While reading all the sensations awaken, you can virtually feel the pain of the boy with broken legs (Chicot), starvation and misery of the hewers, “(…) standing there sweating in the icy draughts and busy trying to swallow their sense of grievance.” Even sexual experiences of the teenagers, hiding from their parents, getting to know first physical pleasures (Chaval and Catherine), and unfulfilled desire (Entienne and catherine). Hypocrisy screens through the scene when the priest is compared to “some large and well nourished cat”, when Father Joire was “(…) passing by, holding up his cassock with the fastidiousness (…)”and did not wish to get himself wet. Ignorance and lack of help from the church’s side; missing ideology of God’s rules especially for priests that should be servants of God. Christianity was not in its right rules. Prostitution reached its picks. The punishment from God for exploitation of coalminers and sexual deviance expressed on the streets of France.The violence, cruelty with their graphic descriptions provoke physical reaction on the reader. Contrast of lives of the classes through the descriptive visions of houses of the aristocracy, “The kitchen was huge, and judging by its extreme cleaningness and the great battery of dishes, saucepans and utensils with which it was filled, (…)”. George’s allowed themselves to spoil their only daughter Cecile who in the age of 18 still needn’t to work living of their parent’s inheritance, waiting to find the right, rich husband for her. On the other hand, Zola describes Maheu’s family house where everyone bathed in one room in front of the fire place to keep worm, where the whole family was used to each others nudity and had to bear in mind heavy burden of the circumstances.
Zola describes the state as a violent tool of oppression of working class, “Iron fist inside the velvet glove”. Implying Hegel’s philosophy, who sees beyond the material objects and looks out for inevitable change, workers uprising had to become an effect of cruel and violent nature of the state in XVIII century France.
Inspiration:
Winchester University Journalism Course
History and Context of Journalism Part III Lecture 2
Germinal, Emile Zola
