September 2024 The Fortune of the Rougons Chapter III/IV/V

Discussion

I'm in the middle of chapter 4 and really enjoying seeing the groundwork laid for all the characters in subsequent books. I've read about 6 of the later books in the series, and it's kind of neat to already know who some of these newly born children will be in the future.

I'm finding this easy and enjoyable reading, though I was a bit confused at the beginning about what was happening politically in France and whose side Pierre was on vs. Antoine. But now I'm pretty confident I have it sorted out.

>2 japaul22: I'm with you are to who was a republican and who supported the empire. Fairly clear now.

Interesting at the end of chapter 3 Pierre Rougon goes to his mother's to lay low. Adelaide Rougon was born in 1768 and it's now 1851, making Adelaide 83 years of age. Having such a tough life, having "fits", surprising that she is still around. What were these "fits"? Epilepsy? Alcohol related seizures?

Boy, does chapter five drag. So they meet at the well, then behind the lumber pile, then in the fields and woods. 40 pages of this and I'm still not at the end of the chapter!

>3 Tess_W: Oh I meant to come back to this question. I think it's probably epilepsy. Toward the end of the book, when she's having her visions, they say something about her having these fits since childhood, so I don't think it's alcohol. I always think, when I read descriptions of illnesses in old books, that the medical writing could only be as good as the medical knowledge of the time.

>4 labfs39: It is long, and I think one of the problems with this book is that it juxtaposes the long timeline story of Silvere and Miette with the short real-time uprising.

>4 labfs39: I agree with you there!

>4 labfs39:

I actually loved that chapter. It is most certainly surprisingly long but I loved the beauty in his description of the scenery. It really transported me there!

>7 lilisin: I've just been reading chapter 5 and I agree with you, his descriptions are beautiful, and I'm reading in translation.

Have been distracted by other reading projects but finished chapter 4 today. I realise Zola is laying the foundation for his genealogical project as he introduces the extended family but he succeeds in creating shorter-term interest as well—Antoine’s children falling asleep into the potatoes, for example.

>4 labfs39: I hear you. Zola obviously finds a deep dive into “Boy meets Girl” a fascinating subject, but he’s lost me Big Time.

I found the ending of chapter V rather disturbing. The fact that {spoiler alert} Miette died a virgin was obviously troubling for the narrator, who went on about it in far too much detail for me. Indeed, the chapter’s focus on pubescent sexuality generally was eventually rather creepy. Fortunately in chapter VI we are now back with politics and social climbing.

>11 booksaplenty1949:
For spoiler alerts, you can use the spoiler tags.
Type your spoiler as below but just replaced the parentheses with the greater than/less than sign brackets (aka. angle brackets, aka. chevron brackets).

How to type out tags:
(spoiler) Enter spoiler here. (spoiler)

Result:
Enter spoiler here.

>12 lilisin: Thank you. I guess I wasn’t being totally serious as I was assuming that by the end of the month anyone who was participating in the Zola Readathon had finished La fortune des Rougon but given my own slow pace that probably wasn’t fair. Any possibility you could explain how to post a picture?

I wouldn't think we'd need to use spoilers at any point within these threads targeted to certain chapters. If a person hasn't read those chapters yet and doesn't want spoilers, can't they just wait to read posts until they have?

I think lots of spoiler tags inhibit conversation/discussion, personally.

>13 booksaplenty1949: I thought Lilisin was just sharing information in case you didn't know. As for how to post pictures, try the links here. Hope they help!

>15 labfs39: good point, Lisa. Sorry if I misunderstood as well.

No, it's my fault. I definitely spaced out on the fact that this was a chapter specific thread and jumped the gun into trying to be helpful. I saw the phrase {spoiler alert} and immediately thought it'd be a good time to introduce the coding if it wasn't known.

>17 lilisin: I threw the phrase in frivolously but in certain instances (reviews/discussions of mystery stories, for example) premature revelations do literally spoil others’ reading enjoyment, so it is good to know how to avoid doing that. In retrospect I can see how the deaths of Miette and Silvère were probably inevitable; symbolising the end of the 2nd Republic and the naive idealism it represented and ushering in the era Zola wishes to capture in this series of novels. A happy ending for them should not have been expected by an attentive reader.