Iv'e recently finished reading Emile Zola's heartbreaking novel, Germinal, a very dark story about coal miners fighting for survival and some kind of human dignity in late 19th C northern France. I got captivated from the first lines when one of the main characters, Étienne, walked over the windy plain in chilly March, when coldspells yet rules the dawning spring. He found a family of coal miners, the Maheus, where he both found work mates and eventually became a paying guest.
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The family father, le Maheu, seems to be written only to be a film part played by Gerard Dépardieu, and I found out that so he was in the early 1990's. I've never seen the movie, but the pictures here are from that movie. Hopefully I can lay my hands on it one day. Or not-since I really adore the novel. Films are often such disappointments when you loved the novel it was based upon.
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| Le Maheu et la Maheude with little Estelle |
However, the most amiable characters were female; little Alzire, so kind, helpful and sweet in all her actions. So keen on bothering nobody and supporting her worn mother, that she eventually dies of starvation. La Mouquette, a highly stereotypical "kind-whore"-character, Catherine the eldest daughter in the Maheu family and her beautiful, exhausted mother; la Maheude.
Germinal reminds a lot of the works by Ersnt Didring, his Malm-trilogy, Eyvind Johnson and , above all, Moa Martinsson. They must have read Germinal. It must have been one of the first novels written consistently from a labourers perspective. otherwise they were mentioned in novels by the realistic authors, but they were always objectified and viewed upon from the outside.
Germinal isn't lika that at all. The coal miners are the main characters, in stead Zola objectifies the middle- and upper classes. they are viewed from the outside and their lives seem peculiar and exotic, whereas the normality is to live like the coal miners. That perspective is striking since it still is so unusual, perhaps because most authors are from the middle class themselves.For that reason, as well, Germinal was refreshing to read, an experience I am grateful to have done, thanks to my French literature course. Though no one should wait for a French literature course until they read Germinal, but letter late than never.
