Abstract
The concept of the human beast is assigned to the French novelist, Émile Zola, who is the first to codify principles of Naturalism, against which all future naturalist works would be compared. In his novels, especially in the saga Les Rougon-Macquart, the human beast, «la bête humaine», appears as a literary character embedded in the lower social strata, who, due to harsh working and living conditions in the French capital during the Second Empire, acts according to its most basic instincts. The actions of a human beast are violent and brutal and its behavior conditioned by limited education. In his novels, Zola applies the doctrines of biological determinism as well as the laws of heredity attained from scientific readings that were very popular among the intellectuals of the period. However, the theoretical principles recollected in Le roman expérimental (G. Charpentier et Cie Éditeurs, 1880) were not equally applied in other countries due to different literary precedents as well as diverse socio-historical and philosophical backgrounds. This paper aims to examine the nuances in the aesthetic representation of the human beast in Zola’s L’Assommoir (1877), Galdós’ La Desheredada (1881) and Crane’s Maggie, a Girl of the Streets (1843), delving into the behavioral patterns which shape the unique characteristics of their human beasts.
Highlights
The lines which head this article reflect very well the critique Zola had to face after having published the first naturalist novels from the saga Les Rougon-Macquart (1871–1893)
Even though the lowest social class had already been introduced in the realistic era—by Balzac or Flaubert, for example; Auerbach points out that “[w]ith the first great realists of the century, with Stendhal, Balzac, and even with Flaubert, the lower strata of the people, and the people as such in general, hardly appear. It is seen not on its own premises, within its own life, but from above” (2003: 497). It is Émile Zola who introduces the worker as a protagonist and takes the opportunity to carry out a social critique highlighting issues of social injustice, such as poor working conditions and poverty, which he further links to alcoholism, prostitution and violence, according to the theoretical doctrine manifested in his Le Roman expérimental (1880)
In the present study we could see how the literary technique of animalization, almost universally covering the entire anonymous mass of the proletariat, plays a special role when it comes to the characterization of the brutality of certain characters, whose behavior is set in the laws of heredity and social determinism
Summary
The lines which head this article reflect very well the critique Zola had to face after having published the first naturalist novels from the saga Les Rougon-Macquart (1871–1893). Even though the lowest social class had already been introduced in the realistic era—by Balzac or Flaubert, for example; Auerbach points out that “[w]ith the first great realists of the century, with Stendhal, Balzac, and even with Flaubert, the lower strata of the people, and the people as such in general, hardly appear. When it appears, it is seen not on its own premises, within its own life, but from above” (2003: 497). It is Émile Zola who introduces the worker as a protagonist and takes the opportunity to carry out a social critique highlighting issues of social injustice, such as poor working conditions and poverty, which he further links to alcoholism, prostitution and violence, according to the theoretical doctrine manifested in his Le Roman expérimental (1880)
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