Émile Zola Collection: The Kill (La Curée) - Chapter VI

[Zulfiya]

The novel is coming to its logical, and obviously, sad end. This chapter is very dramatic, and the events temporarily do not take for ever to develop.

Zola is trying to concentrate all his writing energy into it. The emotional pressure is high (especially for the naturalist Zola) and palpable.

1. Did you enjoy the close setting for this chapter?

2. Do you think it contributed to the emotional tension of the episode?

3. Why does Zola describe in detail the minutiae of cotillion? Is it a symbolic description of the society?

4. Why didn't Saccard beat Renee and Maxime?

5. One of you described Mme. Sidonie Rougon as an interesting character. What is your opinion of Sidonie when she triggered Renne's fall and ruin both financially, emotionally, and matrimonially, and after Renee's disgrace, she also has guts to offer her the position of a courtesan?

6. Comment on the following. "If Maxime was the impoverished blood of Saccard, she felt that she herself was the product, the maggot-eaten fruit of those two men, the pit of infamy which they dug between them, and into which they both rolled".

I might be slow commenting for the next two days as I am travelling back. I am still here with you :-)

[Robin P, Moderator]

I was just going to start this chapter and instead I read it right through. Plenty of decadence, in the costumes (only the ladies are in revealing costumes, except for the androgynous Maxime), the tableaux, and the reactions of the spectators. Zola is really cutting in showing how much the crowd loved the scene with money and jewels, in more ecstasies than they were for the other scenes. They totally missed that this was a vision of hell, it was more like heaven to them. Their assailing of the buffet tables is another representation of 'la curee" - the fight for the spoils.

Saccard doesn't need to punish Maxime or Renee in any other way than by taking the signed paper and marrying off Maxime to Louise. As we already suspected, Louise may be innocent but she is not foolish. Maxime could do worse, they get along well and I suppose she would continue to tolerate his having mistresses, just like the rest of high society would. She knows he is not marrying her for her "hunchbacked" body.

In the previous chapter I commented on Renee's lack of options for power in society. I was thinking about how a woman could use wits to get ahead and realized that is what Sidonie did. She was the female equivalent of her brothers. Eugene conquered politics, Aristide real estate, and she the world of domestic issues.

[Zulfiya]

I do know that Renee fully belongs to the same dissipated world riddled with debauchery and moral decomposition, but she seems to be more sympathetic than others, maybe on a simple basis because her hopes and expectations were thwarted, and she was just a disposable pawn in this world with high hopes to become a chess player.

[Zulfiya]

Jack wrote: Renee sees herself as a victim, not just of the men"

Is it only Renee who sees herself as a victim? I also had a feeling that she was a victim in this novel as far as the concept 'victim' is applied to the corrupted, debauchery-ridden, salacious society of the high middle class.

Did you also find her a victim? Is she the only semi-sympathetic character in the novel?

Why does Zola make it so difficult to relate to his characters?