Germinal by Émile Zola

“There’s only one thing that warms my heart, and that is the thought that we are going to sweep away these bourgeois.”

When I start reading a classic novel, I usually begin with the introduction. True, this section has a tendency to spoil plot points from the story, but I like getting a little background on what I'm about to read before I begin. I feel like the trade-off is worth it because it helps me understand the story better. When I picked up Émile Zola's Germinal, I had every intention of doing the same. However, things didn't go as planned. The introduction in my edition, written by Robert Lethbridge, a noted professor of French language and literature, was almost unintelligible to me. It was written at such a scholarly level that I soon realized I was wasting my time and actually gave up on it - something I very rarely do. What I was able to grasp before I stopped reading was that this book was about the abuses of the coal-mining industry in the 1860s, that Zola scrupulously researched the topic before writing it, and that it is considered a masterpiece of French literature. Armed with that small bit of knowledge, I flipped forward to the novel and started reading.

The novel begins with Étienne Lantier, a young man who is traveling through France in search of work. He is almost starving and on the brink of despair. Through a stroke of luck, he manages to find a job pushing a cart in a coal mine in the small mining town of Montsou. He soon discovers that working in the mine is dangerous, painful, and exhausting. Furthermore, the pay is so little that all of the miners live in poverty, despite performing backbreaking labor nearly every day.  He is tempted to quit after his very first shift, despite his precarious circumstances, but he sticks it out and eventually settles into the job. He even begins to excel in his position and is promoted up the ranks quickly. After a little time passes, he befriends a group of his coworkers, the Maheu family, and moves in with them. He develops feelings for their teenage daughter Catherine, but the circumstances never line up properly for him to act on them.

Through correspondence with an old acquaintance, Étienne becomes interested in socialism. He begins reading socialist books and learning all he can about the subject. Fed up with the dangerous conditions of the mine and the shabby treatment of the workers, revolutionary ideas begin to brew in his mind. When the company introduces a new compensation structure designed to reduce worker pay, he makes a concrete plan and leads his coworkers in a massive strike. Most of the novel is centered around this strike and its aftermath, which Étienne leads masterfully in its early days. However, as the weeks drag on, and people begin to truly starve, he loses control of the situation. As the workers become more desperate, violence erupts and events spiral towards a dangerous conclusion.

Reading this novel was quite the experience. It's one of those books that feels epic; I was out of breath when I finished reading it. Zola masterfully describes the town of Mountsou, the Le Voreux mine, and the people that inhabit them both with a level of detail that truly brings the reader into the story. His descriptions of the mine are especially artistic, as he uses imagery of a monster to show the scope and danger of the place:

"[The miner's] turn had come, the cage reappeared, with its slick, effortless movement. He squatted down inside one of the tubs with his workmates, it plunged down again, then, barely four minutes later, it surged back up again, ready to swallow down another load of men. For half an hour the pit gulped down these meals, in more or less greedy mouthfuls, depending on the depth of the level they were bound for, but without ever stopping, always hungry, its giant bowels capable of digesting a nation. It filled, and filled again, and the dark depths remained silent as the cage rose up from the void, silently opening its gaping jaws."

Indeed, Zola spends a lot of time on the little things, especially the day to day lives of the miners. Their clothing, meals, relationships, and daily routines fill the pages of the novel, teaching the reader the depth of their poverty and the consequences of their ignorance. I was uncomfortable by some of this characterization; the miners are shown to be coarse, dirty, violent, and promiscuous. It felt mean, or perhaps stereotypical at first, but I eventually came to interpret this depiction as a further comment on how a systematic abuse of power by the wealthy can cripple a people. They behave in this way because they know no better, or see no reason to act differently. Their lives were a misery from which they couldn't escape. Why not drink as much as you can or take pleasure wherever you can find it?

Despite being very informative, this level of detail felt oppressive in the first few hundred pages of the novel. I struggled to get into the story throughout it's initial sections. I fared a little better once the strike started, and was fully engaged in the story once the last big event of the novel started up. Germinal's ending is moving and powerful - probably one of the best endings I have read in a classic novel. It very nearly made me forget my earlier boredom and helped me to understand why this is considered to be a masterpiece of French literature. I hadn't heard of this novel before I started doing research on what I wanted to read for my Back to the Classics Challenge, but I'm happy to have found it. Reading this was quite the intricate experience. I feel like I've spent time in the coal mines, marched in a strike, and survived a great disaster - I even feel like calling people "comrade" now, but I suspect that will wear off soon.

Germinal reminded me a lot of The Jungle, Upton Sinclair's exposé on the meat-packing industry's exploitative practices in the early 1900s, which I read last year. Both novels explore the abuse of the working class by the wealthy, and both advocate a socialism as the solution to this problem. However, where The Jungle ends with a cheerful lecture on the benefits of socialism, Germinal explores the difficulty of trying to implement a revolution and force a switch to a new form of government. Étienne's strike is difficult and results in loss of life, making him question the wisdom of trying to change the social order in the first place. When on the brink of death, later in the novel, Étienne expresses this conflict:

"A need for peace and an uncontrollable need for happiness invaded him, and he pictured himself married, in a nice clean little house, with no other ambition than for the two of them to live and die together inside it. They would only need a little bread to eat, and even if there was only enough for one of them, he would give her the whole piece. What was the point of wanting anything else? Was there anything in life worth more than that?"

I enjoyed Zola's more nuanced approach to the topic because it felt human. It acknowledged the regrets and uncertainty which would assuredly accompany a workers' revolt, something Sinclair's work didn't attempt. Germinal also did a better job developing its characters, lending a depth to the novel that The Jungle didn't have. While Zola's characters were still a bit on the flat side, they at least had recognizable personalities and desires. Between the two, I feel like Germinal was the stronger piece. It's a shame that more American readers haven't heard of it.

The title of Germinal refers to a spring month on the French Republican calendar. Just as the name implies, the ideas of rebirth and new growth are the themes that the novel ultimately lands on, and despite all of the difficulties and losses that Étienne and his friends struggle through, the novel ends with hope. The initial strike doesn't end up achieving what they'd hoped for, but Étienne remains confident that the new ideas it planted in everyone's hearts will one day mature and grow into another revolution that will help them claim the equality and safety they deserve. This is a novel full of big ideas, layered meaning, and deep emotions. In retrospect, t's not a surprise that I didn't understand the introduction to the novel. There's so much to talk about here that a professor like Robert Lethbridge probably couldn't help but slip into full-on academic mode. Germinal is a unique and historically significant work that is well worth a read. I know that the impression it made on me won't be fading away anytime soon.


Challenge Tally
Back to the Classics:(a classic in translation) 5/12
Classics Club: (#32 on my list) 5/100
Popsugar Challenge: (a book by an author from a country you have never visited - France) 19/40
Mount TBR: (previously owned) 14/60