Emile Zola

The novel is set in Paris in the years immediately preceding the fall of Napoleon III’s empire. Nana is an eighteen-year-old girl endowed with a peculiar charm that stems, far more than from beauty itself, from her sensuality, youthfulness, and demeanor. From the outset, Zola presents her as a goddess, a deity of vulgarity and scandal. > Nana, very tall, very robust for her eighteen years (in other passages of the book Zola uses the adjective stout), in her white goddess’s tunic, her long hair simply laid bare over her shoulders, walked down toward the stage with an easy demeanor, laughing at the audience. Nana was naked. She was naked with a quiet audacity, confident in the power of her flesh. She was Venus rising from the waves, veiled by nothing but her hair. No one was laughing anymore; the men’s faces, rapt, grew tense, their mouths parched and irritated . For Zola, Nana is an innocent woman, audacious yet fraught with ambiguity and a sensuality that made her “a devourer of men.” The novel opens with a variety show at the theater, where Nana appears amid music, gaudy sets, and foul-mouthed, envious actors and actresses. Nana is, in a sense, a nineteenth-century “showgirl”—a performer, and a mediocre one at that, who is simultaneously the kept woman of wealthy bourgeois gentlemen. In this first part of the novel, the figure of Nana allows for a depiction of nineteenth-century society, where wealthy and prominent figures move from the tedious conversations of austere salons to the life of the theater, if not directly to brothels, squandering their fortunes on mistresses and prostitutes. Hypocrisy and deceit reign supreme. Yet this world does not suit Nana. She seeks, in some way, genuine passion: she beds numerous men, including penniless youths, alienating powerful lovers and thereby squandering influential connections. In the central section, which functions as a sort of caesura between the first (more descriptive) part and the second, more dramatic and complex one, Nana descends into the underworld: she becomes a streetwalker, engages in lesbian affairs, and loses herself in depravity. She does so with voluptuousness, not with revulsion. What ultimately compels her to change her life will not be disgust with the streets, but betrayal and abandonment by the man she loves, who beats her, robs her, and finally casts her out. Nana then resolves to return to high society, but “in grand style,” courting the envy and admiration even of respectable women. She becomes the mistress of a powerful aristocrat, resides in a sumptuous mansion, and squanders fortunes on jewelry, furniture, horses, and carriages. She stands at the very center of French polite society. Yet this life does not suit Nana. As she screams at the aristocrat, who has just uncovered yet another infidelity, > get it through that thick skull of yours: I intend to be free. If I like a man, I go to bed with him . Nana moves like a destructive force, squandering wealth, ruining powerful bourgeois and aristocrats, driving both young and old to suicide. Is she the personification of a social vengeance of the poor against the rich? Or simply the expression of an irrepressible craving for luxury, sex, and depravity? Nana is likely both. Her story ends tragically with her death from smallpox, on the very day France goes to war and the Second Empire begins to crumble. Disfigured by the disease, Nana is abandoned by her friends, who prefer to join the jubilant demonstrations for the departure of troops to the front. Zola is a great social writer, perhaps the greatest of all time. The primary purpose of his novels is to portray and condemn the society of his day from the vantage point of emerging social forces. In his work there is always a social critique that, while lending his novels immense emotional and ideological impact, often desiccates his characters, reducing them to stereotypes of a social class or a societal role. In *Nana*, there is something else. It appears that Zola begins within his conventional frameworks, but gradually Nana’s figure takes shape autonomously. She is no longer merely the representative of a social class. She is a woman who wants to live intensely, a woman who despises men and desires to destroy them for the suffering they have inflicted upon her. It is no coincidence that the turning point of the novel is precisely her abandonment by the lover with whom she had forsaken polite society to endure a life of squalor. Nor is it insignificant that the only person to exert any real influence over Nana is her friend Satin, with whom she shares a loving relationship. From a literary standpoint, Zola alternates passages of extraordinary beauty (the novel’s zenith being the description of the race at the hippodrome) with overwrought pages, somewhat striving for effect and melodrama, as seen in the concluding chapters. What endures, however, is an undeniable ability to convey to the reader the profound essence of events through a chromatic, almost painterly use of language, especially of adjectives.

These are two naturalist novels of a pronounced sociological stamp: almost social inquiries. In *La Terre*, Zola depicts, ruthlessly and without the slightest concession to idealism or optimism, the economic and social reality of French agriculture at the close of the nineteenth century. Nothing is spared; in particular, the family and human relationships are shattered by the greed for property and an ingrained habituation to violence. In *Germinal*, which portrays the plight of the miners and one of the earliest workers' strikes, the style remains strictly realistic, yet idealistic notes emerge, tied to the conviction that one is witnessing the first steps of a great movement—the labor movement—destined to achieve social and political gains. Although the novel’s conclusion is tragic, the reader comes away with a certain optimism. Contemporaries favored *Germinal* over *La Terre*, but today it is undoubtedly the latter that stands out with greater validity, particularly for its narrative pacing (that of *Germinal* is somewhat tedious) and its depiction of the French countryside. These are two great social novels that place Zola among the greatest writers of this genre.