The Assommoir

Emile Zola 91840-1902) is one of the greatest French authors of the literary movement called Naturalism. In his many works Zola explores all of French society in graphic detail using slang, profanity, degradation and vice. This 1876 work "The Drinking Den" (the title has been variously translated through the years) is a graphic account of the life of a poor Parisian washerwoman named Gervaise. Gervaise arrives in Paris with her lover the odious Lantier. He leaves her and their two children for the readily available drinking dens and fleshpots of the City of Light. Gervaise falls in love and marries a reputable roofer named Coupeau. Although Gervaise does not get on well with Coupeau's new family the couple produce a child Nana and live a relatively happy life. All of this changes with dramatic force when Coupeau falls from a roof making it impossible for him to work full time. Gervaise opens her own laundry but the years take their toll. At the novel's end she dies a drunken obese old woman scorned by society and her family. Their daughter Nana lives the life of a prostitute. Prior to the sad end the unfortuante Gervaise was involved in a seedy menage a trois with Lantier and Coupeau! In the Penguin translation their are many expletives which are used and scenes of bawdy drunken and brutal behavior. A touching character is a young girl who dies at the age of eight. The girl had been viciously beaten by her father as she sought to protect her younger siblings from his wrathful behavior. If you want to be cheered up look elsewhere! Naturalism is gritty and shows life without illusion. Zola was a defender of Dreyfus and a champion for the poor. His style is journalistic and almost scientific in the way his characters are examined under the literary microscope he uses with genius.

Zola is not for everyone, it can be difficult to get through at times, but this is definately one of the best in the R-M cycle. Incredibly interesting descriptions of people and Paris. I liked this Penguin translation much better than the Oxford edition (very British).

I absolutely loved this book. It was successful both as a thrilling story and as a devastating commentary on the plight of the Parisian working class in the nineteenth century (although I am sure that it still has a lot of validity). You can't help getting drawn into the story-and you won't be able to put the book down-I don't think it aged at all. Gervaise is a heroine you can't help rooting for. She's poor and hardworking, and like the other proletariat in the story, often referred to by her profession-laundress. She wants a better life for herself after her lover abandons her with their two sons. Pretty and industrious, she soon gets a suitor, who works on roofs. She doesn't want to give in to his advances because she doesn't want any more illegitimate children to deal with on her own. However, her suitor has noble intentions and marries her. They so want the dignity and security of middle-class life that you ache for them. At at first they seem able to achieve it. They work hard, save, and begin to have a nice home and a happy marriage. However, when Gervaise's husband has a tragic accident, we soon realize how precarious working class life is-then, as it still inexcusably is NOW. Without his income, Gervaise will be living very precariously. The real tragic pull of the story is that they almost made it-but then this accident plunges them into all kinds of problems-financial ruin, and ultimately alcoholism, adultery, broken health, and misery. It was so sad to see this family once desperately clinging to decency when all odds were against them, and then surrendering to poverty and humiliation, filth and addiction. I loved this book so much, and found its ending so sad and haunting. I had to get the sequel, about Gervaise's ill-fated daughter "Nana", who becomes a courtesan, which is kind of predictable since she was so neglected and happened to be beautiful so she had a way out of her poverty-at least temporarily. (Gervaise's son is the hero of Germinal). It was good, but not as good as this. I think this is a magnificent book, and Zola at his best.

There are few novels as bleak and unrelenting as this one, at least in my reading experience. Over 500 pages, you witness the aspirations and grotesque decline of a working-class family into alcoholism, promiscuity, and violence. It is so awful, the blows so continual and harsh, that only the most committed of readers will be able to get through it. But for those that do, I believe there are great rewards. On many levels, this book broke new ground. First, it is a clinical dissection of the progression of alcoholism, based on direct observation by Zola and scientific research, describing not only its symptoms in gory detail, but its impact on a family. Second, it was one of the first attempts to portray the working class realistically, rather than as a sterotype of inferior crudity or romanticised as noble savages. THis spawned an entire genre of socially relevant novels and is a great contribution. Third, it introduced an entirely new vocabulary into French art, that is, the gutter argot that the Academie Francaise condemned as unsuitable. Taken together, these are remarkable acheivements.While I hesitate to reveal the plot, I assume that most readers will know it in outline. It involves a good person - a hard-working laundress with dreams of running her own shop - who marries a neighbor a few weeks after her lover leaves her with two children in Paris. For many years, things go well: they love eachother, work very hard and save money, and live cleanly. THen, after a terrible accident, the husband begins to drink, which initiates a downward spiral that is so painful to follow: his work suffers, then his marriage, and finally his health. The laundress, who is so sympathetic and full of hopes, is simply crushed under the burden of supporting everyone financially and emotionally. SHe wants to do what is right and fails utterly, helpless to halt the destruction she is witnessing. In addition, her many enemies, such as her spiteful in-laws and neighborhood gossips, add cruel twists to her decline.The heroine's misery and debasement are monuments to naturalist realism, through which Zola aspired to show things as they really are: there is none of the growth and romantic redemption that one expects in Anglo-saxon novels from the same period of the late 19C. On a broader longitudinal scheme, the novel also shows the backgrounds of two of Zola's most important characters, the half-siblings Nana and Etienne, who are the central characters in two truly great novels that follow (Nana and Germinal). FInally, it adds a crucial dimension to the portrait of 2nd-Empire France, that of the working class. Recommended as a truly historic novel. However, the reader is warned that there is little pleasure in store.

One need go no further than the title of the book, dervied from the French verb "assommer"- to beat down, to understand that this will be a brutally and painfully realistic work. Zola is true to this expectation. Emile Zola had a thunderous impact on both nineteenth century French literature and political culture. Not only did he decry blatant injustice through his works, but to a large extent, he sacrificed his livelihood in espousing the cause of Captain Dreyfus through his tract "J'accuse!". Zola's sincere moral beliefs will surprise no one who has read his works. The passion with which the novels that comprise the Rougon series are written is a rarity. Having read five or six of these novels, I find that the charcter of Gervaise in L'Assomoir is both the most real and the most endearing. As opposed to Nana who is often perceived by readers as cold and merciless, Gervaise is a simple, hard-working woman who suffers a tourmented life. Zola's classic naturalist descriptions of the bars and the consumption of absinthe are priceless. In fact, Gervaise's suffering almost (but not quite)enables us to justify the actions of her daughter Nana in the subsequent book of the series. For anyone who is interested in sampling Zola's mastery and sincere passion, this book is a must read.