Kate Meehan

17 March 2014
Emile Zola:
Preface to Thrse Raquin (1873) and Naturalism in the Theatre (1881)
Significance:
Emile Zola is considered one of the pioneers of the literary and theatrical schools of
naturalism. A prolific novelist, his 20-book series known collectively as Les RougonMacquart, which attempted a scientific exploration of a family during the Second French
Empire, with special emphasis on heredity and environment in shaping factors, is considered
one of the most important literary feats in 19th century western literature.
As a dramatist, he adapted these popular novels, notably Thrse Raquin (described as
putrid by critics and considered the first of the Les Rougon-Macquart series)1 and
LAssommoire (The Drinking Den), for the stage. In the same manner as his literary forays,
Zola insisted that his performances reflect man as a product of their environs, and
advocated a new methodology for play production.
Context:

The Paris Commune: The French Army, led by Napolean Bonaparte, botched a war
with Germany and allowed Paris to fall under siege. All the rich people got out, but
the immigrants, refugees and working class were trapped within the city and began
to starve. The people wrested control of the army quartered in Paris just as France
and Germany signed an armistice. By March, the local guard had seized all of the
canons and most of the guns quartered in the city. Throughout, the Communards, as
they were called, set up a series of reforms that included the right for workers to
maintain their tools of trade, pensions for veterans families, and the separation of
church and state. By the end of May, the French army arrived and a terrible street
battle began which claimed the lives of 30,000 parisians.

These political upheavals are the backdrop against which Zolas narratives are written.
Like many of his day, Zola was fascinated with the burgeoning fields of sociology, inspired, in
part, by Charles Darwins publication of Origin of the Species in 1859 and subsequent works,
The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex (1871) and The Expression of the
Emotions in Man and Animals (1872). At the time, it was increasingly popular for men of
means to investigate the lower classes in anthropological or sociological context.
Anthropology and Sociology societies became popular social clubs, and a number of tracts
relating to these new ways of viewing the working poor were published, including Henry
Mayhews London Labour and the London Poor (1851), Sir Francis Galtons Hereditary
Genius: An Inquiry into its Laws and Consequences (1869) George Robert Sims How the
Poor Live (1883) and Andrew Mearns Prestons The Bitter Cry of Outcast London: An Inquiry
into the Condition of the Abject Poor (1883) among many many others.2

Ferragus. "La littrature putride." Le Figaro. January 23, 1868.

2 These examples are from England. For further reading on the phenomenon in Paris, see Gonzalo J.
Sanchezs Pity in Fin-de-sicle French Culture: "libert, galit, Piti"

Zola was also politically active, most notably getting involved in the Dreyfus affair, in which
a Jewish soldier was falsely accused of trading French secrets. Zola spoke up in his defense
in a famous front-page editorial with the headline Jaccuse, accusing the highest forms of
government of obstruction of justice and anti-Semitism in hopes that his libel trial would
force new evidence into the public eye.
Summary:
Thrse Raquin
Zola asserts that naturalisms effects on criticism and history, namely its ability to analyze
man with some criteria, and evaluating him based on his circumstances, environment, and
physical attributes are the natural next step in the evolution of theatre as a genre. He
claims that the experimental, scientific spirit of the age will replace the schools and
formulas of the contemporary stage.
The well-known tricks for introducing and unraveling a plot have been worked to death;
what is needed now is a broad and simple portrayal of men and affairs.
Theatre should be a purely human study free of all irrelevancies and going straight to the
target. The action lies not in some story or other but in the inner conflicts of the characters.
The endings [should] become the mathematical solution to a set of problems. [Playwrights
should] choose ordinary, colorless, subsidiary characters to show the banality of everyday
life behind the excruciating agonies of chief protagonists.
Naturalism in the Theatre
Zola describes the changes that must be made for a naturalist theatre, specifically relating
to sets, properties, costumes and performance.
The 17th century was indifferent to the truthfulness of the setting because natural
surroundings were not then perceived as a force capable of having any influence
whatsoever on the action or the characters. Nature counted for little, man alone was noble,
and what is more, man stripped of his humanity abstract man, studied for the way he
functioned as a rational being and creature of passions.
Today, accuracy of setting is a consequence of our obsessive need for reality.
Accurate scenery, a drawing-room for example with its furniture, its flower stands, its
knickknacks, immediately establishes a situation, tells us what world we are in, reveals the
characters habits.
Costumes at the time were often relegated to high fashion, in part because it drove ticket
sales. In doing so, this limited the types of stories they told. There is as much reluctance in
choosing costumes that are too cheap as in introducing a bold innovation in staging. He
discusses his contemporaries, pointing out that their reluctance to show cheap clothes
onstage results in a whole social class, the vast majority of human beings, finds itself
virtually excluded from the theatre.
Zola suggests that showing places where different social classes intermingle would allow for
a lively depiction of contemporary issues, and allow playwrights to show us the real
common man and not those sniveling works who play such strange roles in boulevard
melodramas.

On diction, Zola requests actors forgo the language of theatre: [which] consists of those
clichs, those resounding platitudes, those hollow words that roll around like empty barrels,
all that unbearable rhetoric in our farces and our dramas.
To sum up:
If one wants to create living beings, one must present him to the public, not only in
accurate costumes and in environments that determine their lives, but also with their own
personal ways of thinking and expressing themselves.
Discussion Questions:
1.) In addition to changes in aesthetics, what else does Zolas naturalism rebel against?
2.) Who is the new hero of Zolas naturalism?
3.) What is the relationship between realism and naturalism?