The Fortune of Rougon: the story of the origins ...

The fresco painted by Rougon- Macquard Zola allows to plunge into everyday life, social, political, etc. the Second Empire, and therefore, besides its high literary quality, a work first hand to understand the customs and history of this period. This first in a series that will count twenty, plunges us into the small sub prefecture of Plassans, in Provence. Zola recounts the origins of the family who gave his name to his epic, and how the laws of heredity will affect the character of the different characters that evolve during the reign of Napoleon III.
The rough-hewn peasant Rougon wife Adélaïade Fouque, mentally ill, and the couple soon give birth to Pierre Rougon. On the death of her husband, married Adelaide Macquart, a smuggler equally uncouth. These two marriages give birth to two branches winding the Rougons with Peter, that ambitious dream, with the petty bourgeoisie of its Yellow Salon, draw a very personal glory of the coup Prince-President Louis Napoleon Bonaparte, and Macquard. The elders of the two branches think only satisfy their personal desires: Pierre Rougon, money, ambition and Antoine Macquard, alcohol and debauchery.
Zola's style is both very fluid and very refined. The evocation of love between Miette and Silvere, two young people caught up in the whirlwind of popular revolt, sounding full of naivety, tenderness, romantic ideal. Zola knows perfectly portray the characters, their characters, their weaknesses, their desires, their morality or lack of morality, and to evolve in a well defined medium to observe the result, in the great tradition of the naturalist novel.
A fascinating work in many ways.