde Rougon in 1874; dies of heart disease on November 7, 1873. Innateness, a combination
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in which the physical and moral characteristics of the parents are so blended that nothing of them appears manifest in the offspring. A doctor. 7. ARISTIDE ROUGON, alias SACCARD, born in 1815, married in 1836 to Angele Sicardot, the calm, dreamy-minded daughter of an officer; has by her a son in 1840, a daughter in 1847; loses his wife in 1854; has a natural son in 1853 by a work-girl, Rosalie Chavaille, counting consumptives and epileptics among her forerunners; remarried in 1855 to Renee Beraud Du Chatel, who dies childless in 1864. An adjunction of characteristics, moral prepotency of his father, physical likeness to his mother. Her ambition, modified by his father’s appetites. A clerk, then a speculator. Still alive in Paris, directing a newspaper. 8. SIDONIE ROUGON, born in 1818, married at Plassans in 1838 to a solicitor’s clerk, who dies in Paris in 1850. Has, by a stranger, in
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1851, a daughter Angelique, whom she places in the foundling asylum. Prepotency of her father, physical likeness to her mother. A commission agent and procuress, dabbling in every shady calling; but eventually becomes very austere. Still alive in Paris, treasurer to the OEuvre du Sacrement. 9. MARTHE ROUGON, born in 1820, married in 1840 to her cousin Francois Mouret, bears him three children, dies in 1864 from a nervous disease. Reverting heredity,
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skipping one generation. Hysteria. Moral and physical likeness to Adelaide Fouque. Resembles her husband. 10. FRANCOIS MOURET, born in 1817, married in 1840 to Marthe Rougon, who bears him three children; dies mad in 1864 in a conflagration kindled by himself. Prepotency of his father. Physical likeness to his mother. Resembles his wife. At first a wine-merchant, then lives on his income.
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11. HELENE MOURET, born in 1824, married in 1841 to Grandjean, a puny man, inclined to phthisis, who dies in 1853; has a daughter by him in 1842; remarried in 1857 to M. Rambaud, by whom she has no children. Innateness as in Pascal Rougon’s case. Still living, at Marseilles, in retirement with her second husband. 12. SILVERE MOURET, born in 1834; shot dead by a gendarme in 1851. Prepotency of his mother. Innateness with regard to physical resemblance. 13. LISA MACQUART, born in 1827, married in 1852 to Quenu, a healthy man with a well-balanced mind. Bears him a daughter, dies in 1863 from decomposition of the blood. Prepotency of and physical likeness to her mother. Keeps a large pork-butcher’s shop at the Paris markets. 14. GERVAISE MACQUART, born in 1828, has three sons by her lover Lantier, who counts paralytics among his ancestors; is taken to Paris, and there deserted by him; is married in 1852 to a workman, Coupeau, who comes of an alcoholic stock; has a daughter by him; dies of misery and drink in 1869. Prepotency of her father. Conceived in drunkenness. Is lame. A washerwoman. 15. JEAN MACQUART, born in 1831, married in 1867 to Francoise Mouche, who dies childless in 1870; remarried in 1871 to Melanie Vial, a sturdy, healthy peasant-girl,
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by whom he has a son, and who is again enceinte. Innateness, as with Pascal and Helene. First a peasant, then a soldier, then peasant again. Still alive at Valqueyras. Fourth Generation: 16. MAXIME ROUGON, alias SACCARD, born in 1840, has a son in 1857 by a servant, Justine Megot, the chlorotic daughter of drunken parents; married in 1863 to Louise de Mareuil, who dies childless the same year; succumbs to
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ataxia in 1873. A dissemination of characteristics. Moral prepotency of his father, physical likeness to his mother. Idle, inclined to spending unearned money. 17. CLOTILDE ROUGON, alias SACCARD, born in 1847, has a son by Pascal Rougon in 1874. Prepotency of her mother. Reverting heredity, the moral and physical characteristics of her maternal grandfather preponderant. Still alive at Plassans.
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18. VICTOR ROUGON, alias SACCARD, born in 1853. Adjunction of characteristics. Physical resemblance to his father. Has disappeared. 19. ANGELIQUE ROUGON, born in 1851, married in 1869 to Felicien de Hautecoeur, and dies the same day of a complaint never determined. Innateness: no resemblance to her mother or forerunners on the maternal side. No information as to her father.
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20. OCTAVE MOURET, born in 1840, married in 1865 to Madame Hedouin, who dies the same year; remarried in 1869 to Denise Baudu, a healthy girl with a well-balanced mind, by whom he has a boy and a girl, still too young to be classified. Prepotency of his father. Physical resemblance to his uncle, Eugene Rougon. Indirect heredity. Establishes and directs “The Ladies’ Paradise.” Still alive in Paris. 21. SERGE MOURET, born in 1841. A dissemination of characteristics;
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moral and physical resemblance to his mother. Has his father’s brain, influenced by the diseased condition of his mother. Heredity of a form of neurosis developing into mysticism. A priest, still alive at St. Eutrope. 22. DESIREE MOURET, born in 1844. Prepotency of and physical likeness to her mother. Heredity of a form of neurosis developing into idiocy. Still alive at St. Eutrope with her brother Serge.
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23. JEANNE GRANDJEAN, born in 1842, dies of a nervous complaint in 1855. Reverting heredity, skipping two generations. Physical and moral resemblance to Adelaide Fouque. 24. Pauline Quenu, born in 1852, never marries. An equilibrious blending of characteristics. Moral and physical resemblance to her father and mother. An example of honesty. Still alive at Bonneville. 25. CLAUDE LANTIER, born in 1842, married in 1865 to Caroline Hallegrain, whose father succumbed to paraplegia; has by her, prior to marriage, a son, Jacques, who dies in 1869; hangs himself in 1870. A fusion of characteristics. Moral prepotency of and physical resemblance to his mother. Heredity of a form of neurosis developing into genius. A painter.
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26. JACQUES LANTIER, born in 1844, killed in an accident in 1870. Prepotency of his mother. Physical likeness to his father. Heredity of alcoholism, developing into homicidal mania. An example of crime. An engine-driver. 27. ETIENNE LANTIER, born in 1846. A dissemination of characteristics. Physical resemblance, first to his mother, afterwards to his father. A miner. Still alive, transported to Noumea, there married, with children, it is said, who cannot, however, be classified. 28. ANNA COUPEAU, alias NANA, born in 1852, gives birth to a child, Louis, in 1867, loses him in
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1870, dies herself of small-pox a few days later. A blending of characteristics. Moral prepotency of her father. Physical resemblance to her mother’s first lover, Lantier. Heredity of alcoholism developing into mental and physical perversion. An example of vice. Fifth Generation: 29. CHARLES ROUGON, alias SACCARD, born in 1857, dies of hemorrhage in 1873. Reverting heredity skipping three generations. Physical
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and moral resemblance to Adelaide Fouque. The last outcome of an exhausted stock. 30. JACQUES LOUIS LANTIER, born in 1860, a case of hydrocephalus, dies in 1869. Prepotency of his mother, whom he physically resembles. 31. LOUIS COUPEAU, called LOUISET, born in 1867, dies of small-pox in 1870. Prepotency of his mother, whom he physically resembles.
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32. THE UNKNOWN CHILD will be born in 1874. What will it be?
*** Jean Macquart, Etienne Lantier, Angelique Rougon, Silverdere Mouret, Helene Journey are some of my favorite characters. Madame Rougen amd Jacques Lantier are my least favorite.
June 5, 2018
NANA
While this book is a collection of all Zola’s novels, I at this time only read Nana. Zola survives the test of time.
Nana is a prostitute, a courtesan not really. Her public is rather base and she is scarcely recognized by women of society. While she sees herself as mounting the steps of society, her base instincts scuttle any hope.
While this book is a collection of all Zola’s novels, I at this time only read Nana. Zola survives the test of time.
Nana is a prostitute, a courtesan not really. Her public is rather base and she is scarcely recognized by women of society. While she sees herself as mounting the steps of society, her base instincts scuttle any hope.
June 29, 2018
True confessions - I never finished it. I picked up Les Rougon after watching Mr. Selfridge. I'd never read any Zola and thought it was a good starting place. I enjoyed what I read, but wasn't captivated. The book traces threads of a family, some with interesting stories, some not so interesting. Maybe one day I'll pick it back up when I don't have other things more pressing to read.
April 3, 2020
Majestuosa. Se asienta como sirope en el corazón y como conciencia en el cerebro.
Want to read
June 18, 2014The complete audio version in French is available at Literature audio.com.
Durée : 348h 29min
Durée : 348h 29min
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