2.2
Is the Working Class the Subject or Object of History in
Emile Zola's Germinal ?

A lecture/essay by Nathan Hollier

• What is �class'?
• Is the working class the subject or the object of history in Germinal ?

Class

1.1 Brief definitions

Class arises out of the relationship between capital and labour that forms the basis of production in a capitalist society: a common economic relationship, a common culture, a common consciousness.

Class is an event. Categorical and generative definitions of class (from R.W. Connell, Ruling Class, Ruling Culture , 1977).

Class is an expression of the human relations inherent in the form of production that predominates in a society. The study of class is the study of the social structure that arises out of this general mode of production.

Class arises from the fact that in our society, solving the basic economic problems (what to produce, how to produce, and to whom that which is produced should be distributed) necessitates people entering into relations with other people as employees or employers, workers or capitalists.

The structure and nature of our society is an expression of the general relationship between labour and capital. This labour-market relationship determines income, working hours, the nature of work, the amount of leisure we have, the kind of leisure activities we do, the health services available to us, the education we have. It impacts on our understanding of ourselves, our relations with others, our whole degree of power or lack of power over our lives. The nature of this relationship between labour and capital has wide-ranging and thoroughgoing effects that ramify throughout every aspect of our lives.

As Connell explains in Ruling Class, Ruling Culture , Marx develops in Capital (1867), �a theory of class as a structure generated by the operation of some fundamental and highly general processes, whose effects ramify from the labour market into all other spheres of life� (Connell, Ruling Class, Ruling Culture , 4).

1.2 The Contribution of Karl Marx

Most though not all of our ideas about class come from the Karl Marx (b.1818, d.1883). Marx's publications spanned the period between 1836 (three books of poems for his fiancee) and 1880 (�Enquete ouvriere' [inquiry, investigation into work, working]). He wrote The Communist Manifesto with Friedrich Engels in Brussels, Belgium, in 1848. As with any thinker, it is important to keep in mind his historical context when considering his intellectual contribution.

1.3 Historical Context

Class society is something that came into being at a certain time in history as a result of great historical changes. The type we are familiar with [modern class society] came into existence in Euope [over] two centuries ago. At that time a traditional social order was being demolished and replaced. The key to the change was the combination of private ownership (or �property') with industrial production. A new technology, the mass production of goods by means of machines, had been developed. Starting in England in the late-eightenth century, this technology began to replace crafts and hand-work in every sphere of life. Factories spread across the landscape � the �dark Satanic mills' of William Blake, who lived through it � and more and more of the people became factory-workers. Landless and propertyless, they had to sell their labour power to the masters of the factories in order to live. The masters of the factories were those who, under the system of private property, owned the expensive machines and buildings: the capitalists, in the language of the day; or as we call them nowadays, businessmen and shareholders.

The new form of production was vastly more efficient than the old, so workers in the old crafts were driven out of business, and died off or emigrated or became factory-hands. In pursuing their private profits, businessmen were unexpectedly revolutionising the whole society. The old social order of aristocrats, gentry, yeomen, peasants and craftsmen gradually caved in, to be replaced by a new system in which businessmen were unquestionably on top� (Connell & Irving, �Yes Virginia, There is a Ruling Class', in Mayer, Australian Politics: A Fourth Reader , 1976, 81-82).

From the late eighteenth century the Industrial Revolution, especially in Britain, �provided substantial increases in living standards and opportunities for acquisition of great wealth for the new middle class. It was clear that the reasons for economic growth were industrialisation, capital investment, and higher productivity, and that every widening of market opportunities made still further advances possible

To the socialist, however, industrialism had a different face. Workers in the new factories were paid low wages: although factory pay was high enough to draw labour from the countryside, unemployment in rural areas meant that workers were willing to accept very low wages. Hours of work were long, women and children were employed in substantial numbers and often in hard and dangerous jobs, factory discipline was often harsh and rigorous [see that history of getting people to work], and in some areas company-owned stores profited from exclusive selling rights among employees [this is included in Zola's Germinal , in village two-hundred and forty]. Particularly in the textile and coal industries, competition kept selling prices low, and firms competed with each other by squeezing labour costs whenever possible� (Daniel Fusfeld, The Age of the Economist [seventh ed.] 55).

�The realities of industrial life [especially unrestricted free-market forces] created sharp contrasts between the growing wealth of the new industrialists and bankers and the poverty of those without property who formed the work force in the factories of the slum-ridden cities� (Fusfeld, 55).

�Poverty there had always been, and rich and poor had lived side by side for ages. Many people always had to wrest a meager living from a stingy nature. But industrialisation promised abundance. For the first time it seemed as though the economy might be able to produce every thing people could want, and that the great struggle for existence could be resolved. Yet the gray slums of Manchester and the black country of [Zola's] coal mines told a different story. The promise and the reality were vastly different� (Fusfeld, 55).

The other great revolution of this time was the French Revolution of 1789, which promised �liberty, equality, fraternity' but which by and large also failed to deliver these things. �Even where parliamentary government existed, as in England and France, participation was limited to persons with property� (Fusfeld, 56).

Connell and Irving argue that these two revolutions, the industrial and � bourgeois -democratic', �were actually two sides of the same process� (Connell & Irving, �Yes Virginia, There is a Ruling Class', 81-82).

�In some countries such as England, the aristocracy caught on to what was happening and joined the new powers; in others, such as France, they were blown away by revolution. But in either case the restless chick of capitalism could not be contained within the egg-shell of Euope. It broke out to cross the world, bringing more and more countries within its system: as giant markets for exports, like India and China; as sinks for suplus population and capital, such as the United States; and as suppliers of raw materials, such as Argentina and Australia� (Connell & Irving, �Yes Virginia, There is a Ruling Class', 82).

�The Industrial Revolution and the French Revolution apeared to many as means of realising some of the ageless and ancient ideals of Western civilisation � abundance, an end to toil, and the triumph of brotherhood and equality. Yet in the darkness of the post-Napoleonic reaction all this was betrayed, and (economic) depressions seemed to produce even greater poverty and want than before, since the unemployed worker did not have even a small plot of land on which to grow food. To the early socialists it was self-evident that private ownership of the means of production ws the source of society's ills. Ownership of machines, factories, and other capital enabled the owner to reap rich rewards, to sti back and rake in profits while others worked. At the same time, economic position brought political power [the Marxist notion of a ruling class] . . . Society as a whole had been betrayed for the benefit of a few, in the opinion of the [socialist] critics� (Fusfeld, 56).

See also Erib Hobsbawm, The Age of Revolution .

1.4 Marx's Theory of Class

Marx's development of the theory of class needs to be understood within the context of his whole analysis of society and the capitalist economy. His notion of class is integrated within his broader philosophy and social analysis.

Marx is regarded as one of the three great thinkers within the discipline of Economics, along with Adam Smith (1723�1790, a great Scottish expounder of economic liberailsm and the policy of laissez-faire [government abstention from interference in the lives of individuals]) and John Maynard Keynes (1883�1946, who developed a theoretical justification for government intervention in the economy and society).

But he was an interdisciplinary thinker. His work has implications for all of the humanities and social sciences:

�It is difficult to condense the grand scheme of Marx's thought without doing injustice to the power and consistency of his reasoning. The very fact that Marx's argument is long and intricate, with all parts of it logically connected and integrated, makes almost any short summary a falsification� (Fusfeld, 60).

Marx begins from the assumption that all human society is characterised by two great, fundamental struggles: i) human beings against nature; and ii) human beings against each other.

�Two great forces are continually at work in the development of human society . . . The development of technology and improvements in methods of production are one result of that struggle, and in its early stages [Marx thought that] capitalism represented a major step toward abundance [when we would all have as much as we wanted, no-one would be needy]. Factory production and machine technology greatly increased human command over nature, and competitive capitalism [, market forces] forced business firms continually to reinvest their profits in new and better methods of production. Capitalism's failure [in Marx's view] lay in its inability to continue this process and in the periodic breakdowns, or crises, that occurred� (Fusfeld, 66). [These continue to occur, but not as badly as they had done before the analysis developed by Keynes.]

So for Marx, �economic relationships are the fundamental driving force in any society� (Fusfeld, 60). cf. Descartes (�I think therefore I am'), and Hegel and idealism. Marx was a philosophical materialist . (See especially Marx and Engels, The German Ideology , 1845�46).

�In Marx's view, the struggle for existence led to the second great force that causes economic and social change: the struggle of people against people. Human beings are one type of productive resource, and control over them is one way in which a few can increase their wealth and welfare [though, of course, at the expense of others]. Therefore, argued Marx, the struggle for existence inevitably leads to exploitation of some by others� (Fusfeld, 66).

�Early manifestations of this principle�, Marx argued, �were the patriarchal family, the slave-based economy of ancient times, and feudalism� (Fusfeld, 66) [and consider the US].

Feudalism, in turn, �developed into the wage system of capitalism� (Fusfeld, 66).

�Each of these social developments represented a victory in the battle against nature and marked an increase in human freedom � for some, if not all � and each was made possible by advances in technology and the social organisation of production� [in particular, the replacement of traditional means of social organisation with the spread of markets] (Fusfeld, 66).

[Marx did not think that the industrial revolution was a �bad' thing. He supported it (see Hobsbawm). But he thought that the capitalist system was inherently flawed and would over time be replaced by another system: what he called �socialism' and �communism'.]

How are the many exploited by the few within capitalism?

The primary relationship in capitalist society is that between workers and capitalists, or between employees and employers. It is this relationship that makes production (of the many things we need, to live) possible. But this relationship is inherently exploitative. The nature of this general relationship determines personal and group opportunities, experience, and even consciousness.

�Marx started his attack on capitalism with the labour theory of value � (Fusfeld, 61).

This theory, �which was developed by the economic liberals and the classical economists (like Adam Smith), stated that the true value of any product or service was simply the amount of labour used in its production. So a table that takes ten hours of labour to make is worth twice as much as a chair that requires five hours of labour� (Fusfeld, 61). [This theory remains true, as was made clear by the highly successful entrepreneurs interviewed by Michael Gilding in his recent work, The Secrets of the Super Rich .]

�In Marx's view, labour under capitalism is exploited because it is not paid the full value of the products and services it produces. The capitalist employs workers at the current wage rate and works them for as many house each day as possible, making sure that the value of the workers' output is greater than the wages paid. This difference between wage and output value, which Marx called � surplus value ', becomes the capitalist's profit.

[Remember, this is what Ian was talking about in his lecture in week 2: surplus value]

Exploitation of the worker can be intensified, and the surplus value appropriated by the capitalist can be increased, by an employer's efforts to achieve lower wages, longer hours, and employment of a greater number of women and children� (Fusfeld, 61).

�In a capitalist society, according to Marx, the two great economic interests are those of capitalist and worker. These two classes stand in opposition to each other, since the capitalist can prosper only if the worker is exploited (my emphasis). In this respect capitalism is only the latest in a series of [modes of social organisation] in which one class exists at the expense of another (Fusfeld, 61).

As Marx and Engels put it in a famous passage from The Communist Manifesto (1848):

�The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebian, lord and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another . . . The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of fedual society has not done away with class antagonisms. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones� (cf. the fate of the Soviet Union and more recently of Iraq).

Or as Marx wrote in his Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy (1859):

�In the social production which men [sic] carry on they enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a definite stage of development of their material powers of production. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society � the real foundation, on which rise legal and political superstructures and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production in material life determines the general character of the social, political and spiritual process of life�.

So, in order to live people have to produce. In order to produce they must either work or have others work for them. The nature of the work they do, or of the management or profiting from workers that they experience, will be determined by the economy's overall stage of development, or technological advancement. The overall total of these forms of work and relationships between workers and capitalists constitutes the economic structure of society, the economic base , upon which people build legal systems, political systems, systems of social administration, and culture itself, including the arts and learning, and people's way of life, their shared beliefs, values, feelings and sensibility. (�Culture' actually derives etymologically from �cultivate' � so imaginative production � art � is always connected to the labour that makes it possible, as cultivation of the earth made possible leisure time, and so cultivation of the mind). People's understanding of the world is ultimately shaped by these forces of production, the structure of society that comes out of it, and their own position in the class structure, which is also to say, the nature of their economic relationships, of their human relations with other workers and capitalists.

Another form of exploitation:

�Marx saw capitalism as a gigantic mechanism through which the labour time of the worker is transformed first into profits and from profits into capital [; this is one of the strong themes of Zola's Germinal ]. Whereas labour time is owned by the worker, capital is the property of the capitalist [; so the longer people work, the more profit the capitalist can accumulate, the more competitive the firm can be]. In this fashion the capitalist class grows increasingly wealthy out of the labour of the working class: �They coin our very life blood into gold', to quote a radical song from pre-World War I America� (Fusfeld, 61).

There are also psychological effects, as detailed by Zola in Germinal and, arguably, by the writers of all working-class novels:

�Marx viewed work as a continuing interaction between, people, nature, and the product of labour. Work was an essential element in the development of the huma personality, so a full realisation of the self required a full and rich development of the individual's relationship with the means of production and the product. Yet under capitalism the worker is separated from both the fruits of labour and the tools of production, which are the property of the employer. Full development of the self and the personality is prevented. The result is a pervasive alienation [a key Marxist term] that dehumanises all personal and social relationships [essentially, human relations are commodified , reduced to their monetarily measurable dimension; again, there are numerous examples within Germinal ; arguably this is the main theme of the novel], (and) life becomes dehumanised and pointless [think of factory work]. The result is a range of social and psychological pathology that pervades all capitalist society and is inherent in its basic economic relationships� (Fusfeld, 61-62).

As Connell and Irving summarise: �The institution of property . . . produced a system of exploitation by which the owners of capital extracted profit from the labours of the poor. The workers became instruments of profit-making, and in their personal work, a kind of extension of the machine� (Connell & Irving, �Yes Virginia, There is a Ruling Class', 82).

Marx thought that capitalism was doomed, and he set out to prove this through a detailed analysis of capitalism.

�At one level the argument has a moral basis: the inherent injustices of capitalism lead ultimately to economic and social conditions that cannot be maintained. At another level the argument is sociological: class conflict � between a decreasing number of increasingly wealthy capitalists and a growing and increasingly miserable working class � will lead ultimately to social revolution. And, finally, the argument is economic: the accumulation of capital in private hands makes possible economic abundance, yet accumulation also leads to depressions, chronic unemployment, and the economic breakdown of capitalism� (Fusfeld, 62-63).

�At each level [of Marx's analysis] the idea of conflict is emphasised: conflict between (moral) ideal(s) and reality, (social or class conflict) between capital and labour, and (economic conflict) between growth and stagnation� (Fusfeld, 63).

�Marx was quite aware of the possibility that (the economic trends towards stagnation that he identified) could be modified by political and social changes [arguably this is what happened with 1880s �new liberalism' and the 1930s Keynesian �new deal']. Labour unions, originating in the conflict between capital and labour, could reduce exploitation of labour, but Marx feared that opportunistic union leaders might retreat from class conflict in favour of class accommodation. Governments, although dominated by capitalist political interests, could introduce social welfare legislation to strengthen the economic system as a whole. And parliamentary democracy could provide the appearance of popular participation wven while the economic basis of political power was becoming more concentrated. Marx, however, was confident that the underlying economic trends and conflicts would predominate and ultimately create a revolutionary situation in which capitalism would be more or less rapidly transformed into socialism� (Fusfeld, 64).

�Classes develop in interaction (both conflict and alliance) with each other. The class structure develops by the extension of the labour market to engulf other forms of economic organisation [the principle of user pays], and the economic, social and political mobilisation of the groups who appear in the labour market� (Connell, Ruling Class, Ruling Culture , 5).

So to summarise: class is a general relationship that ensues from the general process of production within a society and an economy. To study class is to study the nature of that relationship (between labour and capital), and the impact of that relationship on the individual and society.

In this course we're really concerned with the effects of labour and specific labour-market relations on individual and group experience and consciousness; that is, with the relationship between class and culture.

The Working Class in Germinal : Subject or Object of History?

2.1 Subjects and Objects

As Raymond Williams shows in Keywords , the relationship between subject and object is confused by a history of changing and at some stages reversible meanings.

The word �subject' can mean

• subject to certain influences or rules or even oppressions
• it can refer to a pejorative sense of subjectivity, meaning a limited or biased perception
• but subject can also be related to the position that holds power and agency
• the negative connotations of �subject' should not be forgotten, but it is the connection between subjectivity and agency that is most useful for our purposes here: to say that workers are the subjects of history is to say that they are actively and consciously involved in the creation of that history

The word �object' has similar layers of meaning. It can mean

• to object, or to voice opposition
• it also relates to the notion of objectivity, that an object can be fully perceived as it really is
• and from this it can signify some absence of agency in the object of analysis: to say that the working class is the object of history is to emphasise the extent to which that class is acted upon by larger forces of history

To ask if the wc are the subject or object of history in Germinal is to ask how this novel should be categorised. Is it a �working class' novel? Or, in what sense is it a working-class novel?

The notion of the working class as object of history corresponds to the notion of working-class writing as that writing written about the wc.

The notion of the working class as the subject of history corresponds to the notion of working-class writing as that writing written by the wc.

There is a third understanding of the working class as both the object and subject of history. This is a �dialectical' understanding, in which it is acknowledged that the wc is both acted upon by historical processes and at the same time actively involved in the production, reproduction and perhaps revolutionisation of those historical processes. This dialectical notion of the working class as both the object and subject of history, consistent with the philosophical method of Marx, corresponds to the notion of working-class writing as that written for the working class: that writing which represents the interests of the working class at a particular historical moment.

Dialectical materialism:

�Out of conflict comes change, and for this basic reason, according to Marx, capitalism must give way to another form of society in which conflict is replaced by ethical, social, and economic harmony. Change through conflict is the �dialectical process' by which socialism ws ultimately to replace capitalism� (Fusfeld, 63).

As Robert Heilbroner writes:

�Materialism by itself would reduce ideas to mere passive accompaniments of economic activity. That was never Marx's contention. For the new theory was dialectical as well as materialist: it envisaged change, constant and inherent change; and in that never-ending flux the ideas emanating from one period would help to shape another. �Men make their own history, wrote Marx, commenting on the coup detat of Louis Napoleon in 1852, �but they do not make it just as they please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but under circumstances directly found, given, and transmitted from the past'� (Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers , p.145).

�It is the dialectical force of things that is the centrepiece of (Marx's) vision� (Heilbroner, The Worldly Philosophers , p.145).

On this point Connell and Irving note: �The people exploited in the factory economy were men and women, not machines, who gradually became aware of their common situation and the nature of the historical forces that had shaped their lives. Workers became conscious of being a �working class' [became a class for itself, in the terms used by Marx, as Ian discussed in week 2; see E.P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class ], and they began to act together in resistance to the capitalists. From very early the history of captialism is studded with episodes of opposition: angry weavers breaking the power-looms, factory hands sabotaging machines, workers making joint demands and in the course of time organising unions and developing the technique of the strike� (Connell and Irving, �Yes Virginia', 82).

Connell also writes somewhere that power is always relational: this is a realisation that ensues from a dialectial understanding of history and society.

�Through the nineteenth century a great dichotomy developed in society and a great confrontation developed between the classes. Towards the end of that century the working class went into politics on a large scale, and a strong political resistance to capitalism developed� (Connell and Irving, �Yes Virginia', 82).

So how is Germinal best categorised?

2.2 Class Relations in Germinal

�Published in 1885, Germinal was the thirteenth to appear in the great series of twenty novels to which Zola devoted nearly twenty-five years of his life� (b/w 1870&1893, Tancock, Introduction, 6).

In writing Germinal , Zola is clearly concerned to examine the nature of the economic system in France, class relations as they existed in his time, and the impact of this system and set of social relations on his society generally, and more particularly, its two major classes: the capitalists and the workers, the bourgeois and the proletariat, the ruling-class and the working-class, the employers and the employees. Living in the age of European positivist scientism, and being born into the bourgeois, Zola attempted to depict society in the most scientific, value-free way. Consequently his work is generally described as having a �naturalist' aesthetic. This tends to be accompanied by a scientistic attitude to society. In Germinal he focuses, accordingly, on the social system, and is loathe to pass judgement on people, though at times it is possible to identify his subjective views. Given his focus on the system and his ostensible refusal or at least reluctance to take sides in his depiction of the French class structure, it is possible to think of the book as possessing a liberal ideology. Tancock, in writing the introduction, reads the book in this way. But it is also possible to see Germinal as an attack on the system. I think it makes more sense to see the book as this: an attack on the French capitalist society, which takes as its primary target of criticism the system, rather than the members of the bourgeois.

Class relations and conflict provide the drama of Germinal .

Zola focuses on the capitalist social and economic system rather than only on the wc, though he does spend more time looking at the wc.

I think it is beyond question that class relations in Germinal are depicted as exploitative, cf. L.W. Tancock's argument in the introduction.

Zola is aware and critical of the cycle of capitalist production: boom and bust:

Bonnemort: � �Oh, plenty of factories, and no mistake! Should have seen them three or four years ago. Everything humming, couldn't find enough men, never were such profits. And now we're all tightening our belts again. The whole place is a misery: factories closing down and peole being sacked right and left� (22). See also pp.146, 149.

The workers are shown to be the products of their environment, the objects of history, acted upon:

• They have to work very hard
• They have to work long hours
• Both the young and old work in the mine
• They are alienated from the products of their labour
• They do not receive enough money to ever achieve freedom from the reliance on labour
• Because they don't have very much money they are hungry often and physically stunted
• They are prone to physical and mental illness
• They live with more or less permanent anxiety
• They must beg and prostitute themselves (often literally, but as often metaphorically: consider the coal-mining �auction', p.147) for money, the means of existence
• They have very little formal education, because of the need to work and get money
• Their relations with other members of their family are brutal, unmediated (eg they have to live on top of each other)
• Their relations with other members of their class are defined by resentment and greed
• They lack the courage to stand up and demand respect from members of the employer class
• Their forms of entertainment are basely physical: namely alcohol and sex
• They have very little �culture', in the sense of the arts and learning; their lives are not cultivated; everything just happens (eg childbirth, Zola's mc fear of wc overpopulation, cf. first and third world)
• They are depicted as beastlike, animalistic, pp.337-339
• The mine is also depicted as a beast, making it explicit that the workers are products of their working environment

The Le Voreux mine is a symbol of capitalism, cf. Marx's steamtrain:

�the pit was evil-looking, a voracious beast crouching ready to devour the world� (21, cf. Connell & Irving).

Cf. �vorace': voracious, greedy, ravenous, gluttonous

�All along the road frm the silent village to the panting Le Voreaux a line of shadows tramped slowly through the blast� (37).

�the pit gulped down men in mouthfuls of twenty or thirty and so easily that it did not seem to notice them going down� (39).

�Like some nocturnal beast the cage, with its four decks each containing two tubs, leaped noiselessly up out of the darkness and settled itself on its keeps� (39).

�The hunger of this giant maw could swallow up a whole people� (40).

The workers become extensions of the machine, and so also beast-like:

Jeanlin's face is �like a small, frizzy-haired monkey's� (31).

Getting up in the morning, �Shirts flew through the air, and they shamelessly relieved the night's distension with the calm familiarity of a litter of puppies brought up together� (31).

Maheu is down on himself for falling asleep before getting up to go to work.

�Though they were shivering in their thin clothes, they did not quicken step, but plodded on, strung out along the road like a trampling herd� (37, here, the specific connotion is a lack of brain, agency).

�A muffled and unintelligible order was bellowed into the megaphone and the rope was pulled four times � the �meat-call' as it was termed � to warn them at the bottom that a load of human flesh ws coming down� (39).

�nothing could be heard but the regular calls of the boys and the snorting of the haulage girls as they reached the incline, all steaming like overloaded mares� (55).

Etienne �was accepted and looked upon as a real miner, as the crushing mould of habit pressed him a little more each day into the likeness of an automaton� (138).

[It can be seen that the effects of the labour-market relationship ramify throughout almost every aspect of their life. You could say that this is because they are from a country that is by our current standards poor, but it is the inequality that is at issue]

But the wc are also shown to possess a degree of agency:

• They know that their interests are different from those of their employers
• They know that they are treated badly
• They take pride in their work and in themselves
• They can enjoy humour
• They are not unintelligent
• They are capable of direct action

Part 3, chap2: a chapter celebrating wc culture, cf. Tressell's Ragged Trousered Philanthropists and Agnes Smedley's DoE, p.149.

The workers have pride in their work and in their physical strength.

Mouquette �nearly exploded with indignation� when �somebody had accused her of going with a nailmaker� . . . declaring that she had more self-respect, that she would cut off one of her arms if anyone could claim to have seen her with anybody else but a miner� (41).

The miners can enjoy humour, and the simple things.

There is an appealing earthiness to them.

Zola shows the skills of the workers, and does not depict them as unintelligent (eg 53).

The same goes for the bourgeois: they are the products of their environment but also have a degree of agency. They are not simply evil, and have the capacity for independent thought and behaviour. See pp.81-83

Further egs.

Part One

Makes apparent the effects of the general relationship between capital and labour: the class structure.

The workers are economically poor, politically downtrodden, culturally undeveloped.

The mining firm, according to Bonnemort, is � �Perhaps not quite so rich as the Anzin Company � that's our neighbour � but even so, millions and millions. You lose count.'� (26)

The low wages are mainly a result of unemployment, the reserve army of unemployed: this is made clear at the start, through the experience of Etienne.

Maheu says: � �You know, we could easily be in his shoes. We ought to be thankful. It isn't everybody that's worn out with work!'� (40-41, even though he and his family are living at starvation point).

�So far (Etienne) was only too glad to have found this galley-slave job, and he accepted the brutal rule of the skilled over the unskilled� (55).

The same can be said for the poor working conditions: �Fear of losing precious time made them heedless of danger� (51, greed or need? Cf. Tancock).

Long working hours and long working lifetimes

The black humour of �Bonnemort': �servant of death'.

� �Fifty years as miner and forty-five of them underground. Not so bad, is it?'� (25).

Children and old people working

The work is physically very demanding and uncomfortable

Hot, damp and wet, and see the experience of Etienne: 54

Poverty and want

�It isn't every day you see any meat.'
�If you even got bread . . .'
�Yes, that's a fact; if you even got bread.'� (22)

Poverty and hunger leads to stress and anxiety

� �Oh Lord!�, says Maheude, �what am I going to do? Six more days! They'll never end . . . And she went on in a doleful voice'� (33).

Poor health

�The old man could not answer at once for he was choked by a vilent fit of coughing. In the end he spat, and his spittle showed up as a black patch on the ground reddened by the glow� (21, pthisis?).

� �I never used to cough, and now I can't shake it off. And the funny thing is that I spit and I spit . . .' (25).

Maheude is �already worn out at thirty-nine, owing to her life of poverty and the seven children she had had� (33).

Catharine has �the virginity of a child whose puberty has been retarded by the conditions of bad air and fatigue in which she lived� (58).

Very little formal education and no general means of social advancement:

�Oh yes, it wasn't yesterday that he (Bonnemort) and his had begun picking at the seams! His family ahd worked for the Montsou mine ever since the beginning, and that went back a long way, a hundred and six years� (26, Zola points a little ironically to the man's pride in how long he and his family have been working there):

�You did this job from father to son, just like anything else. His son Toussaint Maheu was killing himself at it now, and hs grandchildren and all his lot; they all lived in the village, up there. A hundred and six years of cutting, the kids after the old ones, and all for the same firm. Plenty of posh people couldn'' have said as much, eh?� (26).

Bonnemort has no understanding of who owns the mine, the shareholders:

"�What? Who does this belong to? God knows . . . People. . . .' And he pointed to some vague unknown distant spot in the night, where these people lived for whom the Maheus had been hacking at the seam fo a hundred and six years. His voice had taken on a kind of religious awe, as though he were speaking of some inaccessible tabernacle, where dwelt unseen the gorged and crouching deity whom they all appeased with their flesh but whom nobody had ever seen� (27)

Catherine believes in �The Black Man' (58).

As a result of the lack of education, the workers are often in awe of the wealthy.

�Stuck on the walls were some highly-coloured prints � the standard portraits of the Emporor and Empres presented by the Company, soldiers and saints with plenty of gilt on � which contrasted violently with the bare lightness of the room� (35).

On hearing that Etienne was sacked for hitting a chief, �all (Catherine's) inherited ideas of subordination and passive obedience were turned upside down, and she remained speechless� (56).

Degraded human relations

The people live on top of each other, sharing beds (29). They have no birth control or family planning.

The workers can't access medical services. The doctor ignores Maheude.

Everyone is tired. The parents are abusive to the children. The children are abusive to each other.

The only entertainment is basely physical: sexual gratification and alcohol, eg Mouqette with men. And re alcohol: �Mouqette was explaining to them that Fleurance would not be coming any more: she had been found the day before laid out stiff on her bed � some said a heart-attack, others a litre of gin swallowed too fast� (42).

�These brick walls, built as cheapy as possible by the Company, were so flimsy that the slightest breath could be head through, and no detail of private life was hidden, even from the children� (31).

La Levaque sleeps with her lodger Bouteloup for more money (31).

Zacharie refers to the mother of his illegitimate children as a �lazy pig!� because she sleeps until 6am (32).

Maheude

�gradually had to raise her voice so as not to have her words drowned by Estelle. The noise was getting unbearable and Maheu suddenly seemed to become aware of it, for he picked the child out of her cradle and flung her on to her mother's bed, shouting in a frenzy of rage: �Here, you take her; I could bash her hed in . . . The brat has got very blody thing she wants, she has a suck of milk whenever she likes, and yet she grouses louder than anybody else!�'� (34).

When Etienne asks what happens if the cable taking the miners down breaks, the other miner replies � �Oh well! � it just breaks . . .'� (40).

Part 2

Cf. the depiction of the Gregoires, pp.81-83

The Gregoires are also depicted as people who think of themselves as not greedy, and as �good' people, p.84

Conclusion

I think Zola has real sympathy for the wc and is basically on their side in this novel, politically and aesthetically (see the account of the miners at his funeral in the SR), but he is not convinced by the options of socialism and revolution being put forward by political radicals of the time. He was frightened of this social outcome and by the wc generally. This is best seen in his descriptions of the rebelling wc as a disturbingly powerful (if also perhaps beautiful) natural, animalistic force.

Cf. W.B. Yeats responding to the Easter Uprising in Ireland (1916?) by suggesting that �a terrible beauty had been born'.

Cf. Betty Collins in The Copper Crucible : �in the mind of those children was the knowledge that a strike was a grand and beautiful thing�.

When the workers revolt, they are depicted as out of control and largely incapable of rational collective action.

A crucial point is that this novel was written mainly for a mc readership, the only readership with real purchasing power at this time. I think the novel is ultimately a warning to the mc: these people have justice on their side and if they act brutally we can't really blame them. The obvious implication is that the mc should think about trying to reform the social and economic system, though Zola is reluctant to put �messages' into his fiction, due to his commitment to intellectual scientism and aesthetic naturalism.

I think the novel is about the wc, though not by a wc writer. Is it for the wc? We can talk about that in tutes.