The happiness of the Rougon family

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Title page of the first edition

The happiness of the Rougon family ( French La Fortune des Rougon ), first edition 1871, is the first volume of Émile Zola's monumental twenty-volume Rougon-Macquart cycle . The story is based in part on real events. It describes events surrounding the coup of Napoleon III. in December 1851 in the fictional small town of Plassans in southern France .

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After an exciting opening, a young couple breaks out of the city of Plassans with the Republican military on the evening of the coup d'état. In the following chapters, Zola describes the pre-revolutionary province. The town of Plassans, setting of the novel, is detailed before the reader meets the eccentric heroine Adelaide Fouquet, who is later called Aunt Dide. She is the ancestor of the Rougon and Macquart families. Their rightful son from a short marriage, a laborer named Rougon, works on Dide's land. Dide's later relationship with the smuggler , poacher and alcoholic Macquart has two illegitimate children, a boy and a girl. Dide is progressively falling into a state of illness and senile dementia.

Two storylines follow the fates of both branches of the family. We see Pierre Rougon, the legitimate son, in his attempts to disinherit his Macquart half-siblings, his wedding to Felicité Puech, the voracious daughter of a small trader, and his repeatedly failed attempts to make his fortune. He strives for fame and a high standard of living. The aging couple lived at the lower middle class level until they received news from Paris from their eldest son Eugène . Eugène is one of Napoleon III's closest collaborators. and informs his parents of the impending coup. Provided with inside information, the Rougons gather like-minded people, mainly monarchists , and hold regular conspiratorial meetings in their living room, the so-called Yellow Salon . They gain influence over the conspirators who fear that they will bet on the wrong horse and lose their property and luck.

Here the story turns to the Macquart branch of the family. The Macquarts have to work hard to survive. They are the descendants of an alcoholic and a mentally ill person and thus condemned to a hard and miserable life. Zola's theories of genetic inheritance, which are explained in the foreword to the novel, run through the entire Rougon-Macquart cycle. Of great importance until the first half of the 20th century, Zola's theories are now generally regarded as discredited. They are present in all novels, with the plot serving to present these "scientific" theses.

A third branch of the family, the Mourets, descended from Macquart and Dide's daughter. The Mourets are introduced before the plot returns on the night of the coup. The idealistic but naive Silvère Mouret loves Miette Chantegreil, for whom he has long courted. They decide to join Republican forces to put down the coup. As the story progresses, the Rougon couple develop a plan to overwhelm the Republicans who remained in Plassans in the town hall. The plan works. The rougons gain the favor of the emperor through their "heroic deed". The youngest son of the Rougons, the Republican journalist Aristide Rougon, takes the side of the new rulers after initial hesitation. In the novel Die Beute he goes to Paris, where he gets rich through real estate deals under the name Saccard. Miette is killed in a clash with Napoleonic troops. Silvère is captured. He is brought back to Plassans and shot there.

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