A Love Story Read online

Then, half-fainting, she uttered a stifled cry: ‘Maman, Maman!’ without it being possible to detect if she was crying to her mother for help or if she was accusing her of sending her those ills which were causing her such agony. (p. 211)

  As Susan Harrow remarks, if Jeanne blames her mother for her agony, it is as the woman she is afraid to become. ‘Acutely aware of her sexually maturing body, she views the doctor, her mother’s lover, as her seducer, and his cure as a form of sexual violation.’6 The description of Jeanne on her sickbed, close to death, gives a clear indication of the psychosomatic nature, and essential significance, of her illness:

  as soon as Henri’s fingers touched her, a sort of jolt went through her body... She saw her nakedness, she sobbed in shame, rapidly drawing the sheet up round her. In her agony she seemed to have aged ten years all at once, and, near to death, her twelve years were enough to understand that this man should not touch either her, or her mother through her. (p. 239)

  ‘Her willed death’, Harrow comments, ‘preserves Jeanne from the transition to womanhood and provides an escape from desire: her mother’s and her own. In the death of Jeanne, the mother and her lover are separated [and] the child is freed from her own trial of desire . . . [D]aughter and mother merge in a double death, one real and literal, the other psychic and symbolic’.7

  Love Stories

  The novel contains several love stories, not just that of Hélène and Deberle. The passion of Hélène and Deberle is contrasted with the novel’s other illicit affair, between Juliette and Malignon, and with the more down-to-earth and honest relationship of Rosalie and Zéphyrin, as well as the genuine affection between Rambaud and Jeanne.

  Sharp relief is given to the ideological framework of the novel by the fact that Hélène is presented as a person of great moral virtue. Her strict provincial morality is shocked by ‘the cheerful, insouciant adultery’ (p. 168) of the Parisian bourgeoisie which she discovers at the house of Juliette Deberle. Juliette is more than an incidental figure. She serves a narrative, moral, and ideological purpose. The seriousness of Hélène contrasts with the shallowness of Juliette, who leads a life of frivolous socializing. Hélène has a conventional sense of bourgeois values, but the world of bourgeois rituals — Trouville, the latest fashion, a new boulevard play, society gossip — is foreign to her. Her sobriety contrasts with the world of superficial and ephemeral appearances associated with Juliette: the theatre, fancy-dress balls, amateur theatricals, the emphasis on transient and factitious decorative styles such as japonaiserie. When Hélène arrives at Juliette’s house with the intention of preventing her from keeping the rendezvous with Malignon, she finds her rehearsing Musset’s Un caprice. When she visits Juliette the day after the rendezvous, she finds her ‘pale and with reddened eyes like a tragedy queen’ (p. 225). Juliette’s life is defined by social convention and fashionable taste. Hélène’s struggle to suppress her passion, understood in the original sense of ‘suffering’, is contrasted with the socially inspired curiosity that, along with ennui, impels Juliette to contemplate adultery. Similarly, Hélène’s feelings of guilt and remorse are contrasted with Juliette’s superficial shame at having almost failed to keep up appearances, and with her equally superficial easy social acceptance of Malignon afterwards. Looking back on her relationship with Deberle, two years later, Hélène has the impression that she is contemplating, and passing judgement on, ‘a stranger, whose conduct she despised and found shocking. What a time of peculiar folly, what an abominable evil act, like a blinding thunderclap!’ (p. 263). The narrative is marked by a number of moralizing narratorial intrusions: ‘This self-abasement satisfied a need in her and she was relishing it’ (p. 224); ‘she was experiencing the pusillanimous happiness of telling herself that nothing was out of bounds’ (p. 232) (my italics). The term ‘fall’, which is frequently used (initially in Hélène’s symbolic fall from the swing at the feet of Henri), implies condemnation.

  The caricatural figures of the maid Rosalie and her rustic soldier-lover Zéphyrin may initially appear out of place in the novel. But, like Juliette, they serve a structural purpose in relation to the protagonists, Hélène and Jeanne. Hélène’s indulgence towards the pair, after Zéphyrin’s first appearance, reflects the unconscious softening of her feelings: ‘Seeing the two of them, she had felt her heart melt, as it had once before, making her forget to be strict... Their love had a calm certainty about it’ (p. 63). After her ‘fall’, Hélène’s nervous excitement is soothed into a kind of complacent oblivion as she watches Rosalie and Zéphyrin eating together in the kitchen. The sensuous delight of the food, the heat, and the childlike happiness of the two young people, evoke in Hélène a feeling of complicity as she becomes absorbed into their world: ‘She felt cocooned in their warmth for one another... The distance between them all seemed not so great, she no longer knew which was herself and which the others, where she was or what she was doing there’ (p. 224). For Jeanne, Rosalie and Zéphyrin represent a kind of vitality, and an innocent, happy sensuality, which she herself can never know. During her convalescence in the Deberles’ garden, she watches them in fascination, and says: ‘I was thinking I’d like to live till I’m very old...’ (p. 145). Later, on her deathbed, she contemplates them once more, but this time it is as if to say farewell.

  Hélène reflects, at the end of the novel, that she never really knew Henri, that he remains a kind of ghostly stranger; and she reflects, too, that the city also remains a mystery. She has returned, as Naomi Schor notes,8 to her earlier state of willed ignorance: ‘she became calm again, without desire, without curiosity, continuing slowly forward on the dead straight path’ (p. 264). The retribution wrought upon her for her brief affair and for her transgression upon her sacred role as mother is great. Not only is she deprived of her motherhood (a point given extra emphasis by the birth of the Deberles’ second child, who, it is noted, resembles Jeanne and was conceived at the time of Jeanne’s death), she is also deprived, by the same token, of her sexuality. It is clear that Hélène’s second marriage, to Rambaud, will be as passionless as the first. On her wedding night, Rambaud, like her first husband, had kissed her bare feet, ‘like those of a statue turning into marble again’ (p. 263). As Henri Mitterand remarks,9 one does not need to be intimately acquainted with Freudian psychology to see Rambaud’s fishing-rods (which Hélène has forgotten, moreover) as ironic virility-substitutes;10 and the reference to the need to be sure that the large trunk is firmly closed (echoing the closing of Jeanne’s coffin) may similarly be read in terms of the closure, the ultimate repression, of erotic desire. In the words of Naomi Schor, who argues that the vision of love, marriage, and motherhood developed in A Love Story is fundamentally one of patriarchal containment: in Zola’s works not only is a woman’s place in the home, but ‘mothers are forbidden to experience sexual bliss’.11 We leave Hélène standing, as if petrified, in a frozen landscape.

  1 The interaction between writers and painters in nineteenth-century France was very strong. For a discussion of the important question of the relations between Zola and the painters of his time, see Robert Lethbridge, ‘Zola and Contemporary Painting’, in Brian Nelson (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Émile Zola (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), 67–85. See also William J. Berg, The Visual Novel: Émile Zola and the Art of His Times (University Park, Pa.: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1992) and Anita Brookner, ‘Zola’, in The Genius of the Future: Studies in French Art Criticism (London and New York: Phaidon, 1971), 91–117.

  2 Sigmund Freud, The Interpretation of Dreams, ed. and trans. James Strachey (New York: Avon Books, 1967), 430.

  3 Jean Borie, Zola et les mythes, ou de la nausée au salut (Paris: Seuil, 1971), 214.

  4 This is argued by Freud in The Interpretation of Dreams, 391 ff.

  5 Borie, Zola et les mythes, 215.

  6 Susan Harrow, ‘The Matter with Jeanne: Narrative and the Nervous Body in Zola’s Une page d’amour’, in Anna Gural-Migdal (ed.), L’Écriture du fé
minin chez Zola et dans l’écriture naturaliste (Bern: Peter Lang, 2003), 249.

  7 Harrow, ‘The Matter with Jeanne’, 249–50.

  8 Naomi Schor, Breaking the Chain: Women, Theory, and French Realist Fiction (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), 38.

  9 Henri Mitterand, Zola, ii. L’Homme de Germinal, 1871–1893 (Paris: Fayard, 2001), 413.

  10 In Freudian psychology foot fetishism is widely viewed as an act of sexual displacement, a substitutional act aimed at avoiding contact with the genitals.

  11 Schor, Breaking the Chain, 47.

  Translator’s Note

  When I was asked to translate the eighth in Zola’s Rougon-Macquart series of twenty novels my first problem was the title: Une page d’amour. It has been variously rendered as ‘A Page of Love’, ‘A Love Episode’, ‘Hélène’, and ‘A Love Affair’, but feeling that none of these would do—this is not just about an adulterous relationship as implied in the title ‘A Love Affair’—I decided on ‘A Love Story’. It’s one of the lesser-known novels of Zola, to English readers at least, and not only an exploration of love between the characters Hélène and Henri, Juliette and Malignon, Rosalie and Zéphyrin, Jeanne and Hélène, Monsieur Rambaud and Jeanne, and finally Monsieur Rambaud and Hélène, but also, and perhaps almost as important, Zola and the city of Paris itself. His abiding passion for Paris shines throughout its pages and so I felt that ‘A Love Story’ was a more appropriate way of translating the title.

  The novel was serialized first between December and April 1878 before being published by Charpentier in April 1878. Of the relatively few English translations, the Vizetelly versions of 1887 and 1895, the latter with ninety-four delicate engravings, stand out. Two more translations appeared in the twentieth century, C. C. Starkweather’s in 1910 and Jean Stewart’s in 1957. The book was adapted as a film in 1980 and 1995.

  I hope this new translation will fill a gap in the narrative for the many fans of Zola’s extraordinary cycle of novels and attract new readers to his masterly storytelling.

  Thank you to all those friends and colleagues I have consulted at various times while I have been working on the translation, to Brian Nelson, Perrine Chambon, Arnaud Baignot, Jennie Feldman, Mauro and Anne Pinheiro and the translators at the CITL in Arles; to Judith Luna, my former editor, for her continued encouragement and Luciana O’Flaherty, my present editor at OUP. And a special thanks, as ever, to my husband David, for reading it with his usual care and enthusiasm, and making his always immensely invaluable suggestions.H.C.

  Select Bibliography

  A Love Story (Une page d’amour) was serialized in the newspaper Le Bien public from 11 December 1877 to 4 April 1878. It was published in volume form by the Librairie Charpentier in April 1878. It is included in volume ii of Henri Mitterand’s superb scholarly edition of Les Rougon-Macquart in the ‘Bibliothèque de la Pléiade’, 5 vols. (Paris: Gallimard, 1960–7), and in volume viii of the Nouveau Monde edition of the Œuvres complètes, 21 vols. (Paris, 2002–10). Paperback editions exist in the following popular collections: Folio, ed. Henri Mitterand (Paris, 1989); Les Classiques de Poche, ed. Pierre Marotte (Paris, 1975); GF-Flammarion, introduction by Colette Becker (Paris, 1993).

  Biographies of Zola in English

  Brown, Frederick, Zola: A Life (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1995; London: Macmillan, 1996).

  Hemmings, F. W. J., The Life and Times of Émile Zola (London: Elek, 1977).

  Studies of Zola and Naturalism in English

  Baguley, David, Naturalist Fiction: The Entropic Vision (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

  Baguley, David (ed.), Critical Essays on Emile Zola (Boston: G. K. Hall, 1986).

  Harrow, Susan, Zola, The Body Modern: Pressures and Prospects of Representation (Oxford: Legenda, 2010).

  Hemmings, F. W. J., Émile Zola (2nd edn., Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1966).

  Lethbridge, R., and Keefe, T. (eds.), Zola and the Craft of Fiction (Leicester: Leicester University Press, 1990).

  Nelson, Brian (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Zola (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), esp. ch. 4: Hannah Thompson, ‘Questions of Sexuality and Gender’, 53–66.

  Nelson, Brian, Zola and the Bourgeoisie: A Study of Themes and Techniques in Les Rougon-Macquart (London: Macmillan, 1983), esp. ‘Une Page d’amour: The Ambiguities of Passion’, 96–128.

  Walker, Philip, Zola (London: Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1985).

  Wilson, Angus, Émile Zola: An Introductory Study of His Novels (1953; London: Secker & Warburg, 1964).

  Works in English on or concerning A Love Story

  Bishop, Danielle Kent, ‘Zola’s Women: A Chink in the Armour: A Study of Une page d’amour and L’Œuvre’, in Anna Gural-Migdal (ed.), L’Écriture du féminin chez Zola et dans l’écriture naturaliste (Bern: Peter Lang, 2003), 121–43.

  Harrow, Susan, ‘The Matter with Jeanne: Narrative and the Nervous Body in Zola’s Une page d’amour’, in Anna Gural-Migdal (ed.), L’Écriture du féminin chez Zola et dans l’écriture naturaliste (Bern: Peter Lang, 2003), 237–50.

  Overton, Bill, Fictions of Female Adultery, 1684–1890: Theories and Circumtexts (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), ch. 7: ‘After Madame Bovary: Female Adultery in Zola’, 154–86.

  Richards, Sylvie L. F., ‘The Mother–Daughter Relationship in Émile Zola’s Une page d’amour’, Excavatio, 2 (1993), 93–102.

  Schor, Naomi, Breaking the Chain: Women, Theory, and French Realist Fiction (New York: Columbia University Press, 1985), ch. 2: ‘Smiles of the Sphinx: Zola and the Riddle of Femininity’, 29–47.

  Schor, Naomi, ‘Mother’s Day: Zola’s Women’, Diacritics, 5 (Winter 1975), 11–17.

  Further Reading in Oxford World’s Classics

  Zola, Émile, L’Assommoir, trans. Margaret Mauldon, ed. Robert Lethbridge.

  Zola, Émile, The Belly of Paris, trans. Brian Nelson.

  Zola, Émile, La Bête humaine, trans. Roger Pearson.

  Zola, Émile, The Conquest of Plassans, trans. Helen Constantine, ed. Patrick McGuinness.

  Zola, Émile, Earth, trans. Brian Nelson and Julie Rose.

  Zola, Émile, The Fortune of the Rougons, trans. Brian Nelson.

  Zola, Émile, Germinal, trans. Peter Collier, ed. Robert Lethbridge.

  Zola, Émile, The Kill, trans. Brian Nelson.

  Zola, Émile, The Ladies’ Paradise, trans. Brian Nelson.

  Zola, Émile, The Masterpiece, trans. Thomas Walton, rev. Roger Pearson.

  Zola, Émile, Money, trans. Valerie Minogue.

  Zola, Émile, Nana, trans. Douglas Parmée.

  Zola, Émile, Pot Luck, trans. Brian Nelson.

  Zola, Émile, The Sin of Abbé Mouret, trans. Valerie Minogue.

  Zola, Émile, Thérèse Raquin, trans. Andrew Rothwell.

  A Chronology of Émile Zola

  1840 (2 April) Born in Paris, the only child of Francesco Zola (b. 1795), an Italian engineer, and Émilie, née Aubert (b. 1819), the daughter of a glazier. The naturalist novelist was later proud that ‘zolla’ in Italian means ‘clod of earth’

  1843 Family moves to Aix-en-Provence

  1847 (27 March) Death of father from pneumonia following a chill caught while supervising work on his scheme to supply Aix-en-Provence with drinking water

  1852–8  Boarder at the Collège Bourbon at Aix. Friendship with Baptistin Baille and Paul Cézanne. Zola, not Cézanne, wins the school prize for drawing

  1858 (February) Leaves Aix to settle in Paris with his mother (who had preceded him in December). Offered a place and bursary at the Lycée Saint-Louis. (November) Falls ill with ‘brain fever’ (typhoid) and convalescence is slow

  1859 Fails his baccalauréat twice

  1860 (Spring) Is found employment as a copy-clerk but abandons it after two months, preferring to eke out an existence as an impecunious writer in the Latin Quarter of Paris

  1861 Cézanne follows Zola to Paris, where he meets Camille Pissarro, fails the entrance examination to
the École des Beaux-Arts, and returns to Aix in September

  1862 (February) Taken on by Hachette, the well-known publishing house, at first in the dispatch office and subsequently as head of the publicity department. (31 October) Naturalized as a French citizen. Cézanne returns to Paris and stays with Zola

  1863 (31 January) First literary article published. (1 May) Manet’s Déjeuner sur l’herbe exhibited at the Salon des Refusés, which Zola visits with Cézanne

  1864 (October) Tales for Ninon

  1865 Claude’s Confession. A succès de scandale thanks to its bedroom scenes. Meets future wife Alexandrine-Gabrielle Meley (b. 1839), the illegitimate daughter of teenage parents who soon separated; Alexandrine’s mother died in September 1849

  1866 Resigns his position at Hachette (salary: 200 francs a month) and becomes a literary critic on the recently launched daily L’Événement (salary: 500 francs a month). Self-styled ‘humble disciple’ of Hippolyte Taine. Writes a series of provocative articles condemning the official Salon Selection Committee, expressing reservations about Courbet, and praising Manet and Monet. Begins to frequent the Café Guerbois in the Batignolles quarter of Paris, the meeting-place of the future Impressionists. Antoine Guillemet takes Zola to meet Manet. Summer months spent with Cézanne at Bennecourt on the Seine. (15 November) L’Événement suppressed by the authorities

  1867 (November) Thérèse Raquin

  1868 (April) Preface to second edition of Thérèse Raquin. (May) Manet’s portrait of Zola exhibited at the Salon. (December) Madeleine Férat. Begins to plan for the Rougon-Macquart series of novels

  1868–70  Working as journalist for a number of different newspapers

  1870 (31 May) Marries Alexandrine in a registry office. (September) Moves temporarily to Marseilles because of the Franco-Prussian War