(The Fortune of the Rougons), 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 large cast of characters - 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. The events are experienced through the eyes of 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.
Plot summary After a stirring opening on the eve of the coup d'état, involving an idealistic young village couple joining up with the republican militia in the middle of the night, Zola then spends the next few chapters going back in time to pre-Revolutionary Provence, and proceeds to lay the foundations for the entire Rougon-Macquart cycle, committing himself to what would become the next twenty-two years of his life's work. The fictional town of Plassans (loosely based on the real city of Aix-en-Provence, where Zola grew up and Lorgues, in the Var, where the insurrectional events described in the novel took place in December 1851) is established as the setting for the novel and described in intimate detail, and then we are introduced to the eccentric heroine Adelaide Fouque, later known as "Tante Dide", who becomes the common ancestor for both the Rougon and Macquart families. Her legitimate son from her short marriage to her late husband, a labourer named Rougon who worked on Dide's land, is forced to grow up alongside two illegitimate children — a boy and a girl — from Dide's later romance with the smuggler, poacher and alcoholic Macquart, while the ageing Dide slides further and further into a state of mental illness and borderline senile dementia. From this premise, the next nineteen novels all get their central protagonists and to a certain extent their themes.
The narrative continues along double lines, following both "branches" of the family. We see Pierre Rougon (the legitimate son) in his attempts to disinherit his Macquart half-siblings, his marriage to Felicité Puech, the voraciously ambitious daughter of a local merchant, and their continued failure to establish the fortune, fame and renown they seek, despite their greed and relatively comfortable lifestyles. Approaching old age, the Rougon couple finally admit defeat and settle, crushed, into their lower middle class destinies, until by a remarkable stroke of luck their eldest son Eugène reports from Paris that he has some news that they might find interesting. Eugène has become one of the closest allies of the future Emperor Napoleon III and informs his parents that a coup is imminent. Having been effectively given insider information about which side to back in the coming revolution, the Rougons then make a series of seemingly bold moves to show their loyal and steadfast support for Napoleon III, winning the admiration of the most influential people in the town, mostly royalists who are themselves afraid of showing too much commitment for fear of backing the "wrong horse" and losing their standing and fortune.
The narrative then switches over to the Macquart side of the family, whose grim working-class struggles to survive are juxtaposed keenly with the Rougons' seemingly trivial quest for greater wealth and influence in genteel drawing-room society. Descended from a drunken ne'er-do-well and a madwoman, Zola effectively predestines the Macquarts to lives of toil and misery. Zola's theories of heredity, laid out in the original preface to this novel, were a cornerstone of his entire philosophy and a major reason for his embarking on the mammoth Rougon-Macquart project in the first place in order to illustrate them. Largely discredited nowadays, the theories are largely "present but unseen" in most of the novels in the Rougon-Macquart cycle, allowing those books to be enjoyed without the overshadowing effect of Zola's somewhat suspect scientific ideas. Due to the original story nature of , the theories are placed much more to the fore, and can appear somewhat heavy-handed as a result.
A third branch of the family, the Mourets, descended from Macquart and Dide's daughter, are then introduced before the novel's focus is brought back to the "present", the night of the coup, via a quite brilliantly told love story. The idealistic but naïve Silvère Mouret falls madly in love with the innocent Miette Chantegreil, and after a long courtship they decide to join up with the republicans to fight the coup. The rest of the novel then picks up from where the opening chapter left off, and from then on is basically a dual narrative telling the story of the old Rougon couple and their increasingly Machiavellian machinations to get themselves into a position of fortune and respect in Plassans, juxtaposed with Silvère and Miette's continuing love story and the doomed republican militia's disastrous attempt to take the town back. Eventually, the Rougons exploit their half-brother Antoine Macquart into inadvertently helping crush the republican threat, and they achieve their life's ambition, fortune and favour. For Silvère and Miette, who committed themselves so completely to a doomed cause, there can be no such happy ending and Zola leaves their half of the story at a bleak dead end.
Characters
Plassans is a stand-in for Zola's hometown, Aix-en-Provence. The author describes both its physical and social aspects in such detail that the town practically becomes one of the book's characters. It is "a sub-prefecture of about ten thousand inhabitants", "built on a plateau overlooking the Viorne, and resting on the north side against the Garrigues hills, one of the last branches of the Alps." Plassans is divided into three distinct neighborhoods: the old quarter where the workers and the destitute live; Sainte-Marc, with the mansions of the wealthy aristocrats; and the new town, home to the bourgeoisie. On Sundays during fine weather, the poor and the wealthy walk, respectively, the north and south sides of the east-west road, promenading without anyone ever giving a thought to crossing to the other side. "They are only separated by a distance of some seven or eight yards, yet it is as if they were a thousand leagues away from each other."
In order of appearance:
Chapter 1
Silvère Mouret: Son of Ursule Macquart, grandson of Adélaïde Fouque; "a strong, sturdy-looking lad" with a "fine mouth and soft, delicate skin ... He must have been about seventeen years of age." As the novel opens in early December 1851, he slips into a desolate area (a former cemetery) of Plassans on a frigid night; he is carrying a carbine, which the reader later discovers was used by his grandfather, the smuggler and poacher Macquart. Silvère has joined the insurgents who intend to overthrow the Empire of Louis-Napoléon and reestablish the Republic. The night the insurgents pass through Plassans, he scuffles for possession of the carbine with a gendarme named Rengade and manages to put out one of Rengade's eyes in the process. Rengade vindictively murders Silvère for this in the book's final chapter. Miette Chantegreil: Given name Marie, "thirteen years of age, and although strong and vigorous did not look older owing to the bright childish smile which lit up her countenance ... She was nearly as tall as Silvère, plump and teeming with life." She has been heaped with scorn by the local populace because her poacher father was sent to the galleys as punishment for killing a gendarme, an act he steadfastly maintained in court was one of self-defense; only his sincere incomprehension of the lack of a legal basis for such a defense kept him from the guillotine. Miette and Silvère are desperately in love and intend to marry. After meeting Silvère in the Aire Saint-Mittre, they espy the Republican insurgents marching through the night. She is overcome with the need to prove herself and, not wanting to leave Silvère, she demands to be allowed to carry the insurgents' banner the rest of the night on their march. She is killed during the battle in the streets of Plassans between the Republicans and the National Guard.
Chapter 2
Adélaïde Fouque: Born 1768. "This girl, whose father died insane, was a long, lank pale creature, with a scared look and a strange gait ... As she grew up, she became still stranger..." As the male line had died out, she inherited a sizeable fortune when she was orphaned at eighteen, "which rendered her an eagerly-sought heiress." Instead, she shocked the town by marrying the family's gardener, Rougon.
The Rougon line
Rougon: A peasant from the Basses-Alpes, "coarse, heavy, vulgar, scarcely able to speak French..." "From a salaried servant, he ascended rapidly to the enviable position of husband." He dies of a sunstroke only fifteen months after his wedding to Adélaïde. Pierre Rougon: Born 1787, son of Adélaïde and Rougon; deeply resents his half-brother and half-sister, Antoine and Ursule Macquart; thinking himself the rightful heir to his mother's estate because he is the only one of her children born in wedlock, he schemes to cut them as well as their mother out of anything he can; becomes fat and flabby. By skillful maneuvering during the Republican insurgency of December 1851, this heretofore lowly vegetable oil dealer gains power and respect in Plassans. Felicité Puech: Wife of Pierre Rougon; "A short, dark woman such as one often meets in Provence. She looked like one of those brown, lean, noisy grasshoppers ... thin, flat-breasted with pointed shoulders and a face like that of a polecat, with singularly sunken and attenuated features ... The slyness of a cat was visible under her narrow, black eyes..." After uncovering her husband's secret maneuverings during the insurgency, she deftly manipulates the situation to assure he achieves the influence in Plassans that she has for so long coveted. Pierre and Felicité's three sons: Convinced that at least one of their sons will shower his parents with the blessings of success, Felicité convinces Pierre to send them to the local college and then, at great expense, to extend their education in Paris. When they return to Plassans they are unable to apply what they've learned: "The three young men idled about and grew fat." Eugène Rougon: Born 1811; "A man of middle height, slightly bald, and already disposed to obesity. He had has father's face, a long face with broad features ... This big fellow usually exhibited a formidable, sleepy attitude ... he longed for self-indulgence..." Having studied law in Paris, he tried to make a go in Plassans but "seldom succeeded in gaining a case for a client." Anticipating the excitement of the disturbances of February 1848, "he formed a sudden resolution and left for Paris, with scarcely five hundred francs in his pocket." From there, he keeps his father back in Provence informed of political developments, allowing Pierre to position himself for the right moment to take power in Plassans. Pascal Rougon: Born 1813; lives modestly as a doctor immersed in research; has no regard for his relatives' scheming for material gain; subject of the final novel in the series, Doctor Pascal.