Nais Micoulin - A Novella by Emile Zola (1884)

Paris in July - Year Ten - hosted by Thyme for Tea

So far as my participation in Paris In July Year Ten I have read 

1.  Colette- Two Early Short Stories

2. The Black Notebook by Patrick Modiano 

3. "A Duel" by Guy de Maupassant ( A Franco-Prussian War Story)

4. Life, Death, and Betrayal at The Hotel Ritz in Paris by Tilar Mazzeo (non fiction)

5. How the French Invented Love by Marilyn Yolem (literary history)

6. "The Lost Child" by Francois Coppée 

7. "The Juggler of Norte Dame" by Anatole France- no post

8. A Very French Christmas- A Collection of the Greatest Holiday Stories of France

9. "The Illustrious Gaudissart" by Honore de Balzac

10. After the Circus by Patrick Modiano

11. "Gaudissart II" by Honore de Balzac

12. 6:41 to Paris by Jean-Phillipe Blondel

13. "Noel" by Irene Nemirovsky 

14. Giovanni's Room by James Baldwin

15. The Madeleine Project by Clara Beaudoux

16. Nais Micoulin by Emile Zola

Along with Honore de Balzac, Emile Zola (1840 to 1904) is one of the two greatest chroniclers of French life.  His cycle of twenty novels, Les Rougan-Macquarie chronicles the lives of two fictional interrelated families during The Second Empire (1852 to 1870).  The works take us into brothels, drinking dens of the very poor of Paris, high end brothels, coal mines, a department store, the city food market and lets us see the intricacies of the financial dealings at the top of Paris Life.  We meet washerwomen and countesses, rouges, virgins (though not for too long), ministers of finance and farmers.  Reading through this cycle was a great reading life experience for me.  I read this in The Delphi Edition of the works of Zola.  It would be difficult to read this other than in a digital collection.

I wanted to include Zola in my readings for Paris in July Year Ten.  Looking through the collection there is a novel called Paris but it is part three of a trilogy, the other segments are London and Lourdes.  I see this as a hopefully July in Paris 2018 Project.  There are a number of short stories in the collection, last year I posted for the event upon "The Boot Licking Virgin", as salacious a story as Zola probably felt comfortable with in 1880.

This year's Zola work, Nais Micoulin, a novella, also has a strong for the time sexual theme.  There are seven characters in this story of rich Parisians at their country home on the Atlantic coast in Provence.  We have an attorney, his wife, their only child Ferderic,  a caretaker of their estate, who also fishes, and his daughter Nais, his wife and a mentally challenged hunchback with a dog like devotion to Nais.  The two children, meeting at age 12, become very close even though the boy's doting mother does not approve the relationship.  Time goes by and Fredefic grows into a spoiled playboy.  Then as then one year he notices Nais has developed into a beautiful woman.  They begin a secret affair, love under the moonlight.  Nais is deeply in love with Frederic.  I don't want to give away to much plot but the father discovers them asleep together and determines to murder Frederic.  He knows he has to be careful as he will automatically be considered in the wrong. His attempt to shot him from ambush is thwarted by Nais.  To complicate the plot, he often beats her to establish his status as father, as was accepted.  The story takes an intriguing turn I did not see coming.  If the story has a theme it is that money wins out over Love and birth is destiny.

I'm glad I read this work.  It is a very good mini-Zola.

Mel u

"Love Under the Roof" - A Short Story From the Parisian Sketches of Emile Zola- Plus my Ideas on the best set in Paris Zola novels

French Literature and History on The Reading Life 

Host Webpage for Paris in July 2016

So far for July in Paris I have read

1.  The Dogs and the Wolves by Iréne Nemirovsky 

2.  Mavis Gallant -  Two Set in Paris works, a short story and a note book entry

3.  Five Nights in Paris by John Baxter.

4.  The Little Paris Book Store by Nina George

5.  "The Problem of Summer Time" by Marcel Ayme

I could not let Paris in July end with posting on Emile Zola, one of the greatest French writers.

This post Includes my suggestions as to the best set in Paris novels in the Les Rougon-Macquart Cycle.

Last year I completed a read of the twenty novels in Emile Zola's Les Rougon-Macquart Cycle.  It follows the lives of two interrelated families in France from 1855 to 1870.  Some of the works in the cycle are among the greatest of all French novels, others take a bit of will to complete.  As I read on, I found a very sentimental attitude toward virginal young women.  Zola's treatment of love before sex and marriage enters the picture is highly romantic.  I highly recommend reading the full cycle in publication order to all serious literary autodidacts.  

I could not participate in Paris in July without including a work set in Paris by Zola but  before I do That I want to list my favorite set in Paris novels in the Les Rougon-Macquart Cycle.

My Suggestions For Set in Paris Novels by Emile Zola

1.  Nana.  Centers on a Parisian prostitute.  A harshly realistic look at the demimonde world.  Considered  by all one of his very best works.

2.  The Dram Shop.  Set in the slums of Paris.  We learn about the upbringing of Nana.  This works focuses on the terrible impact of alcoholism,  in spite of how it sounds, this is a very funny novel. One of my favorites.

3.  The Big Store.  Set in a giant Paris department store.  Recently made into a movie.  Business details are very well done.

4.  The Belly  of Paris.  Centered on the food market.

"Love Upon the Roof" is very typical of Zola's stories that center on young "pure" women.  The central character is twenty and is on her own in Paris.  She works as a seamstress, as Zola tells us very common occupation for single women in Paris.  Everything is beautiful in the young woman's world, she is in love.  "Love Upon the Roof" can be read in under five minutes, great it is not but it illustrates a side of Zola's worldview.  It is part of a series of four stories known as The Parisian Sketches.

Mel u

My Thoughts on Completing Emile Zola's Rougon Macquart Cycle

Composed from 1871 to 1893 the twenty novels in Emile Zola's Rougon Macquart cycle

present French society in the Second Empire from 1852 to the fall of the empire in 1870.  They center on two intermarried families.  Taken as a whole the cycle is one of the supreme achievements of French literature.   I am glad I took the time, not really that much as few of the novels are over 400 pages, to read the full cycle.

I began reading the cycle, in publication order, skipping the four I had already read May 10 this year.  I am very glad I decided to read through the complete cycle.  The novels are very uneven in quality, from work to work as well as in individual novels.  As I was reading sometimes I thought is this  ever going to be over and then just as I was wondering if I could go on I would enter into segments of transcendent qualitity that just amazed me.  If there is a weakness in the work of Zola, this is just my thoughts, it is in the romances and the long rhapsodies on young girls.  I sense Zola equates sex or the lost of virginity as an act of corruption, an abandonment of the good and maybe God to embrace the world in all its corruption.  For sure once a woman has sex, married or not, something bad will soon happen.

Zola sees deep corruption everywhere, something bad is always coming soon in a Zola novel.  He has theories about heriditary degeneracy and this plays a big part in the cycle.  

These words from the last novel in the cycle kind of sum things up 

To those new to Zola, I would say first read his acknowledged by most, not by me, masterwork, set in the coal mines, Germinal.  Then I suggest you read The Dram Shop followed by Nana. Then you can decide for yourself if you want to read the entire cycle.  

I read the cycle in the Delphi Classics E Book of The Complete Works of Zola.  The translations are older public domain translations and some may be slightly bowdlerized for sexual content.  The edition also includes 11 other novels and a number of short stories.  To me it is $2.95 well spent and without it I would not have been able to read the cycle.   

There are ten Zola novels I have not yet read.  Maybe next year!

Doctor Pascal by Emile Zola - 1893. The Final Novel in the Rougon Macquart Cycle

Doctor Pascal is the last of twenty novels in Emile Zola's grand Rougon Macquart Cycle.  I began reading the cycle, in publication order, skipping the four I had already read May 10 this year.  I am very glad I decided to read through the complete cycle.  The novels are very uneven in quality, from work to work as well as in individual novels.  As I was reading sometimes I thought is this  ever going to be over and then just as I was wondering if I could go on I would enter into segments of transcendent qualitity that just amazed me.  If there is a weakness in the work of Zola, this is just my thoughts, it is in the romances and the long rhapsodies on young girls.  I sense Zola equates sex or the lost of virginity as an act of corruption, an abandonment of the good and maybe God to embrace the world in all its corruption.  For sure once a woman has sex, married or not, something bad will soon happen.

Doctor Pascal is not a book to be read as a stand alone.  It is kind of a reward for completing the cycle in that Doctor Pascal sums up each of the members of the Rougon and Marquart families in a just magnificent chapter.  I loved it.  The rest of the book is devoted to the researches into human heriditary of the doctor and his life as a country doctor.  He, at fifty nine, marries a twenty year old woman.  This lends itself to prime Zola pot boiler stuff.  Every thing is wonderful for a while then....

These lines seemed like a kind of summing up

Very soon I will do a sort of summing up post and give my thoughts on who should read the full cycle and where those who hesitate to make this commitment, should start. 

The Debacle by Emile Zola (1891)

The Debacle is the 19th of 20 novels in Emile Zola's grand Rougon Macquart Cycle.  Composed from 1871 to 1893 they present French society in the Second Empire from 1852 to the fall of the empire in 1870.  They center on two intermarried families.  Once I complete the cycle, hopefully next week, I will attempt an over all post on The Rougon Macquart Cycle.  

The Debacle is the best, most exciting and longest work  in the cycle ( assuming the last work Dr. Pascal does not surpass it.) You can see the great development in the narrative skills of Zola over the long course of writing the cycle.   I think it is not commonly seen as the best of Zola because the vast majority will first read his consensus best work Germinal then maybe Nana and then  move on.  Few people who do lists of best novels have read the full cycle and that is why The Debacle is not on any/many best novels must reading lists.  

Set in 1870, it deals with the Franco-Prussian War, the fall of Napolean III and the rise of the Paris commune.  The Debacle is the best literary treatment I have read of the consequences of war for the foot soldiers and for the people whose towns, homes and fields serve as battle grounds.  Zola lets us see how an army of 250,000 marching through an area brings famine, death and disease to the residents of the territory.  His accounts of battle wounds and death are the best I have ever read.  His treatment of the terrible impact of the battles on horses were hard to read.  Napolean III and his minions are the worse kind of fools.  As the war drags on and France is more and more savaged by the Germans we see him go from much admired figure to a despised man most of the French hate.  The search for food dominates everyone's existence.  Soldiers did not have many food supplies, German or French, and were supposed to live off the people whose areas they fought. There are numerous brilliant set pieces in The Debacle.  Battle wounds are very graphically described and the scenes in the military hospital are overwhelmingly powerful in their sheer horror.

Of course the Germans are depicted mostly as monsters, killing children, raping women and burning everything they can while stealing anything of value.  Some French officers, even Generals, are depicted as heroic and self-sacrificing carrying more for their men than their own lives.  Some run at the first sight of Germans.  Many French army leaders are just buffoons who got their rank through connections. There was an old farmer who was accused of being a collaborator for selling butchered animals to the Germans, I admit I loved it when he explained he only sold the Germans meat from animals found dead from disease.  We also see the terrible revenge the Germans take on local people.

The plot is driven by the friendship of a man of aristocratic background and Jean Marquart, who lost his farm in The Earth and joined the army for a paycheck.  We follow them through the war.  We see the war's impact on friends and families and we see how military service forms bonds across society. 

There are romantic aspects to the novel but they don't get in the way.  As the novel and the war winds down the biggest fear becomes whether or not the Germans will burn Paris to the ground.  

The Debacle is a very exciting work.  It is very hard to predict what will happen next. OK this is Zola so you can sort of figure it won't be real pleasant.

A new society will emerge from the destruction of the Second Empire in the Franco-Prussian War.

The Debacle is near compulsive reading you want so badly to see what will happen next.

19 down, one to go!

Money (L'Argent) by Emile Zola - 1891

Money is the 18th novel of 20  in Emile Zola's grand Rougon Macquart Cycle.  It focuses on the foundation, management and eventual scandal ridden down fall of an investment bank.  A lot of what goes on in the novel sounds much like the criminality that goes  on in giant banks world wide today.  It is a story of greed, grandiose schemes based on fantasies and fraud, of business leaders who care only about themselves, who gladly hurt thousands and thousands just to make themselves a bit richer, of idiots in control. 

Zola gives us a lot of detail about how one started a bank in France in 1890, how you sold stocks and found investors.  We learn a good bit about the lives of those who start the bank.  We also meet middle class people who invest all of their life savings in bank stock.  This being Zola, we know things will end badly for them.

Money is interesting for its portrayal of the business side of the banking and stock market in France.

Maybe I have, after 17 prior novels in the cycle, reached  Zola overload but I did not become very interested in the characters in the novel.  

Two to go! 

Mel u

The Dream by Emile Zola (1888, work 16 in The Rougon Macquart Cycle)

The Dream is very different from the prior fifteen novels in Ths Rougon Marquart Cycle.  It set in rural France among mostly  decent people.  My post read research revealed that in The Dream Zola set out to show he could write a successful work that did not depend upon sensationalism and depravity for its power.  

It centers on a young girl we first meet as an orphan, Angelique.  She is a fourth general Rougart.  She is adopted by a happily married couple in their early forties whose only child died while an infant, long ago.   I sense in Zola an antagonism toward sexual activity, a feeling that sex is inherently corrupting.  His ideal female is very beautiful, falls in love while quite young and dies a virgin.

The family in the novel make their living by producing grand embroidered tapestries and gowns.  The testify to the glory of the saints.  Angelique is very into the love of Catholic Saints, especially Saint Agnes.  Agnes died in Rome around 300AD at 13.  She was very beautiful and had many suitors but she had made a vow of lifetime chastity, declaring her love of God overrides any possible earthly attachment.   A high ranking Roman official had her tortured and executed when she refused to renounce God and marry him.  There is a lot of powerful religious imagery in The Dream.

Angelique and a rich very handsome man of great character meet and fall in love to everyone's delight, especially her adoptive parents.  

A beautiful wedding ceremony takes place in this fairy tale like story.  The ending will not come as much of a surprise to Zola readers.

The next novel is The Human Beast.

Mel u

The Earth by Emile Zola (1878, work 15 in The Rougan Macquart Cycle)

The Earth is novel 15 in Emile Zola's grand collection of novels, The Rougon Macquart Cycle.  It focuses on the lives of small farm owners.  There are lots of characters in the novel,at least 100, among them Jean Macquart, son of Antonine Macquart, late of the French Army serving in the  Algerian war and now a farm laborer.   Zola shows us the tremendous love the farmers have for their land.  One of the biggest issues in multi-child families was the division of land upon the death or incapacitation of the parents.  

This being a Zola novel one terrible thing after another happens, from droughts and freezes to crooked financiers.  The Earth gave me a good feel for life on the small French farm.  I cannot really endorse this book as a stand alone work but I do acknowledge it as a central work in the cycle, depicting in Zola's hardcore naturalistic style a very vital part of French society, the farmer.  

Mel u

His Excellency Eugene Rougon by Emile Zola (1876)

His Excellancy Eugene Rougon is novel six of twenty novels in Emile Zola's Rougon Macquart Cycle. The novel centers on Eugene Rougon, son of Pierre and Felicite Rougon who we met in the opening novel, The Fortunes of the Rougon's.  Eugene helped elevate Napolean III to the Emperor and in this laid the foundations for the family wealth.  Much of the novel is devoted to an expose of the gross corruption at the heart of the imperial government.   Everything depended on favoritism and patronage.  It started with the Emperor and went down to the very basic levels of society.  The plot action of the novel turns on Eugene's relationship with a Machavelian Italian seductress, Clorinde.  We follow Eugene as he rises, falls, and rises again in the halls of power.  There are lots of descriptions of the excesses of the royals and their self servicing followers.  

Mel u

Abbe Mourtet's Transgressions by Emile Zola (1875)

Abbé Mouret's Transgression by Emile Zola is the fifth novel in the cycle of twenty in The Rougon Macquart Cycle.  It focuses on Serge Mouret, son of Francois and Martha Mouret.  Serge is the priest for a small French village, few of the people really care about the Catholic Church.   He lives with his mentally challenged sister Desiree.  

This is by far the most lyrical work by Zola I have yet read.   There are very long poetical  descriptions of the lush beauty of the French countryside.  There are lots of village characters described and we get a feel for the economy of the area.

As I read them I did think these descriptions are going on a bit too long but they are powerful and make you feel you are there.  There is a lot of material related to the role of Mary in the lived faith of the peasants.  You can ask her to speak to God for you.  Mary also is a kind of descendent of older Goddesses like Isis.  Serge has taken an oath of celibacy and has disturbing dreams.  His sister Desiree matured in body but not mind tends the animals.  A local Brother (similar to a monk or Christian brother) frequently gives diatribes in which he speaks of all women, including young girls, as sources of sin and talks of wanting to kill young women.  

In reading fiction of other eras, you have to accept a sexual or romantic relationship between twenty six year old men, as Serge was, and a sixteen year old girl is not intrinsically wrong and will not just by the ages be seen as unacceptable.    Serge and a sixteen year old girl fall deeply and passionately in love.  We see the lush vegetative descriptions are setting up lots of Adam and Eve in the Garden connections.  

As I mentioned in a prior post, sex means trouble in the world of The Rougan Marquart Cycle and it is no surprise to see a tragic ending for this novel.  

I am so glad I have undertaken this project.  

Mel u

The Conquest of the Plassans by Emile Zola (1874- translated by Ernest Vizetelly)

The Conquest of the Plassans is book four in Emile Zola's Rougon Marquart Cycle.  (Book three is The Belly of Paris, sometimes translated as The Fat and the Thin, upon which I have previously posted.). It is set in the imaginary French town of Plassans, where the cycle begins.  One of the grand themes of Zola seems to be the long term impact of what he seeks as cogenital mental deficiencies on descendants.  Marriages between cousins were quite common in this period.  Anyone descended from the Marquart side of the family seems doomed to a bad end and to have criminal tendencies and mental health issues.   Some of the descendants, like the daughter in this novel, are developmentally challenged. At the time to have a retarded child was a disgrace and such people were figures of fun.

The lead characters in The Conquest of Plassans are Francois Mouret and Martha Rougan, descended from the Marquart side of the Rougans.  She has a vaguely specified mental illness and is prone to extreme devotion to Catholic priests and what Zola depicts as religious hysteria.  Zola is anti-clerical and few priests, Abbes, come off well.  The Mourets are prosperous enough but still could use more money so the husband decides to lease a room to a priest.  From this terrible mistake the sort of sinister seeming  priest sets in motion a series of events in which he slowly takes control over the people of Plasssns and ends up bringing terrible tragedy down on the family of Francois.

This was an exciting novel. It was quite politically controversial in its time for its extreme negative portrayal of the Catholic Church and it's cleric, depicted as power craving and devoted to their own welfare rather than their flock.  Religious devotion is seen as a form of mental illness almost.

        Ernest Vizetelly

The next novel, Abbé Mouret's Transgressions, also centers on a priest so it will be interesting to see how Zola's attitude toward the church  plays out.  The priest is a son of the couple in today's novel, Serge Mouret.  I know he will manifest the defects of the Marquart line and am looking forward to reading on in the great cycle. 

The Kill by Emile Zola (1871)

The Kill is the second novel in Emile Zola's Rougon Marquart Cycle.  There are three persons of import in The Kill, Aristide Rougon, son of Pierre and Felicite Rougon, his second wife Renne, and the son of his late first wife, Maxime.  The story is now set in Paris.  Pierre has become quite rich through speculating in property and financial instruments.  He always seems,or acts like he is, on the edge of financial ruin.  

In France when an unmarried woman from the gentry got pregnant, there were two alternatives, send her away and figure out what to do with the baby or marry her fast to an acceptable man.   Pierre agrees to marry such a girl, being a widower.  She brings a handsome dowry and has her own property.   Renee is seven years older than her stepson Maxime. To the great relief of Pierre, Renee miscarried so he does not have the burden of a baby.  Much of The Kill, "the kill" is French slang of the time for the part of a hunted animal thrown to the dogs, is taken up in descriptions of conspicuous consumption and elaborate social events.  Maybe everybody in the cycle ends up as the kill.  

Maxime and his stepmother Renee start an affair.  This is very interesting.  Maxime is portrayed as a foppish dandy, nearly adrogenous. Maxime is continually in financial trouble, indulged by Pierre who has his own affairs.   There are lots of complex financial transactions and double deals in The Kill.  It is quite erotic and pretty explicit for a novel of 1871.  Prostituion plays a big part in The Rougon Marquart Cycle.  The very few "good" people in this world seem to be sexual innocents.  Somehow sex equates to corruption, to the fall from Eden.

13 to go.

Mel u

The Fortunes of The Rougons by Emile Zola (1871)

The Fortunes of the Rougons is the lead novel in Emile Zola's twenty novel Rougon Macquart Cycle.  With this novel I have now read six of the twenty.  I will, I hope, be reading the remaining fourteen in publication order.  None of the remaining novels are terribly long so I actually hope to complete this project fairly soon.  (You can find background information on Zola and the cycle in my prior posts on his work.).  The extended family can sort of be divided into three classes, the very poor as seen by the characters in The Dram Shop, the rich such as in novel two The Kill, and the bourgeois who appear in many of the novels.  Most of the lead characters spring from people we meet in The Fortunes of the Rougons.  For example Nana who we first met in The Dram Shop is the granddaughter of Macquart, a very disreputable man possibly involved in banditry. His behavior is way below the standards of decent folk.  From him descend many of the poor people in the cycle.  He was not married to the mother of the child, Madame Rougon.  From her legitimate children come the richer people in the cycle.  In a nature versus nurture breakdown, Zola puts a lot of weight on heredity.   

You can see Zola is working hard to lay the ground work for the whole cycle in this novel.  The action of the novel centers on the impact of an insurrection in December 1851 that helped create the second Empire under Napolean III.  We see how the insurrection changed the fortunes of the members of the Rougon and Macquart families and Zola does a wonderful job of letting us see the terrible violence and atmosphere of fear the insurrection creates in a place where the memories of the Terror are very strong.  If you picked the right side and played your cards right, sucked up to those who will come out on top, your fortunes were made.  Be perceived to pick the wrong side, and you could end up shot.  The struggling middle class Rougons owe their rise (by novel two their children and grandchildren are hyper wealthy) to backing the right side.  The start of the family fortune comes when Mr. Rougon becomes tax receiver.  

There is a lot of romance in the novel.  In 2014 we are not comfortable with great romances between preadolescent girls and considerable older men but I think this was not a source of great outrage in France in 1852.  Zola, like Balzac, is a novelist strongly  focused on money, and it is interesting to see how this impacts relationships in novel.   Zola worked hard laying the foundations of the cycle in this novel.   I think the more one reads on in the cycle, the more Zola's mastery will be evident.  

Standing alone, The Fortunes of the Rougons is a good bit below Zola's most famous works but it is quite exciting and very much worth reading.

I have already begun novel two, The Kill, set among very rich Parisian descendants of the Rougons. 

Please share your experience with Zola with us.

Mel u

The Dram Shop by Emile Zola (1877, L'Assommoir, novel seven in The Rougon Macquart Cycle)

I want  to read all  twenty of the novels in Emile Zola's magnificent Rougon Macquart Cycle.  Inspired by Honore de Balzac's La Comedie Humaine, it is the grand flowering of European Naturalism.  Zola focuses on one extended family in the Second Empire, from 1852 to 1870.  Zola deeply researched everything he wrote about with an objective of showing life as it really was.   I have, including this work, read five of the novels in the cycle, The Belly of Paris (sometimes translated as The Fat and the Thin, set in the giant food market of Paris- food a very big element in Zola- he can make you feel stuffed and starving, Nana, a really great novel centering on a prostitute, in fact we see her childhood in The Dram Shop, The Ladies Paradise, set in a giant Paris department store, and his novel about the lives of coal miners, Germinal, considered by many his best work. This leaves 15 novels to go.  They are not overall as long as a Dickens or Tropllope novel so I hope to complete this project by July 2015, maybe much sooner.

The Dram Shop is a very powerful, almost brutal at times,depiction of the terrible impact of alcoholism on a family and the poor of Paris.  The story focuses on a woman we first meet when she is in her teens, with two illegitimate children.  She had the first child at 14.   She works in a huge laundry.  Zola does a wonderful job of letting us see, feel, and smell just what it was like to work there.  It was terribly hot and noisy, the washerwomen were all in each other's  business.  In a just a totally brilliant section the woman gets into a terrible fight! inside the laundry with another woman she thinks  is having an affair with her man.  The fight is incredibly vicious and lasts a long time. It was totally cinematic.  

The woman is deserted by  the father of her children but soon ends up marrying another man.  His family looks down on her and does not want her in the family.  The wedding dinner was a lot of fun and a big group visit to the Louvre is hilarious.   All of the thirteen chapters have exciting incidents. At first things go well, in a few years the woman opens her own laundry shop and starts out doing well. The great feast in the laundry is just a tremendous pleasure to read.  It is a bit chaotic with her in laws there, her old rival now good friend, drinking companions of her husband, the women that work for her and some neighbors.  A lot happens in the novel, sometimes years go by between chapters.

There is constant spousal and child abuse, much as a direct result of drunkeness,  some of the saddest scenes I have read in a long time.  One man kills his wife by kicking her.  His eight year old daughter takes over as mother to her two younger siblings.  The man gets a horse whip just so he can beat her with it then blames the girl for requiring him to buy a whip and beats her for that.  The laundry has a mentally challenged woman working there and the owner slaps her for being slow.   Women commonly go to their spouses jobs on pay day to prevent it all being spent in a dram shop.  

After a few good years, things go from worse to horrible for the woman.  She also becomes an alcoholic.  We see her daughter Nana drawn to the streets for excitement, money, and to get away.  At fifteen  she has begun to catch the attention of older men. Her father constantly abuses her and calls her a whore.   In one desperate scene, the woman, now in her forties and very heavy, walks the streets to sell herself but can find no takers.  

There is a lot of drama in the novel.  I really enjoyed reading  it.  I read this in the Delphi Edition of The Complete Zola.  No translator credit is given and the dialogue is at times seems silly  with expressions like "Yikes, what a villain" to me in 2014 but no big deal.  The characters are very well realized.  

All in all a very powerful work. 

Mel u

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The Ladies Paradise by Emile Zola (1883)

This is my third year as a participant in the Paris in July Reading Event hosted by Book Bath and Thyme for Tea.   I find this a very interesting and creative event of the sort that helps build the book blog community.  You will find  lots of reading ideas on the host blogs.  I am greatly enjoying participating in this event.  It has motivated me to revisit the work of some of the true giants of European literature, Marcel Proust, Guy de Maupassant, Colette, Alfred Jarry,   Andre Gide, Honore Balzac ,Zola and Dumas. We visited also had visits from Edgar Allan Poe, Katherine Mansfield, The Marquis de Sade and Irene Nemirovsky.  

The Ladies Paradise is an account of life in a giant department store in Paris in the late 19th century.  It is not on the level of Nana and Germinal but I greatly enjoyed reading it.  

The best part of the novel, and it was quite brilliant, was Zola's account of how the department store functioned.  We see how the employees are treated as it grows from a few dozen employees to several thousand. We see how their viciously competitive policies drive many small businesses under.  Zola researched his novels very carefully and there is a lot to be learned about retail in Paris from this novel.  

The weakness in this novel is in the human characters.  The central figure is a heart of gold country girl, Denise, who starts out with the lowest status of jobs in the store.  We see the nasty way other employees treat her.  Many of the employees live in the store dormitory and all take meals there.  Everything is strictly regulated. There are inspectors whose job is to watch over employees to prevent theft and make sure no rules are violated.  The store is a hot bed of gossip. Sales days bring mob scenes and the chaos is exciting.  We learn about life among the ordinary employees, they can and are dismissed without notice at the whim of a superior and we learn about the store owner who has a history as a sexual predator among the female employees.   He develops an infatuation for Denise.  Most who have posted on this novel have said the romance is the weakest part of the book and I agree.  

I would suggest one read Zola's more famous books first.  Then I can see The Ladies Paradise as a good Zola novel.  The BBC recently produced a drama based on it I hope to see someday. 

I hope to post on a short story by Anatole France tomorrow.

Mel u

"The Boot Polishing Virgin" by Emile Zola (from Parisian Sketches, 1880)

Emile Zola is among the greats of European literature.   My favorite, of the four of his many novels I have read, is Nana.     There are twenty novels in his monumental saga of French life, The Rougen Macquart Cycle.  I think a reading of these novels in publication order would be a great reading experience.  I could not let Paris in July come to an end without posting on a story by Zola.  (You can buy for $2.99 an  e book  English edition of the complete works of Zola). 

"The Boot Licking Virgin", taken from a set of four set in Paris short stories, Parisian Sketches, is pretty much a near for its time r rated account of an man raving on to himself about how one of his young female  household staff looks  when she is sleeping.  His first focus of attention is on her "large alabaster bust" which he can glimpse a bit.   The desired female body type, we see this in other writers of 19th century France, was heavier than today and she is described as "plump".  At the end of the story a conversation between the man and the young woman makes me wonder if she is still a virgin.  One of her duties was to polish the boots of the household.   The ending is interesting.  There are no innocents in Zola's Paris.  

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I enjoyed this story for the same reasons its first readers probably did.  Zola has much better work than this O. Henryist story, but it was fun to read.  I think the next Zola novel I read will be The Ladies Paradise, set in  a Paris department store. 

This is my third year as a participant in the Paris in July Reading Event hosted by Book Bath and Thyme for Tea.   I find this a very interesting and creative event of the sort that helps build the book blog community.  You will find  lots of reading ideas on the host blogs.  I am greatly enjoying participating in this event.  It has motivated me to revisit the work of some of the true giants of European literature, Marcel Proust, Guy de Maupassant, Andre Gide, Honore Balzac and today Zola.  I plan to next post on a short story by Anatole France.

Mel u

Germinal by Emile Zola

Germinal by Emile Zola (1885, 582 pages, translated by Havelock Ellis)

Emile Zola

 1840 to 1902

Prior to today I have posted on three of Emile Zola's novels and two short stories.    In order of my personal preference I have read Nana, The Belly of Paris and Therese Raquin.    Germinal is considered by many to be Zola's masterwork.  It is the thirteenth novel in his twenty cycle set of novels, Les Rougon-Macquart in which he attempts to set out the full of life in France in the 1880s.   Zola is considered one of the greatest realistic writers in the European tradition.  By realism one means that all people are terrible and life is horrible, over simplifying a trifle.   Zola was a very important influence on George Moore, who changed the direction of Irish fiction after reading Zola.   Zola through Moore turned the Irish away from the stories in the mode of Tales of an Irish R. M. to an attempt to write about the lives of ordinary people.   This probably would have happened anyway but this is how it happened.

Germinal is a an oppressive and I would have to say depressing novel with its unremitting focus on the lives of French coal miners and the misery caused by a strike.

The coal miners and their families have terrible lives.   There is very little pleasure in this book.   It is set in northern France in the 1860s.  The title refers to a month in the French Republican Calendar, in the spring.   The central character is a young man named Etienne.   He shows up looking for a job at the coal mines one day.   He befriends a veteran miner who gets him a job and finds him a place to stay.  (Wikipedia has a decent account of the plot if you need one for your homework).   

This is a great book though I would not say it is a pleasure to read it.   Zola relates the misery of the men and women working in the mines to the wealthy mine owners pursuit of status items and their vice.   There is a lot of sex in the novel also, I admit I never knew there were women working along side men in the save mines.  My translation is an old public domain one and I suspect it maybe slightly censored from the French original.   

Based on my limited experience with Zola, I would say personally first read Nana then Germinal.  I will read more of his work in 2013.   His full cycle of novels would be a great reading project.

Please share your experience with Zola with us.

Is he just too grim?   what should be my fifth Zola?

Mel u
The Reading Life

"The Flood" by Emile Zola

"The Flood" by Emile Zola (1877, 8 pages)

Manila August 7, 2012

In light of the recent floods in Manila, A Simple Clockwork and I have decided we would both read and post on Emile Zola's (1840 to 1902, Paris, France) famous short story, "The Flood".   I have previously posted on two of his novels, Nana and The Belly of Paris.   Zola is an incredibly powerful writer known for his very realistic novels depicting man at his most base level.

"The Flood" begins by telling us about the wonderful life a hardworking French farmer has made for himself and his family by working his land.   He takes great pride in his large family all of whom live in comfort with him.   The story opens at a family dinner and Zola does a wonderful job of letting us see how the work of the man has paid of for him.  We also feel a sense of almost hubris in his feeling of security.  "The Flood" does not need a lot of explanation, you do not at all need someone to explain it to you.   

As the story continues the rain has been coming down for a long time.  People are worried that the river may rise and flood the farms near it.   The man says people always say the river will rise and flood them out but it never does.   He assures his worried family they have nothing to worry about.   Of  course we know he is wrong but Zola does such a great job describing the terror and destruction brought on by the rising water that every event is still shocking and terrible.   This is a story of the power of nature and perhaps of the folly of arrogance it the face of its wrath.  

This story really should be read by anyone who has ever been in or seen images of floods.   It totally invokes the horrible fear rising waters can bring.   

"The Flood" can be read online HERE

I am reading this story as my participation in Short Stories on Wednesday.

Do you know of other short stories or novels centering around floods?

Mel u