Emile Zola

Émile Zola

Émile Zola is a french writter and journalist born on April 2, 1840 in Paris and died on September 29, 1962.
Émile Zola was one of the most prominent French novelists of the late 19th century. He was noted for his theories of naturalism.
After having moved the family to the Aix-en-Provence of southern France, Zola’s engineer father died in 1847, he had to face with the youngster and his mother of economic issues.

It was during this time in south of France that he became friend with the future famous painter, Paul Cézane.

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Self-Portrait with Beret, Émile Zola, 1902.

Zola moved back to Paris in 1858 continued studying in the lycéen Saint Louis but failed twice of the baccalaureat exam. Finally he succeeded to find a job in in 1862 with the publishing company Louis Christophe Francois Hachette. Zola had a passion for writing and published his debut novel in 1865, La Confession de Claude, an autobiographical work that chronicled a man falling in love with a sex worker.

Zola was heavily influenced by Darwin's scientific ideas, which led him to become interested in the way that environment shapes people. He is considered to the big daddy of Naturalism and Zola's work was a huge inspiration for many of the Naturalists that came after him.

He wrote an article in The Tribune, where he puts his polemical skills into practice by writing fine anti-imperial satires.

On the literary level, he is best known for Les Rougon-Macquart, a 20-volume Romanesque fresco depicting French society during the Second Empire, which depicts the trajectory of the Rougon-Macquart family, through its various generations and whose each of the representatives of an era and a particular generation is the subject of a novel.

In 1898, Zola wrote a newspaper letter “J’Accuse,” which condemned his country’s military for trying to cover up the wrongful conviction of Jewish army captain Alfred Dreyfus on espionage charges.

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       Newspaper letter “J’Accuse”.

Thérèse Raquin is Zola's first major novel wrote in 1867. It tells the tale of Thérèse, who is unhappily married to the egotistical Camille. When the couple moves to Paris, she gets involved with Laurent, and the two lovers plot Camille's murder.

Nana wrote in 1880 is one of the twenty novels that make up Zola's Les Rougon-Macquart series. Nana is a prostitute who begins in the slums but then slowly makes her way up the glitzy world of sex until she becomes a powerful high-class prostitute.

Last year I read Le bonheur des dames and I really appreciated the novel. It set in the world of the department store, an innovative development in mid-nineteenth century retail sales. I was passionate by the main character, Denise, who struggled with lots of issues but finally married with the powerful Octave Mouret and the whole story  seens as a victory for women.

I do appreciate Émile Zola because he explored how social environment affects people. He’s particulary human and respectful of each individuals. I planned to read others novels he wrote, in particular Germinal dedicated of the minors in the north of France.

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