- Summary
- In the preface to this novel Zola explains his theories
of heredity, and the work itself forms the introductory
chapter to that great series which deals with the life
history of a family and its descendants during
the French Second Empire.
The common ancestress of the Rougons and the Macquarts
was Adelaide Fouque, a girl who from youth had been subject
to nervous seizures. From her father she inherited
a small farm, and at the age of eighteen married one
of her own labourers, a man named Rougon, who died fifteen
months afterwards, leaving her with one son, named Pierre.
Shortly after her husband's death she fell completely
under the influence of Macquart, a drunken smuggler
and poacher, by whom in course of time she had a son
named Antoine and a daughter named Ursule. She became
more and more subject to cataleptic attacks,
until eventually her mind was completely unhinged.
Pierre Rougon, her legitimate son, was a man
of strong will inherited from his father, and
saw that his mother's property was being squandered
by the Macquarts. By means approximating to fraud
he induced his mother, who was then facile, to
sell her property and hand over the proceeds to him.
Soon after he married Felicite Peuch, a woman
of great shrewdness and keen intelligence, by whom
he had three sons (Eugene, Aristide, and Pascal)
and two daughters (Marthe and Sidonie).
Pierre Rougon was not particularly prosperous,
but his eldest son, Eugene, went to Paris and
became mixed up in the Bonapartist plots which led
to the Coup d'Etat/ of 1851. He was consequently able
to give his parents early information as
to the probable course of events, and the result of
their action was to lay the foundations of the family fortune.
- Commentary
- A lengthy, confusing book that sets the stage
for the entire series by describing a period of
insurrection, revolutionary movement, and violent
clashes that results in the establishment of the
French Second Empire.
Inspite of its limitations, Fortunes shows Zola
creating "high drama around the opposition between
individual and mass, between the separated tenants of
chambered space and a throng driven by some instinctual force
that obliterates boundaries, taboos, families."
(from Frederick Brown. Zola A Life.
Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996.)
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