11 - Zola’s utopias

Summary

Zola is a pivotal figure in late nineteenth-century French culture. His works both attracted and alienated key figures of the time. He moved from a phase of literary recognition to a late career marked by political and social utopianism. He is best known as the author of L'Assommoir, and for his open letter to the President of the Third Republic written in defence of Alfred Dreyfus. To art lovers, he is the journalist whose art criticism called for recognition of Edouard Manet and the Impressionists. To informed readers, he is the father of naturalism and the author of Les Rougon-Macquart. To students of literature, he is the writer who wanted to infuse scientific rigour into fiction. The experiments of Claude Bernard influenced Zola's literary theories, and Hippolyte Taine's trinity of race, milieu and moment determined the lives of his characters. To his biographers, Zola is a multifaceted man drawn to science and politics; concerned with social ills and their potential solutions; a staunch supporter of secularism in education; and an enthusiast of technological innovations like electricity. From Zola's biographies, a psychological portrait emerges of an obdurate believer in progress who 'frequently succumbed to one or another of the various forms of pessimism then circulating in France'.