Basically, Fortune interweaves three stories into
one frame:
1. The
origin of the Rougon-Macquart family.
2. The
historical account of the birth of Second French Empire.
3. The
innocent love story of Silvère and Miette.
Published in
1871, Fortune takes place in a
provincial town of Plassans. Adelaide Foque aka Tante Dide is an orphan girl of
a merchant - a queer, nervous, imbalanced, passionate girl. She married the
family gardener, the coarse, vulgar Rougon, and had a son: Pierre. However, she
also had a lover, a drunkard good-for-nothing poacher: Macquart. Soon her
husband and lover died, leaving her with Pierre and two illegitimate offsprings
from Macquart: Antoine and Ursule.
Pierre is
the perfect combination of his mother and father: crafty, ambitious, with
insatiable desire. He married a local merchant daughter (though rumor has it
she's an illegitimate daughter of a Marquis) Felicité Puech - intelligent, full
of intrigue, envious, and ambitious. They had three sons: Eugène, Pascal, and
Aristide. When their oil business didn't give them the wealth and respect they
badly craved, they were full of bitterness.
In 1851, the
Rougons, in the last attempt to gain respect, opened their yellow drawing room
to some merchants and dealers to have meetings and discuss politics. These
local conservative bourgeoisies secretly supported the monarchy as they're
afraid of losing their privilege against the working class, if France continued
to be led by the Republican. When the eldest son Eugène Rougon sent his parents
reports about the upcoming coup d'état, Pierre & Felicité saw a brilliant
way to gain fast fortune.
Antoine
Macquart is almost a duplicate of his father - lazy, cowardly, alcoholic,
egoist, hypocrite; while from his mother, he inherited very little - lack of
discipline, and insatiable desire for pleasure and comfort. He married a
hardworking and alcoholic woman, Fine, and they had three children: Lisa,
Gervaise, Jean. Besides heredity influence, Zola also believed that guilty sex
produces faulty behaviour in subsequent generations. The strongest result is in
Antoine Macquart's family. Gervaise - we would follow her faith later in L'Assommoir - but here we get a glimpse
of how she was brought up literally with drinks and by her drunkard parents.
She was conceived when her parents were drunk, resulting to a delicate feature
and a liking of drinks.
Ursule
Macquart inherited more from her mother, than her father. She is shy,
whimsical, melancholy, with sudden changes of nervous laughter and dreaminess.
She married a respectable hatter: Mouret, and they had three children:
François, Hélène, and Silvère. After Ursule died of consumption, Silvère lived
with Tante Dide.
Fortune opens with the story of Silvère
and his sweetheart, a very young girl called Miette. Theirs is an innocent
relationship, almost childish. It was on the night of December 1st, 1851 - the
night of the coup d'état. Together with Miette, Silvère, full of idealistic
(more of a nervous hysteria, actually - inheritance from grandma Dide!) views
of Republican, joined a group of insurgents which was marching towards
Plassans. Fortune could be viewed as a miniature of the recorded history about
the coup d'état. Louis Phillippe staged the coup; just as the Rougons, according
to Eugène's secret letters, staged Pierre's heroic salvation of the city. And
just as the bloody origins of the Second Empire, so did the fortune of the
Rougons was paid for in blood.
As usual
with Zola, Fortune is full of
metaphors. In fact you would be surprised with how often the word
"blood" or something represents it (red color in the flag carried by
Miette and Miette's coat, for instance) surfaced from the entire story,
especially near the end. The most obvious one is when Pierre and Felicité was
in bed after planning their own "coup":
"They kissed each other gain and fell asleep. The patch of light on the ceiling now seems to be assuming the shape of a terrified eye, staring unblinking at the pale, slumbering couple, who now reeked of crime under their sheets, and were dreaming that they could see blood raining down in big drops and turning into gold coins as they landed on the floor."
Even Pascal,
the naturalist self of Zola "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."
Another less
obvious metaphor is how Zola described the cycle of life using "the
door" built by Macquart the poacher to smoothen his adultery with Tante
Dide. Dide has closed it after Macquart's death, but later on Silvére and
Miette found and opened it once again for similar purpose, though theirs are
pure and innocent. It represents how each generation was condemned to repeat
the actions of the former. Here is a tinge of the determinism views not
uncommon in 19th century.
But the last
paragraph (my favorite) is the strongest of all, where Zola stroke his hammer
for the last time with all his might:
"But the strip of pink satin fastened to Pierre's buttonhole was not the only splash of red marked the triumph of the Rougons. A shoe with a bloodstained heel lay forgotten under the bed in the next room. The candle burning at Monsieur Peirotte's bedside, on the opposite side of the street, shone in the darkness with the lurid redness of an open wound. And far away, in the depths of the Aire Saint Mittre, a pool of blood was congealing on a tombstone."
Another
metaphor of cycle of life I found in the third paragraph of Chapter 1 - the
cemetery:
"In 1851 the old people of Plassans could still remember having seen the walls of the cemetery when they were still standing, though the place had been shut for years. The earth, gorged with corpses for over a century, exuded death... The abandoned cemetery had then gone through a process of purification every spring by covering itself with thick, lack vegetation.... After the May r rains and the June sunshine, the tallest weeds sprouted higher than the walls and could be seen as far away as the main road; while inside the place seemed like a deep, dark green sea bestrewn with big, strangely colored flowers. Underfoot, between the mass of stems, you could feel the damp soil bubbling and oozing with sap."
Life ends in
death, and sometimes, death is needed to get a new life on top of it. So Zola
opened the book with new life germinating from a cemetery - could the cemetery
interpreted to be the dead of First Empire (after February Revolution in 1848)?
Then the new stems should be the present Second Republic. Or is it the Republic
that is dying, and the new life oozing from the damp soil is the germinating of
the Second Empire? Either way, as with all Zola's novels, there's always hope
and regeneration after each death.
In his
preface Zola mentioned that Fortune,
as the first of twenty novels, "could bear the scientific title Origins.”
And with such a great origin, it's no wonder that The Rougon-Macquart turned
out to be an epic tale of a disordered family during Second Empire of France.
Or is it because I have read all the novels (except Doctor Pascal) that I can regard Fortune as great? It's true that
when I first read it, I didn't see something special. It is true then what I
have mentioned in the beginning, Fortune
becomes great because it's an 'origins'. Hence, the title 'cycle' which we put
to The Rougon Macquart. Bravo Zola!
Rating: 5 to
5
Hi Fanda, I really enjoyed your review above, and applaud you for the knowledge and research that went into it. My own take is that The Fortune of The Rougons is a 5 star book, regardless of the novels that followed. It was the first Rougon-Macquart novel I read so I had no expectations or comparisons to judge it against at the time.
ReplyDeleteThe origin story and the story set at the time of the coup is built and told so well, that for me, the novel stands up well on it's own 2 feet. The interactions of the Rougons and Macquarts, and each character's drives and intentions, is played out here much more than any later novel, and this novel shines because of it. I love the characters of Pierre, Felicite and Antoine, it's a shame they don't have their individual novels. So the novel has many strengths, and I really did enjoy it, and I'm saying that in the context of currently reading The Kill (which Zola wrote directly afterwards) which to be honest I'm struggling with that one a bit. Again though, great review, you did the novel proud.
Hi Pete, thank you, it's so nice of you.
DeleteYou're right, I enjoyed Pierre & Felicite's line of story very much, but I hated Macquart (Antoine). I feel that Zola developed the characters deeper in this book than in others.
I'd read The Kill next, for Zoladdiction. Hopefully I'd enjoy it as much as my first read. And good luck to your reading too! :)
Wow, that's a great, thorough review! I've read during Fall 2019, but I can't wait to finally read it again! Personally, I absolutely loved it just as much as The Conquest of Plassans, so I had to wait for the next 4 books before experiencing the same feeling of awe (despite enjoying very much The Kill and finding myself being moved by Renée). I loved the prose, of course, but the characters really stood out to me, I think the plot was so interesting and I laughed quite a few times and my eyes were watery in the end, after what happened in the end. And yes, the last lines really stood out to me, they were very memorable. I can't wait to analyze this novel even further, it means a lot to me. ❤️
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