EMILE ZOLA - 20 BOOK SAGA (look for this at book exchange or thrift place off i95belletair
EMILE ZOLA - 20 book saga
The Fortune of the Rougons
is the first book of Emile Zola's Rougon-Macquart cycle of novels centering on the Rougons and Macquart family. The book centers around the 1848 revelation in France, and introduces us to a family of characters of varying dispositions, many of whom hope to gain power and privilege through backing one side or the other in the revolution. The brilliance of this novel is in its ability to show us all types of people and what makes us who we are. Some of us are social climbers who will stop at anything to get by, such as Pierre in the novel. Others of us are true believers who are willing to fight for love or a cause, such as Silvere in the novel. Others are more interested in inward interests such as delving further into our chosen fields of study, such as Pascal in the novel. Yet others, such as Felicite, are not willing to risk much to achieve our goals, but we are more than willing to manipulate others into achieving those goals for us. In portraying this plethora of characters in such a realistic way, Zola manages to show us who we are in a believable and enlightening way. ( )
The Fortune of the Rougons was both the first book written and the first in internal chronology of Zola's 20-volume Rougon-Macquart cycle. It tells of the origins of the Rougon and Macquart families, as well as the beginnings of France's Second Empire in 1851.The novel begins with the late-night secret rendezvous of two teenage lovers in a secluded cemetery. Silvère, a 17-year-old apprentice coachmaker, has come to take a final stroll with 13-year-old Miette before he leaves to join the insurgents who are protesting the coup d'état in which Louis Napoleon has overthrown the French republic and proclaimed himself emperor. Zola uses their languorous and reluctant walk in the winter moonlight to describe at length the town of Plassans, its people and its surroundings. (Plassans is based on Aix-en-Provence.) Much to their surprise and delight, when they have strayed several miles from Plassans, the two children encounter the very column of republicans whom Silvère has planned to join. Armed with scythes, pitchforks and a few ancient muskets, they march together, singing the Marseilles, into Plassans. Zola now digresses to give a lengthy history of the family of Adélaïde Fouque, a woman given to strange attacks of the nerves and to unconventional behavior. Inheriting her father's substantial farm, Adélaïde suprises Plassans by marrying a simple peasant named Rougon. She gives him one son, Pierre, before Rougon dies. Adélaïde then begins an affair with a smuggler named Macquart and gives birth to two illegitimate children before Macquart is killed. This sets up a conflict between the two lines: the Rougons: legitimate but somewhat tainted, grasping for wealth and bourgeois respectability; and the Macquarts: passionate and impulsive, nursing a bitterness not only against the legitimate Rougons but against all authority. They and their descendants will people all twenty of the Rougon-Macquart novels, a series which chronicles in parallel the crimes and foibles of the Second Empire.Returning to the present we find the Rougons and the Macquarts on opposite sides of the political divide. Pierre Rougon has sided with the reactionaries and is scheming to use the uprising to serve his personal ambitions. Silvère, a descendant of the Macquart line, has, of course, joined the peasants and laborers who will strive in vain to restore the Republic. The contrast between the two leaves no doubt where Zola's sympathies lay.But Zola's stated purpose in writing The Fortune of the Rougons and its sequels is to study human personality and behavior as it is shaped by two factors: heredity and environment. He doesn't describe his characters as "good" or "evil," but rather as the inevitable end result of the factors that went into their making. Zola's notions of human psychology and heredity are both archaic and simplistic by modern standards, but this detracts very little from the value of the novel."For a moment he thought he could see, in a flash, the future of the Rougon-Macquart family, a pack of wild, satiated appetites in the midst of a blaze of gold and blood." With this teaser, Zola gives us a foretaste of the Rougon-Macquart novels he had yet to write. The Fortune of the Rougons serves as both a standalone novel and as an introduction to what is to come. Zola does introduce a number of characters who will become significant only in later volumes, and his true masterpieces were yet to come, but The Fortune of the Rougons is worthwhile on its own. ( )
As the first in Zola's 20-book Rougon-Macquart series, the role of this novel is to set the stage, to introduce the family, to explain the rationale, and to highlight the events that started the Second Empire. Zola has several goals in this series: to show the importance of heredity and its interaction with environment; to depict the particular characteristics of the successful, legitimate, Rougon side of the family and the unsuccessful, illegitimate Macquart side; and to illustrate the social system of the Second Empire.I am glad I read Germinal and L'Assommoir before I read this book, because they show Zola at his best: the fully developed characters, the intimacy of their lives matched by the breadth of their world, the vivid details of the environment (be it coal mining or the slums), the satire, and the compelling story telling. While these can be found in places in this book, Zola gets a little bogged down in setting the stage for the whole series (lots of background information on the two main lines of the family) and goes a little overboard in showing the development of friendship and love between the teenagers Miette and Silvère, both of whom have had difficult childhoods. Additionally, Zola's view of heredity, as explained in this book, is seriously flawed by modern standards, although perhaps novel for its time.Nonetheless, I enjoyed this book, which takes place over a week or so during the 1851 coup in which Napoleon's nephew took over the government in Paris fairly bloodlessly while republican resistance took place in the south and elsewhere. The teenagers get wrapped up in the resistance, while Silvère's uncle, Pierre Rougon, and his wife, scheme for greater power, even while fighting their continuing battle against Pierre's half-brother Antoine, one of the founders of the Macquart side of the family. The story of the scheming, and the satiric look at the reactionary cabal, are priceless. I appreciate the understanding I got of the structure of the family (helped by a family tree at the beginning of the edition I read), and I will definitely be reading more Zola.
Zola, basing himself on the works of thinkers of his time, including Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, believed that heredity and environment were the two most important factors in determining the course of a person's life. He set out to demonstrate this theory in the 20-novel Rougon-Macquart series subtitled The Natural and social history of a family during the Second Empire, which examines the lives of five generations of the respectable (and legitimate) Rougon branch and of the dissolute (and illegitimate) Macquarts. As preparation for this huge undertaking, he first charted out an elaborate family tree as depicted below. La Fortune des Rougons, the first novel, establishes the origins of the two clans and presents a vast cast of characters, of which several will figure as leading protagonists in consecutive novels. The story opens on the clandestine meeting of two virginal young lovers, Miette and Silvère, just outside the fictional Provençal town of Plassans, relating their love story leading up to this night—the eve of the 1851 coup d'état—during which Napoleon III came into power, the events of the day forming the central motif of the novel. The two idealistic adolescents are about to join a vast gathering of republicans to storm Plassans and nearby towns along the way to Paris, on a doomed journey to oppose the coup. Plassans is also the hometown of Silvère's grandmother Adelaide Fouque, commonly known as Tante Dide, the matriarch of the Rougon-Macquart dynasty. She is an eccentric and a pariah who, after losing her husband the late Rougon, who fathered her only legitimate child Pierre, then takes up with the notorious alcoholic and trafficker Macquart, a union from which two more illegitimate children are born. We follow the progress of Pierre Rougon, while he takes his first steps as a young man to secure the family fortune by conning his mother out of her ancestral home and property and taking away his siblings' inheritance. Pierre Rougon and his wife Felicity see their limited fortune spent away on their children and floundering business and all the while, Pierre's half-brother Antoine Macquart continually harangues the Rougons for money as compensation for begin cheated out of his legacy. Much like his father, Antoine is a profoundly lazy man who contrives to marry a hard-working woman and sponge off her and his children while claiming to have republican ideals. The Rougons, after decades of vain struggles, finally seize their opportunity on this night in 1851, putting in place a series of Machiavellian schemes involving Antoine, and putting the lives of men on the line to finally come into wealth and power, all the while playing power games among themselves to determine who will have the upper hand in this old couple. A fascinating read and a very promising start to a great literary saga.
The Fortune of the Rougons
is the first book of Emile Zola's Rougon-Macquart cycle of novels centering on the Rougons and Macquart family. The book centers around the 1848 revelation in France, and introduces us to a family of characters of varying dispositions, many of whom hope to gain power and privilege through backing one side or the other in the revolution. The brilliance of this novel is in its ability to show us all types of people and what makes us who we are. Some of us are social climbers who will stop at anything to get by, such as Pierre in the novel. Others of us are true believers who are willing to fight for love or a cause, such as Silvere in the novel. Others are more interested in inward interests such as delving further into our chosen fields of study, such as Pascal in the novel. Yet others, such as Felicite, are not willing to risk much to achieve our goals, but we are more than willing to manipulate others into achieving those goals for us. In portraying this plethora of characters in such a realistic way, Zola manages to show us who we are in a believable and enlightening way. ( )
The Fortune of the Rougons was both the first book written and the first in internal chronology of Zola's 20-volume Rougon-Macquart cycle. It tells of the origins of the Rougon and Macquart families, as well as the beginnings of France's Second Empire in 1851.The novel begins with the late-night secret rendezvous of two teenage lovers in a secluded cemetery. Silvère, a 17-year-old apprentice coachmaker, has come to take a final stroll with 13-year-old Miette before he leaves to join the insurgents who are protesting the coup d'état in which Louis Napoleon has overthrown the French republic and proclaimed himself emperor. Zola uses their languorous and reluctant walk in the winter moonlight to describe at length the town of Plassans, its people and its surroundings. (Plassans is based on Aix-en-Provence.) Much to their surprise and delight, when they have strayed several miles from Plassans, the two children encounter the very column of republicans whom Silvère has planned to join. Armed with scythes, pitchforks and a few ancient muskets, they march together, singing the Marseilles, into Plassans. Zola now digresses to give a lengthy history of the family of Adélaïde Fouque, a woman given to strange attacks of the nerves and to unconventional behavior. Inheriting her father's substantial farm, Adélaïde suprises Plassans by marrying a simple peasant named Rougon. She gives him one son, Pierre, before Rougon dies. Adélaïde then begins an affair with a smuggler named Macquart and gives birth to two illegitimate children before Macquart is killed. This sets up a conflict between the two lines: the Rougons: legitimate but somewhat tainted, grasping for wealth and bourgeois respectability; and the Macquarts: passionate and impulsive, nursing a bitterness not only against the legitimate Rougons but against all authority. They and their descendants will people all twenty of the Rougon-Macquart novels, a series which chronicles in parallel the crimes and foibles of the Second Empire.Returning to the present we find the Rougons and the Macquarts on opposite sides of the political divide. Pierre Rougon has sided with the reactionaries and is scheming to use the uprising to serve his personal ambitions. Silvère, a descendant of the Macquart line, has, of course, joined the peasants and laborers who will strive in vain to restore the Republic. The contrast between the two leaves no doubt where Zola's sympathies lay.But Zola's stated purpose in writing The Fortune of the Rougons and its sequels is to study human personality and behavior as it is shaped by two factors: heredity and environment. He doesn't describe his characters as "good" or "evil," but rather as the inevitable end result of the factors that went into their making. Zola's notions of human psychology and heredity are both archaic and simplistic by modern standards, but this detracts very little from the value of the novel."For a moment he thought he could see, in a flash, the future of the Rougon-Macquart family, a pack of wild, satiated appetites in the midst of a blaze of gold and blood." With this teaser, Zola gives us a foretaste of the Rougon-Macquart novels he had yet to write. The Fortune of the Rougons serves as both a standalone novel and as an introduction to what is to come. Zola does introduce a number of characters who will become significant only in later volumes, and his true masterpieces were yet to come, but The Fortune of the Rougons is worthwhile on its own. ( )
As the first in Zola's 20-book Rougon-Macquart series, the role of this novel is to set the stage, to introduce the family, to explain the rationale, and to highlight the events that started the Second Empire. Zola has several goals in this series: to show the importance of heredity and its interaction with environment; to depict the particular characteristics of the successful, legitimate, Rougon side of the family and the unsuccessful, illegitimate Macquart side; and to illustrate the social system of the Second Empire.I am glad I read Germinal and L'Assommoir before I read this book, because they show Zola at his best: the fully developed characters, the intimacy of their lives matched by the breadth of their world, the vivid details of the environment (be it coal mining or the slums), the satire, and the compelling story telling. While these can be found in places in this book, Zola gets a little bogged down in setting the stage for the whole series (lots of background information on the two main lines of the family) and goes a little overboard in showing the development of friendship and love between the teenagers Miette and Silvère, both of whom have had difficult childhoods. Additionally, Zola's view of heredity, as explained in this book, is seriously flawed by modern standards, although perhaps novel for its time.Nonetheless, I enjoyed this book, which takes place over a week or so during the 1851 coup in which Napoleon's nephew took over the government in Paris fairly bloodlessly while republican resistance took place in the south and elsewhere. The teenagers get wrapped up in the resistance, while Silvère's uncle, Pierre Rougon, and his wife, scheme for greater power, even while fighting their continuing battle against Pierre's half-brother Antoine, one of the founders of the Macquart side of the family. The story of the scheming, and the satiric look at the reactionary cabal, are priceless. I appreciate the understanding I got of the structure of the family (helped by a family tree at the beginning of the edition I read), and I will definitely be reading more Zola.
Zola, basing himself on the works of thinkers of his time, including Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, believed that heredity and environment were the two most important factors in determining the course of a person's life. He set out to demonstrate this theory in the 20-novel Rougon-Macquart series subtitled The Natural and social history of a family during the Second Empire, which examines the lives of five generations of the respectable (and legitimate) Rougon branch and of the dissolute (and illegitimate) Macquarts. As preparation for this huge undertaking, he first charted out an elaborate family tree as depicted below. La Fortune des Rougons, the first novel, establishes the origins of the two clans and presents a vast cast of characters, of which several will figure as leading protagonists in consecutive novels. The story opens on the clandestine meeting of two virginal young lovers, Miette and Silvère, just outside the fictional Provençal town of Plassans, relating their love story leading up to this night—the eve of the 1851 coup d'état—during which Napoleon III came into power, the events of the day forming the central motif of the novel. The two idealistic adolescents are about to join a vast gathering of republicans to storm Plassans and nearby towns along the way to Paris, on a doomed journey to oppose the coup. Plassans is also the hometown of Silvère's grandmother Adelaide Fouque, commonly known as Tante Dide, the matriarch of the Rougon-Macquart dynasty. She is an eccentric and a pariah who, after losing her husband the late Rougon, who fathered her only legitimate child Pierre, then takes up with the notorious alcoholic and trafficker Macquart, a union from which two more illegitimate children are born. We follow the progress of Pierre Rougon, while he takes his first steps as a young man to secure the family fortune by conning his mother out of her ancestral home and property and taking away his siblings' inheritance. Pierre Rougon and his wife Felicity see their limited fortune spent away on their children and floundering business and all the while, Pierre's half-brother Antoine Macquart continually harangues the Rougons for money as compensation for begin cheated out of his legacy. Much like his father, Antoine is a profoundly lazy man who contrives to marry a hard-working woman and sponge off her and his children while claiming to have republican ideals. The Rougons, after decades of vain struggles, finally seize their opportunity on this night in 1851, putting in place a series of Machiavellian schemes involving Antoine, and putting the lives of men on the line to finally come into wealth and power, all the while playing power games among themselves to determine who will have the upper hand in this old couple. A fascinating read and a very promising start to a great literary saga.
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