Germinal by Emile Zola

Source of book: I own this

 

Americans are, for reasons unknown to me, quite unfamiliar with Emile Zola. Perhaps because his books don’t lend themselves to adaptation to Disney movies? (See: Hugo and The Hunchback of Notre Dame…) In any event, Americans seem to know of Dumas and Hugo, and maybe Balzac, but not Zola.

 

This is a real shame, because Zola is one of the most important figures in Victorian literature (and politics!) not just in France, but Western history. 

 

To begin with, Zola was the founder of Naturalism as a literary movement - a style that came to dominate the late Victorian era and the early decades of the 20th Century. Germinal certainly displays all the characteristics: detachment, determinism, and a sense that the universe doesn’t care about the fate of humans. 

 

Zola’s novels also criticized society and injustice, and worked to move France toward a more equal and caring society. In this, he was similar to Charles Dickens, who likewise wrote books that exposed the cruelty and violence of child labor, unsafe working conditions, and starvation-level wages. 

 

Oh, and there was also that whole Dreyfus Affair thing. French military officer Alfred Dreyfus - of Jewish descent - was falsely accused and convicted of espionage. Zola was instrumental in bringing the true facts to light, and eventually bringing about a complete exoneration and reinstatement of Dreyfus. At stake, among other issues, was the question of whether France would be a religio-ethnic state, or whether all the citizens of France would have equal rights and access to justice. Zola clearly came down on the side of pluralism and equality. 

 

[Note: if you want to understand far-right neo-Fascists like Marie Le Pen, look no further than their insistence that Dreyfus was guilty. Antisemitism still drives the far right in white society.] 

 

Zola died all too early, in an incident that remains controversial. It is clear that he died of carbon monoxide poisoning due to a blocked chimney. What is less clear is whether the blockage was intentional. Zola had survived previous assassination attempts, and this could very well be the final, successful one. 

 

Germinal is actually part of a series of interlinked novels following the fortunes of a family through the era of Napoleon III. The Rougon-Macquart series contains 20 books, of which Germinal is number 13. It became the most popular of the series, and the one best known outside of France. 

 

So what is this book about? 

 

The story is of an ill-fated coal-miner’s strike in the 1860s, and exposes the hardship and brutality of the lives of the poor. The main character, Etienne, is a member of the central family of the series, and is a naive youth who is looking for whatever employment he can. He joins the mine workers, and becomes friends with one of the families. 

 

After the mine owners decide to change how wages are calculated (in a way that results in a lower net wage), the miners strike. As starvation sets in, the workers become more and more dangerous, violent, and mob-like. The culmination is that the army is called in and eventually murders men, women, and children, both ending the strike and causing political upheaval that Zola hints will eventually result in significant changes to society. 

 

Hence the title. “Germinal” would be known to French citizens of the time as the name of one of the months under the French Republic. It also has the meaning of germination, growth, renewal. The novel takes place over the course of a year, from the month of Germinal to the next Germinal, and the idea that the seeds sown by the strike will eventually produce fruit in the future. 

 

Readers used to English Victorian novels probably need a bit of a warning. This novel may have plenty of Victorian elements - psychodrama, lurid crimes, dying young women, frustrated love, over-the-top descriptions. But English literature has tended (at least until fairly recent times) to gloss over sex, bodily functions, and the details of violence. 

French literature? Not so much. There is a lot of frank descriptions of sex in this book. And rape, nudity, domestic violence, cold-blooded murder, mob violence, excrement, and so on. Zola’s naturalistic approach means that nothing is taboo, everything necessary to the story stays in, and the reader’s sensibilities are irrelevant. But also, this is far from a titillating book - sex is part of life, to be described briefly and clearly, but not offered for arousal. The viewpoint is objective and even at times clinical. 

 

Perhaps the best illustration of this is the way that Zola describes sexual initiation. For the most part, young men rape young women. They have children, and they usually marry eventually. But sex rarely starts out completely consensual. Zola does not approve of this, but he describes a dynamic that is unfortunately still present, particularly in impoverished communities. The brutality in this (and in the related domestic violence) is driven in part by the crushing poverty. 

 

So much in this novel seems all too relevant today. Rich capitalists still see workers as mere things, resources to be exploited, not humans with a need for leisure and lives outside of work. (For a few modern instances, take a look at CEOs from Elon Musk on down lately.) 

 

Capital still tries to crush strikes. Although we haven’t seen it lately, both in the book and in history, eventually capital enlists military or police to murder strikers. The irony is that Capital only objects to “big government” when government tries to help ordinary people. Obscene wealth can only be gained when government keeps workers from profiting directly from their own labor, cutting out landowners and mine owners and factory owners. It literally takes the threat (and sometimes reality) of violence to keep the system operating. 

 

The book has a decent amount of discussion of various 19th Century economic theories. Keep in mind that all this happened before Stalin, Mao, and the other doctrinaire Communist dictatorships of the 20th Century. So, Communism, Socialism, and Anarchism are all discussed by the characters as approaches to the central problem: that a few people become obscenely rich off of the labor of workers, all the while squeezing wages to the starvation point. 

 

Anarchism has been largely forgotten these days, and is often misunderstood or misrepresented. It is fun to see it discussed in this book.  

 

Also in the future, of course, was Social Democracy, the use of government to counterbalance the force of Capital, by regulating working conditions and wages, and providing a safety net that reduces the ability of Capital to starve workers, or discard them when age or injury prevents them from working. Oh, and also, to abolish child labor, which our modern Right Wing seems eager to reinstate. 

 

While the specifics of life 150 years later were not foreseen, it is fascinating that the goals were pretty clear, and indeed, many of those goals have been accomplished in the First World, even as the rights gained remain under attack from Capital and the politicians they own. 

 

Despite the fearmongering then and now, it has become obvious that raising wages and providing healthcare, education, and housing to all has NOT destroyed industry or commerce. Quite the opposite, in fact. Wealth trickles up, not down. Enable workers to afford a decent, secure life, and Capital will be just fine. 

 

With any book in translation, it is difficult to separate the original from the art of interpreting the work across a language barrier. My hardback Everyman’s Library edition uses the 1954 translation by Leonard Tancock. In any event, the book is a thoroughly enjoyable (if that is the right word for a rather bleak and pessimistic book) read, in part due to the good translation. 

 

I want to mention the note from the translator on one of the challenges of translating this work. 

 

In translating the novel, I have tried to keep before me the principle of fidelity to the tone of the original, or what Dr. E. V. Rieu has called the ‘law of equivalent effect,’ that is to say the duty of the translator to try to reproduce upon English readers the effect which the original had upon its readers when it was published. Now Germinal is a brutal and angry book about brutal and angry folk whose language is coarse, direct, and often obscene. Any attempt to make it refined and ‘literary’ would have betrayed the author’s intentions.

But translation of coarse dialogue full of oaths is a delicate matter. The crude words for certain parts of the body and their functions present no difficulty, although such words may pain the high-minded reader, but often swear-words lose their point if transposed directly, simply because the scale of values and the social standing of these words are quite different in one language from another. For instance, some of the strongest French oaths used in this novel are more or less blasphemous variations and elaborations on the Nom de Dieu! Theme. I have frequently substituted for this sort of thing language more likely to be used by Englishmen of a similar type in similar circumstances.

 

Zola’s descriptions of the mine and mine work are colorful and detailed, both accurate (I have some knowledge from other reading) and evocative. Like Dickens, he creates a sense of injustice at the hard lives the characters are forced to endure, but he does it through a rather objective and unemotional descriptive power rather than emotional manipulation. He shows rather than tells - in the best sense of that truism. 

 

The writing is also informed by significant research: Zola literally visited a mine, interviewed miners after a strike, and spent many hours learning the language of coal. 

 

As usual, I wrote down a few lines that seem particularly interesting. 

 

One of the best is the description of the mine owner Gregoire:

 

And this religious faith was mingled with a profound sense of gratitude for an investment which had kept the family in idleness for a century. It was their private deity, whom they, in their egotism, extolled with sacred rites as the divine benefactor of their home, who gently rocked their slothful bed and fattened them at their groaning table. This had gone on from father to son - why risk offending destiny by harboring doubts? 

 

The Gregoires are also emblematic of the sort of “charity” that the rich tend to indulge in. Rather than a just wage for their workers, they give stuff that the workers don’t really need - another coat? - instead of what they do need: enough money to feed themselves. They also, like the wealthy (and middle class) of our own time, blame the poor for their own condition. I mean, he literally says this to Maheude, the incredibly frugal matriarch of the mining family that is teetering on the brink of literal starvation. 

 

“Yes, there is a lot of suffering in this world, it is true; but, my good woman, we must also admit that the workers are not very sensible. Instead of putting a little on one side as the peasants do, the miners drink, run into debt, and end up by being unable to support their families.”

 

Another is that of Maigrat, the owner of the behemoth shop, who meets a gruesome end later in the book. 

 

He stocked everything: grocery, provisions, greengrocery; he sold bread, beer, and pots and pans. Formerly an inspector at Le Voreax [one of the mines], he had set up in business with a small canteen, and then, thanks to official protection, his trade had grown and grown until it had killed the small shops in Montsou. 

 

He is a toady for the mine owners, and also lasciviously preys on the teen daughters of his customers - want credit? Be prepared to give sexual favors. 

 

It was a known fact that when a miner wanted more credit, all he had to do was to send along his daughter or wife, no matter whether she was pretty or plain so long as she was willing. 

 

His comeuppance? After he smashes his brains out falling off a wall while trying to protect his store from the mob, one of the women he coerced into sex grabs his penis and yanks it out, parading it through town on the end of a stick. (I warned you the book was frank…) 

 

While there is a certain amount of humor in Etienne’s naive exploration of ideas about labor and capital, at the core are issues that have resonated since the dawn of human civilization - since inequality arose in human society. I think this passage still holds up today in our own circumstances.

 

All sorts of questions had occurred to him: why poverty for some and wealth for others? why should the former be ground under the hell of the latter, without any hope of taking their place? The first step forward had been the realization of his own ignorance. From then onwards he had been a prey to secret shame, a hidden sorrow; knowing nothing he dared not talk about the things most on his mind, such as the fact that all men are equal, and equity demands a fair share for all of the things of this world. 

 

That is the core there: if humans are equal, that means equal access to economic, social, and political power. Which is why the Right Wing, concerned so long with preserving economic hierarchy, is now intent on destroying democracy. After all, people might (and eventually will) vote to equalize wealth and income. This becomes very explicit in the book: Etienne inspires the miners with the goal of a true Republic, which would guarantee a living wage for everybody. 

 

Hey, that actually sounds pretty good, doesn’t it? 

 

I mentioned the constant presence of sex in the book. Zola hits on something that is both true and also widely disbelieved by those who are wealthier. Sex is one of the few pleasures that it doesn’t take money to afford. (At least in the short term - babies obviously cost money.) It should not surprise anyone, therefore, that impoverished people take advantage of it. 

 

White Evangelicalism reverses this truth, claiming that the reason that people are poor is that they have too much sex. Probe a bit deeper, though, and attitudes a lot more like Gregoire appear: they don’t believe that poor people should be permitted to experience the pleasures of sex, let alone the deeper pleasures of companionship and children. They can’t afford to, so they should go without. Silly working class, sex is for rich people!

 

Zola also contrasts the sex the miners are having with the sex that the wealthy are not having. Hennebeau, the manager of the mine (and a somewhat sympathetic character - he is caught in the middle), is being cuckolded by his wife, and hasn’t had sex in many years. 

 

He had passed several couples, quite a slow procession of people out walking in the lovely winter night. Still more lovers going to take their pleasure behind the walls with lips pressed to lips. These were his normal encounters now: girls on their backs in every ditch, penniless louts gorging themselves with the only joy that cost nothing. And these fools grumbled at their life when they had bellyfuls of the one and only happiness of love! How gladly he would have starved like them if he could have begun his life again with a woman who would give herself to him here on the ground with all her body and all her heart. 

 

I can see this still in the way that stereotypes of “hypersexuality” are used to denigrate African Americans and blame them for ongoing inequality. Yeah, if they would just stop “rutting like rabbits” they wouldn’t be poor. There is some jealousy here to, in the imagination that to be poor is somehow to magically enjoy sex more. 

 

Another passage seems to be contemporary as well: the description of how the big mining companies are gradually taking over more and more of the economy, working to enslave most of the population to profit the few people at the top. This is the inherent problem of corporate consolidation, and why entities like unions - and government - are needed to counterbalance the power they have. 

 

Alongside the greater tragedy of the failed strike is a personal tragedy: that of Catherine. A mere 15 when the story begins, she has already spent years working in the mine. Malnutrition has delayed her menarche, but that doesn’t stop the belligerent and tyrannical Chaval from raping her, then (as was the custom) taking her as his woman whether she wanted it or not. He desired, and so he assumes she must comply. Zola makes a sad commentary on male/female relationships in such a degraded and impoverished society.

 

So many men only took women for the sake of having them, and never bothered their heads about their happiness.

 

This seems also to be the case in white Evangelicalism, at least if the books they write are any indication. All the pushback against the idea that women are equally entitled to pleasure in sex, or that a man has the duty to consider his wife’s happiness in decision making. Nope, women exist to serve and pleasure men, not the other way around, right? 

 

Ultimately, the strike fails because of the actions and inactions of government. On the negative, the government has nothing to say when the mine owners import workers from Belgium. On the other hand, the government sends armed soldiers to keep the strikers from preventing the scabs from working. In other words, government sides with the capitalists, not the workers. It comes down to force and violence, and the people with the money can buy off the people with the guns to murder the people with neither money nor guns. 

 

An old woman, Ma Brule, says it best as she screams at the soldiers:

 

“You lot of blackguards! You dirty lot of sods! Look at them! They lick their masters’ boots and can only be brave against poor people!”

 

The modern equivalent now is, of course, our increasingly militarized police. They are so fucking brave against poor people. 

 

The obscenely rich are, however, terrified that some day, the guns might turn on them. This fear eats at them, and is why they retreat further and further from actual interaction with working class people. 

 

Germinal is fascinating to read in our present moment. The United Auto Workers just won a series of improved contracts with the three big American automakers. Unions have taken on Tesla in Europe, and are looking to do so here as well. I wish them the very best. 

 

The public mood is changing. Over forty years of Reaganomics redistributing wealth and income upward may have enriched the Baby Boomers, but it has significantly narrowed the future for my children’s generation. The Speaker of the House is seeking large cuts to programs that care for senior citizens. The pressure to return to greater grinding of the faces of the poor in order to enrich the billionaire class continues apace, but as the entitled and coddled older generations die off, more and more of us are becoming awakened to the game. And we are not as easy to manipulate into voting more money for the rich by the usual racist dog whistling that worked for our parents and grandparents. 

 

As Etienne hoped, the seeds planted germinated back in the 1860s. It took time, but the world we live in is different from the one in which children died in the coal mines. 

 

Now, it is time to reverse the last 45 years of war against the poor, and again plant the seeds of equality, equity, and mutuality.

 

***

 

Other related reading: 

 

The Cypresses Believe in God by Jose Maria Gironella 

Part of Our Time by Murray Kempton

American Amnesia by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson

The Bonanza King by Gregory Crouch