The Fortune of the Rougons

By Émile Zola

“The Fortune of the Rougons” (French: La Fortune des Rougon), originally published in 1871, is the first novel in Émile Zola's monumental twenty-volume series Les Rougon-Macquart. The novel is partly an origin story, with a huge cast of characters swarming around - many of whom become the central figures of later novels in the series - and partly an account of the December 1851 coup d'état that created the French Second Empire under Napoleon III as experienced in a large provincial town in southern France. The title refers not only to the "fortune" chased by protagonists Pierre and Felicité Rougon, but also to the fortunes of the various disparate family members Zola introduces, whose lives are of central importance to later books in the series. (Excerpt from Wikipedia)

• Language: English
• Publisher: Otbebookpublishing
• Release date: Jan 31, 2016
• ISBN: 9783958644717

Émile Zola

Émile Zola (1840-1902) was a French novelist, journalist, and playwright. Born in Paris to a French mother and Italian father, Zola was raised in Aix-en-Provence. At 18, Zola moved back to Paris, where he befriended Paul Cézanne and began his writing career. During this early period, Zola worked as a clerk for a publisher while writing literary and art reviews as well as political journalism for local newspapers. Following the success of his novel Thérèse Raquin (1867), Zola began a series of twenty novels known as Les Rougon-Macquart, a sprawling collection following the fates of a single family living under the Second Empire of Napoleon III. Zola’s work earned him a reputation as a leading figure in literary naturalism, a style noted for its rejection of Romanticism in favor of detachment, rationalism, and social commentary. Following the infamous Dreyfus affair of 1894, in which a French-Jewish artillery officer was falsely convicted of spying for the German Embassy, Zola wrote a scathing open letter to French President Félix Faure accusing the government and military of antisemitism and obstruction of justice. Having sacrificed his reputation as a writer and intellectual, Zola helped reverse public opinion on the affair, placing pressure on the government that led to Dreyfus’ full exoneration in 1906. Nominated for the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1901 and 1902, Zola is considered one of the most influential and talented writers in French history.

Book preview

Reviews for The Fortune of the Rougons

[fuzzy_patters · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

The Fortune of the Rougons is the first book of Emile Zola's Rougon-Macquart cycle of novels centering on the Rougons and Macquart family. The book centers around the 1848 revelation in France, and introduces us to a family of characters of varying dispositions, many of whom hope to gain power and privilege through backing one side or the other in the revolution. The brilliance of this novel is in its ability to show us all types of people and what makes us who we are. Some of us are social climbers who will stop at anything to get by, such as Pierre in the novel. Others of us are true believers who are willing to fight for love or a cause, such as Silvere in the novel. Others are more interested in inward interests such as delving further into our chosen fields of study, such as Pascal in the novel. Yet others, such as Felicite, are not willing to risk much to achieve our goals, but we are more than willing to manipulate others into achieving those goals for us. In portraying this plethora of characters in such a realistic way, Zola manages to show us who we are in a believable and enlightening way.

[lriley_43 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The first book in Zola's famed Rougon-Macquart 20 book series--The fortune of the Rougons is also pretty good. Adelaide Fouque (Aunt Dide)--the mother of Pierre Rougon and his two illegitimate siblings Antoine and Ursule (nee Mouret) Macquart comes into focus before being sent off to an insane asylum. It is really Pierre Rougon and Antoine Macquart and their greed, ambition and treachery which is most center stage here which sets up the rest of the novels in the series. The unfortunate Silvere Mouret who meets his unglorious end--being executed by a policeman kind of epitomizes a Zola type of tragic hero--an inexeperienced youth who dreams of social justice and is absolutely devastated by the death of his girlfreind Miette in a battle during the republican revolution circa 1850. The Rougon's come to power in the aftermath having constructed a farce proving their loyalty to the Napoleon the III regime and its forthcoming reactionary government which is also coming into power. Macquart is the great betrayer of his republican brethren. Well written and well plotted--this is a good place for anyone interested in the French novel or French history in the form of the novel to start.

[cindywho-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I'd read l'Assommoir and Nana in college, so I thought I'd take a trip to where the whole series began. I don't think I got all the political background about the beginning of the Second Empire, but there were some good character descriptions and action.

[therebelprince · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

In 1789, the French rebelled against their hereditary monarchs and created a Republic. In time, the Republic thickened into Empire, before returning to monarchy. And then, in 1848, the monarchy fell for a second time, to a Second Republic. But in 1851, in what amounted to a coup, Napoleon III restored his family line into a Second Empire.

Got all that? By 1851, the French were divided between republicans, monarchists, monarchists 2.0 (those who didn't believe in the original line of kings and queens, but in their relatives who had taken over the throne years earlier), and lovers of empire. As well as, no doubt, some socialists and the like. For twenty years, the French survived an Empire, before it too finally came crumbling down.

It is across these twenty years that Emile Zola sets his twenty book cycle, of which The Fortune of the Rougons is the first. Through three interconnected families - one proletariat, crushed by the boots of the self-interested; one bourgeois and crippled by madness; and one nouveau riche Emperor-butt-kissing clan - the author explores life under the Second Empire in a dizzying array of forms. Each book has its own tone, cast of characters, genre, and plot, but all are connected through a family web.

Fortune is stuck with a lot of exposition, so you'll probably want to a) have some patience, and b) move on to a second book afterward so as to use all of this knowledge. At the same time, it is littered with hilarious and moving character portraits, ambience, and genuinely beautiful writing. Taking place in the days immediately following the coup, and set in the Provencal town of Plassans, Zola weaves a narrative of, well, fortunes. Those whose fortunes rise and those that fall as some conspiracies buckle, and others blossom. All mixed in to a tawdry family history that goes back to the 1780s, when France was in its final, blistering years of monarchy.

From here, you can venture to any one of the other Rougon-Macquart novels (except the last, Doctor Pascal). The next book published was The Kill which I'd probably recommend next. Zola himself had a preferred reading order that goes on to His Excellency Eugene Rougon - that is, however, one of the drier books in the series, so perhaps only go to that one if you're feeling particularly enchanted by Fortune.

[beyondedenrock · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I love Zola’s writing, I have meant to read more of his Rougon-Macquart series, but I hadn’t read anything for such a long time because I was wondering just how to set about it:•I could carry on picking random books from the series as they could catch my eye.•I could read them in the order they were written.•I could read them in the author’s recommended reading order.I inclined towards the latter, but I hesitated to pick up this first book; because I feared that it would be a complicated setting a lot of things up but not so interesting for its own sake kind of book.When I found a group that was beginning to read the whole series, I knew that it was time for me to begin.I found that my fears weren’t entirely unfounded: there were a lot of characters, there were many stories opening up, and I would have been lost quite early on had my book not had a family tree I could consult; and I’m still not entirely sure about the political history or all of the implications of the story I read.That said though, I loved this book, I’m very glad that I read it. Zola’s writing about his characters and the world around them is so very vivid, and as I began to the roots and branches of this fictitious family tree I was intrigued by the possibilities it presented; for future stories and for what those stories might say.The scene is set, and then this story begins with a pair of young lovers who will be caught up in republican protests. Silvère had planned to join the ranks, and he had brought the gun that had always hung on the wall in his grandmother’s home; Miette had thought that she would be left behind, but she was caught up too and found herself carrying the flag.Then the story went back in time, recounting the recent history of Silvère’s family.Adelaide Fouque was the descended from a family of a market gardeners. She was a simple soul, and after the death of her parents during the French Revolution she was wealthy and completely alone in the world. She was courted by a farm worker named Rougon, she married him, and she gave birth to a son, Pierre.Rougon died not long after the birth of his son, and his wife fell in love with a smuggler and heavy drinker named Macquart. They had two children together: a boy named Antoine and a girl named Ursula. The three children grew up in a haphazard wild manner, and it wasn’t long before Pierre soon began to resent his illegitimate half-siblings and his weak minded mother.Fortune seemed to favour him: Antoine was conscripted into the army, Ursula married and moved away, and when Macquart was killed and Adelaide retired to his cottage to mourn he saw a wonderful opportunity .Pierre tricked his mother into signing over the family home to him, he sold it off, and he used the proceeds to set himself up in the world. He married Felicité, the daughter of a merchant, and a young woman who was every bit as socially ambitious as he was. They rose very little, but they managed to send their sons to good schools and then university, and they hoped and prayed that they would be successful and elevate their family..The three boys are educated, but with no capital behind them, their options are limited. Pascal, the middle child, becomes a doctor, he does good work but the other two … well, they are rather too like their parents …It seems that the ambitions of Pierre and Felicité will always be thwarted, but finally they have a piece of luck. Their son Eugène had moved to Paris, he was mixing with important people, and he passed information to his parents that would allow them to chose the right associates, express the correct views, and rise to the very top of society in Plassans.Silvère came to Passans after the death of his mother, Ursula, and her husband, Mouret. He lived with his grandmother, Adelaide, now known to all as Aunt Dide; he was apprenticed as a wheelwright and he was introduced to Republican politics by his uncle, Antoine.Antoine had returned from the army and he was the bitterest opponent of his half brother Pierre, who he claimed had cheated him of his inheritance.When the clash of the republicans with the government came to its climax, the Rougons’ yellow drawing room had become the centre of political activity in Plassan as the great and good of the town rallied to support the status quo.Could Pierre and Felicité achive their greatest ambition?What would happen to Silvère and Miette?How would the fallout affect Aunt Dide, Antoine, the three sons of the Rougons?Those are the bare bones of the plot; a plot driven by character, by family relationships and by history. I was so impressed by the portrayal of those family relationships and of how, together with circumstance, they affect the formation of character and the making of decisions; sometimes for good but often, it seems, for bad.I was impressed by the writing. The characters lived and breathed, and everything feel utterly real. I caught the author’s cynicism; I caught his passion for his subject; and sometimes I caught his anger. One thing that particularly impressed me was the way he could take a small incident and use it to say so much.I was particularly taken with the story of the young lovers, and the writing about the natural world that ran through their story. That was something that I hadn’t found in Zola’s books before, and it balance the writing about the Rougons and the town beautifully.There were times when I thought he spent too long with one side of the story; and there were characters I saw too much and others not enough. But maybe as I read on I will see the bigger picture better.I found much to admire, I felt many emotions as I read; and, most of all, I was struck by how very well Zola laid the foundations for so many more books in this one.

[smiler69 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Zola, basing himself on the works of thinkers of his time, including Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, believed that heredity and environment were the two most important factors in determining the course of a person's life. He set out to demonstrate this theory in the 20-novel Rougon-Macquart series subtitled The Natural and social history of a family during the Second Empire, which examines the lives of five generations of the respectable (and legitimate) Rougon branch and of the dissolute (and illegitimate) Macquarts. As preparation for this huge undertaking, he first charted out an elaborate family tree as depicted below. La Fortune des Rougons, the first novel, establishes the origins of the two clans and presents a vast cast of characters, of which several will figure as leading protagonists in consecutive novels. The story opens on the clandestine meeting of two virginal young lovers, Miette and Silvère, just outside the fictional Provençal town of Plassans, relating their love story leading up to this night—the eve of the 1851 coup d'état—during which Napoleon III came into power, the events of the day forming the central motif of the novel. The two idealistic adolescents are about to join a vast gathering of republicans to storm Plassans and nearby towns along the way to Paris, on a doomed journey to oppose the coup. Plassans is also the hometown of Silvère's grandmother Adelaide Fouque, commonly known as Tante Dide, the matriarch of the Rougon-Macquart dynasty. She is an eccentric and a pariah who, after losing her husband the late Rougon, who fathered her only legitimate child Pierre, then takes up with the notorious alcoholic and trafficker Macquart, a union from which two more illegitimate children are born. We follow the progress of Pierre Rougon, while he takes his first steps as a young man to secure the family fortune by conning his mother out of her ancestral home and property and taking away his siblings' inheritance. Pierre Rougon and his wife Felicity see their limited fortune spent away on their children and floundering business and all the while, Pierre's half-brother Antoine Macquart continually harangues the Rougons for money as compensation for begin cheated out of his legacy. Much like his father, Antoine is a profoundly lazy man who contrives to marry a hard-working woman and sponge off her and his children while claiming to have republican ideals. The Rougons, after decades of vain struggles, finally seize their opportunity on this night in 1851, putting in place a series of Machiavellian schemes involving Antoine, and putting the lives of men on the line to finally come into wealth and power, all the while playing power games among themselves to determine who will have the upper hand in this old couple. A fascinating read and a very promising start to a great literary saga.

[thorold_1 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

The Rougon-Macquart cycle was partly inspired by Balzac's vast Comédie humaine, but it was conceived as a much more tightly-planned and focussed study, following the career of one particular family through the period of the Second Empire (1851-1871). Zola wants to show us how every aspect of French society was infected by the corruption, greed, and cynical self-interest coming down from the top, and over the course of the 20 volumes (originally he wanted to do it in 10...) and more than 20 years of work, that's pretty much what he did.In this first volume Zola introduces us to the many members of the family, the lucky possessors of genetic material from Adélaïde Fouque (epileptic and mentally-disturbed) and her husband Rougon (vile peasant) or her lover Macquart (criminal). By the logic of 19th-century genetic science, we know that nothing could possibly go right with this mix, and it doesn't. The family is as corrupt as the government it lives under. Because there are so many characters to introduce for future use and so much back-story to establish, this doesn't feel like a particularly well-balanced book, but from Zola's point of view we need all this information if we are to make sense of what follows, so you'd better be taking notes. Or have one of those editions that has Zola's famous crib-sheet in the endpapers. The foreground story takes place over a few days in December 1851 as the sleepy provincial town of Plassans (Aix-en-Provence) reacts to the news of Louis Napoléon's coup-d'état. The idealistic teenager Silvère and his 13-year-old playmate/budding girlfriend Miette join the peasant army that is setting off to no-one-knows-where to defend the Republic against the evil Bonapartists, whilst Silvère's uncle Pierre schemes to ally himself to whichever side looks like giving him a worthwhile civic appointment when the dust settles. Normally in a historical novel it's a problem for the author that we already know who is going to win, but Zola cunningly exploits our hindsight to supply the tragic irony behind the story of the young revolutionaries and the black comedy of coup, counter-coup, and counter-counter-coup that plays out between the entrenched, the suppressed, and the upwardly-mobile in Plassans, in what we are obviously meant to take as a small-scale parody of the even more unseemly political events in Paris.This book doesn't have the same kind of detailed excavation of the life of a particular aspect of society that we find in the later books in the cycle - it's obviously mostly based on Zola's own childhood memories of small-town life at the time of the coup, and so we don't get quite as much interesting detail as I would like, and we do get rather more than I would like of the sentimental adolescent friendship/love-affair of Silvére and Miette. But still definitely worth reading!