Nineteenth-century French novels have a lot to say about our 21st-century world. And I'm not just talking about Jules Verne books that predicted some of today's technological advances.
I'm also talking about Honore de Balzac's Eugenie Grandet, which features a selfish rich guy like many of the wealthy in 2011. And Victor Hugo's Les Miserables, with its overzealous police inspector reminiscent of the cops who broke up the admirable Occupy encampments. And Emile Zola's Germinal, with its abused working class. And Zola's Ladies' Delight, in which a "big box" store crushes mom-and-pop businesses.
The topicality of these and various other 19th-century French novels is one reason why I think they rival that century's superb literature from England (Austen, Dickens, the Brontes, etc.); Russia (Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, Turgenev, etc.); and the United States (Melville, Hawthorne, Twain, etc.). Plus many of these French novels are great reads!
Stendahl (pen name of Marie-Henri Beyle) was a pioneer of realism in early-19th-century French literature with The Red and the Black and The Charterhouse of Parma, but it was Balzac and Zola who are better known for showing fictional characters in the context of the real-world milieu that (along with heredity) shaped their personalities and actions.
Balzac and Zola were also much more frank than their 19th-century English, Russian, and American counterparts in depicting sexual situations -- meaning the two French authors were very 21st century in that way. The bedroom scenes in Balzac's The Magic Skin and Zola's Nana and The Beast in Man may not be quite "NC-17," but they're certainly a solid "R"!
This dynamic duo also made the imaginative leap of putting the same characters in multiple novels. For instance, painter Claude Lantier is a secondary character in Zola's The Belly of Paris before Claude's somewhat older self becomes the main protagonist in Zola's The Masterpiece -- one of the best books ever written about a "starving artist" starved for recognition.
Balzac called his overlapping novels (including the great Old Goriot) "The Human Comedy." Zola's interconnected, "naturalistic" novels came under the heading of the Rougon-Macquart series -- after the multigenerational family branches depicted in a cycle of 20 books. Multigenerational sagas are certainly a staple of modern literature, as exemplified by John Steinbeck's East of Eden and more recent novels such as Jeffrey Eugenides' Middlesex and Junot Diaz's The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.
But I'm focusing too much on Balzac and Zola! There was also Gustave Flaubert, who wrote the acclaimed Madame Bovary; Victor Hugo, who mesmerized readers with The Hunchback of Notre Dame and the aforementioned Les Miserables; and Guy de Maupassant, who was best known for short stories such as "The Necklace" but penned novels, too.
Of course we can't forget Alexandre Dumas, author of the revenge epic The Count of Monte Cristo and the swashbuckling The Three Musketeers. Indeed, Dumas' novels were more varied than he's often given credit for. His The Black Tulip, for instance, managed to make a Dutch flower competition highly exciting. And the partly black Dumas used his memorable Georges novel to address racial tensions -- an issue still very much with us today.
Men unfortunately dominated 19th-century French literature. One exception was George Sand (pen name of Amantine Lucile Aurore Dupin), who authored novels such as Mauprat and Consuelo. This 1800s woman had a modern sensibility when it came to things like gender roles.
Then there was Colette, whose first book was published in 1900 and thus qualifies for inclusion in this post if one believes centuries end in a "00" rather than "99" year! Her Claudine at School debut is the tale of a teen girl that I liken to Charles Dickens' The Posthumous Papers of the Pickwick Club in that both were laugh-out-loud early novels by authors who upped the seriousness quotient in their subsequent, more sophisticated books. Colette's psychologically astute novels, which often addressed the place of women in society, still speak to us strongly in 2011.
Yes, the 1800s were quite a time for authors in France -- and their work continues to resonate long after their deaths.
Which 19th-century French novels are your favorites?
I agree that Camus' "The Plague" was a riveting book. I'm very glad you mentioned it!
I have to add that is one of the best things about my Kindle-the classics, often for free. I downsized drastically some years back and my Kindle is one way I can keep the books I love and go back to the classics I've missed.
Thanks to all for the suggestions!
Your point about the Naturalist movement is very timely as they reacted to the crassly excessive exploitation of the oligarchs of the 1st Gilded Age just as that of the financiers in this Gilded Age. I studied Melville, Stephen Crane, Ambrose Bierce, & Theodore Dreiser in depth & can confirm thier influence by Zola & other French novelists.
I was also reminded of reading Flaubert's Salammbô in the 80s & was stunned by the power of if Flaubert's prose. His indictment of the bourgeois in Biovary is again as timely now as it in the mid-19th Century.
Don't discount Jules Verne who set the 1st milestone at the dawn of science fiction either. At the zenith of the recent French-bashing era I recall having worked with French engineers in the Silicon Valley & defending their science & technology, which was topnotch IMO. The work of Mdm. Curie & Louis Pasteur was crucial in creating our modern world; their great science made for excellent scifi.
Excellent point about influences. You're absolutely right that Zola (who was influenced by Balzac) was among the writers who had a big impact on Crane, Dreiser, Bierce, and others. As an aside, aren't Bierce's ghost and horror stories amazing?
I realize the way I mentioned Jules Verne in my post's first paragraph may have made it seem like I was slighting him, but I'm actually a big fan of his compelling novels. He and (the somewhat later) H.G. Wells of England were definitely among the pioneers of science fiction. And that's an astute point you made about how France's groundbreaking scientists undoubtedly inspired sci-fi writers.
I really enjoyed reading the names of all the authors who have enchanted my teenage years and keep delighting me now.
I have a particular fondness for Dumas' La Reine Margot and La dame de Monsoreau, because of the humor, even though Le comte de Monte Cristo is in my opinion his masterpiece. Joseph Balsamo is also an amazing book, but not as well-known. Let's not forget the work of his son, La Dame aux Camélias is also an timeless story.
In Balzac's work, my favorites are Les illusions perdues and Splendeur et Misère des Courtisanes.
I love Stendahl's La Chartreuse de Parme and every of his other novels, but I don't enjoy Flaubert's writing.
As for Zola, we read so much of him in junior high and in the first years of high school that he is pretty much considered a must read for teenagers, but not many adults keep reading him after turning 18.
And I have to mention the early XIXth century writers: Chateaubriand and Musset.
You could also name Mme de Staël, even though she is more associated with the end of the XVIIIth century and most of her work is unreadable anyway.
My God, what a book! I expected a great adventure story, and I got one, but I was unprepared for the depth of its literary merit -- I had always assumed the Musketeers was kind of a potboiler Dumas knocked off to pay the rent between "serious" novels. But Pevear's gorgeous modern translation (which restores the bawdy elements previously bowlderized for delicate American sensibilities) really opened my eyes. Both a ripping-good yarn and top-shelf literature.
I remember visiting the Pantheon in Paris, where a number of great French writers are buried. And off the port area of Marseille, I got to see the Chateau d'If -- which figures prominently in "The Count of Monte Cristo." And in the countryside near Aix-en-Provence, I climbed Mont Saint-Victoire and saw the dam Zola's father built. And in "downtown" Aix, I saw the statue of Zola's boyhood friend -- the painter Cezanne, who was one of the inspirations for Zola's novel "The Masterpiece" (which Cezanne apparently wasn't too happy about). "Literary travel" is great.
Thanks, pr0gressivist, for sharing your memories and making me think about mine!
Lexis De Rothschild
"The Cat Letters"