17 - Émile Zola (1840–1902): Naturalism

Summary

‘Naturalism’ was the dominant mode of the French novel in the late nineteenth century. The writer who played the pre-eminent role in its development was Émile Zola. At the heart of Zola's naturalism is a concern with integrity of representation. For Zola, this meant a commitment to the idea that literature has a social function: to engage with the ‘order of the day’ through a representation of the sorts of things that concerned people on a daily basis in their social and individual lives. Industrialisation, the growth of the cities, the birth of consumer culture, the condition of the working class, crime, prostitution, the follies and misdeeds of government – these were the issues that concerned Zola. And he wrote about them not simply forensically, as a would-be scientist, but subversively, ironically, satirically. As a body of literature, naturalist fiction represents a major assault on bourgeois morality and institutions. It takes an unmitigated delight – while also seeing the process as a serious duty – in revealing the vice and corruption behind the respectable facade. The last line of his novel Le Ventre de Paris (The Belly of Paris) is: ‘Respectable people … What bastards!’ The shock factor of naturalist texts can be measured by the vehemence of Establishment critics' attacks on Zola and his work. These attacks were usually made on moral and aesthetic grounds. Zola was accused of sensationalism, immorality and intellectual and stylistic crudity. But in reality, the accusations reveal a political dimension: Zola’s work provoked a great deal of reactionary fear among his bourgeois readers and critics.