July 2025 The Conquest of Plassans Chapters 11-18

Comments/discussion

When things begin to move, they movvvvveeee! Chapter 15-Both François and Marthe are prisoners—he literally, she spiritually and emotionally. Society watches. I think the tone changes in these chapters from mysterious to petty to tragic.

Finally, in chapter 16, there are rumblings of organized resistance. Marthe continues to waste way, both spiritually and physically.

Chapter 18-the calm before the storm!

This seems to me, to be turning into a psychological thriller with all the manipulation.

I am still in the building stages, when Faujas is spreading reconciliation and harmony. The scene at the end of ch 12 when he opens the door nailed shut which separated the neighbours’ gardens and Porquier, Maffre, and Rastoil find themselves together, seems like a foreshadowing.

The badminton game in ch 14 is a brilliant metaphor for the political manoeuvring taking place.

>4 booksaplenty1949: Just wow, because my edition had no badminton game!

>5 Tess_W: Maybe it’s called shuttlecock in your translation?

>6 booksaplenty1949: Nope, nothing!

>7 Tess_W: Well it virtually fills the entire chapter in the French version and in the Vizetelly translation available on Project Gutenberg. https://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/56860/pg56860-images.html#XIV
The chapter opens with a couple of paragraphs about the Corpus Christi procession; then on the following Tuesday everyone is in the garden and around five o’clock Abbé Surin proposes a game of badminton with the Rastoil sisters and it takes up the rest of the chapter—about 10 pages. You did mention your copy only had, what, 19 chapters? But why would this be left out? There’s nothing risqué, and it’s a key moment in the conquest narrative.

No idea.........I borrowed my book from the library, it was an antique! I read the 1900 Vizetelly translation, which was heavily bowdlerized to suit the era’s publishing standards. This version is known as the “suppressed English edition.” At some point, I may pick up the Oxford Press edition to enjoy the “good bits” in full. I think today we might call it the abridged version? No idea why a game of badminton would be omitted?! I think in the future I will just purchase the newest Oxford edition. That is the second time a scene or two has been cut from other translations.

>9 Tess_W: I think you would be wise to spring for the Oxford Press translations. I have a copy of Bleak House “arranged for modern reading” which I picked up because Edward Gorey did the illustrations. Otherwise unreadable. In the case of ch 14 of TCofP I am buffaloed as to why the badminton game was excised. Nothing remotely off-colour—-as I noted, the version from 1917 on Project Gutenberg is the Vizetelly translation and the game is there in full.

>10 booksaplenty1949: Yeah, going to have to spring for the Oxford. I did for the first one, but then decided that although I did "like" the book, that I did not "love" the series and would not do a re-read, hence the library version. However, even though I won't be reading again, I want my one and only read to be complete. Already ordering the next read in Oxford.

The Introduction to the Oxford edition of The Conquest of Plassans is available here https://api.pageplace.de/preview/DT0400.9780191641886_A23590782/preview-97801916... I found it helpful.

>12 booksaplenty1949: Thanks, book! I will definitely read it.....sometime! School is starting for me in 8 days and I have a doctors appt, dental surgery, and a concert to go to....so twill be sometime!

>13 Tess_W: There is a reference to the badminton game as an example of Zola’s ability to symbolically choreograph a scene, in this case one which acts as a metaphor for Faujas’ ability to turn the self-interest of both sides to his own advantage. Too important an episode to edit out, I would have thought.

Despite his generally weak character and the punitively penny-pinching ways Mouret abruptly adopted in ch XV I found his fate in ch XVIII rather hard to read.