The Fortune of the Rougons

What It's About

In the small southern French town of Plassans, the ambitious Pierre Rougon and his wife Félicité scheme to turn the political chaos of December 1851 to their advantage, as Louis-Napoléon Bonaparte's coup d'état spreads from Paris to the provinces. Around them are the rest of the family, including their matriarch Adélaïde Fouque (known as Tante Dide) and her illegitimate Macquart descendants. Set against their manoeuvring is the doomed idealism of Silvère, a young republican, and Miette, the girl he loves. This is the opening volume of Zola's twenty-novel Rougon-Macquart cycle, and it is a sharp, often bitter portrait of small-town opportunism.

Key Concepts

Zola uses the novel to lay out the premise of the whole cycle: that heredity and environment shape a family across generations, an idea he treated as quasi-scientific. The book also satirises political opportunism, showing how those with the least principle can profit most from a regime change. Class resentment, greed and the gap between republican ideals and cynical self-interest run throughout. Readers sometimes find the novel uneven compared with later entries in the cycle, as Zola was still refining his method, but its political satire remains effective.

About the Author

Émile Zola (1840–1902) was a French novelist and journalist, and the leading figure of the Naturalist movement in literature. Raised in Aix-en-Provence, he worked in publishing and journalism in Paris before establishing himself as a writer. He was also a prominent public intellectual, and is remembered for his open letter defending Alfred Dreyfus.

About This Edition

This is an 1886 translation by Ernest Alfred Vizetelly.