Our book for May is one of the set texts for the Open University’s AA316 module, The Nineteenth-Century Novel. Emile Zola’s Germinal was published during 1884-5, but it was actually the thirteenth in a series of twenty novels. The sequence studied the effects of heredity and environment upon two branches of a family, the Rougons and the Macquarts.

Zola is particularly associated with the literary movement of Naturalism. Novelists of this school approached their writing like scientists conducting experiments. The authors were supposed to observe life dispassionately, focusing on the conditions that determine an individual’s character, but this was easier to define in theory than to carry out in practice! Germinal is a powerful piece of work, that evokes a strong emotional reaction in readers.

After the French Revolution, ‘Germinal’ was the name given to the month of April. Zola’s novel, not surprisingly, is about the need for social change. It is set in the years 1866-7, a period of economic crisis in France. Unemployment rates were high, and many working-class people were impoverished.

The story concerns a community of miners, who exist in a state of extreme hunger and deprivation. Their entire lives are governed by the mine: it is described as a sinister, voracious beast, with the workers as sacrificial victims.

Class antagonism grows out of their suffering, because the people have to fight for their very existence. However, Zola does not set out to denounce their employers; instead he conveys the complexity of the general situation.

Do read ‘Germinal’: it’s unforgettable!

Content last updated: 18/04/2006

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