"L'Assommoir" by Emile Zola

How do we imagine Paris in the rain? Here's Zola's version:

"The street had been transformed into a morass of sticky mud by the storm. It had started to pour again and they had opened the assorted umbrellas. The women picked their way carefully through the mud, holding their skirts high as the men held the sorry-looking umbrellas over their heads." (Kindle Locations 1042-1044). 

The Paris of the desperately poor and fatally weak individuals portrayed in Emile Zola's famous novel L'Assommoir is not the romantic city that appears in modern fantasies. Zola's realism about the  life of a laundry woman in lower-class Paris in the middle of the 19th century is a fascinating contrast to the Paris of modern novels, films, musicals, and food writers. Here's a description of the streets in the morning:

"The working girls now filled the boulevard: metal polishers, milliners, flower sellers, shivering in their thin clothing. In small groups they chattered gaily, laughing and glancing here and there. Occasionally there would be one girl by herself, thin, pale, serious-faced, picking her way along the city wall among the puddles and the filth. After the working girls, the office clerks came past, breathing upon their chilled fingers and munching penny rolls." (Kindle Locations 89-93). 

Or a description of an apartment building:

"Inside, the building was six stories high, with four identical plain walls enclosing the broad central court. ... Here the sink drains added their stains. The glass window panes resembled murky water. Mattresses of checkered blue ticking were hanging out of several windows to air. Clothes lines stretched from other windows with family washing hanging to dry. On a third floor line was a baby's diaper, still implanted with filth. This crowded tenement was bursting at the seams, spilling out poverty and misery through every crevice." (Kindle Locations 613-616).  

L'Assommoir, the title of the book, was the name of a neighborhood bar where the novel's characters often drink after work or instead of working.  In French, l'assommoir literally means knock-out, that is a place to drink until dead drunk. It's very much a novel of alcoholics and how they got that way.

The main character, Gervaise, arrives in Paris from the provinces with her lover Lantier and their two sons. He soon abandons her and she marries another man, Coupeau. Along with other characters in the novel, they have hopes and dreams of earning an honest living, raising decent children, and pursuing their modest trades: laundry-worker, hatter, metalworker, maker of gold chains, or the like.

Gervaise, in particular, had a dream, expressed near the beginning of the novel. She returns several times to this dream in rare moments of self-awareness throughout the novel.

"Mon Dieu! I'm not ambitious; I don't ask for much. My desire is to work in peace, always to have bread to eat and a decent place to sleep in, you know; with a bed, a table, and two chairs, nothing more. If I can, I'd like to raise my children to be good citizens. Also, I'd like not to be beaten up, if I ever again live with a man. It's not my idea of amusement." She pondered, thinking if there was anything else she wanted, but there wasn't anything of importance. Then, after a moment she went on, "Yes, when one reaches the end, one might wish to die in one's bed. For myself, having trudged through life, I should like to die in my bed, in my own home." (Kindle Locations 560-565). 

Slowly Gervaise and Coupeau engage in more and more feuds with others; they quarrel over money, they lose focus, lose hope, and sink into desperation, alcohol-induced madness, starvation, brutality, and worse. By the end, "She no longer worked, she no longer ate, she slept on filth, her husband frequented all sorts of wineshops, and her husband drubbed her at all hours of the day; all that was left for her to do was to die on the pavement." By the time she dies, she doesn't even have a bed, but sleeps on a pile of rags. (Kindle Locations 5868-5870).

Although the characters lead brutal and unfulfilled lives, and succeed only in destroying themselves, L'Assommoir is fascinating. I found the characters to be essentially sympathetic despite their terrible weaknesses.

To get back to the fascinating portrayal of the Paris of Gervaise's experience -- early in the novel, the shops and streets are at least a bit attractive: 

"Next door to the bakery was a grocer who sold fried potatoes and mussels cooked with parsley. A procession of girls went in to get hot potatoes wrapped in paper and cups of steaming mussels. Other pretty girls bought bunches of radishes. By leaning a bit, Gervaise could see into the sausage shop from which children issued, holding a fried chop, a sausage or a piece of hot blood pudding wrapped in greasy paper. The street was always slick with black mud, even in clear weather. A few laborers had already finished their lunch and were strolling aimlessly about, their open hands slapping their thighs, heavy from eating, slow and peaceful amid the hurrying crowd. A group formed in front of the door of l'Assommoir." (Kindle Locations 500-505). 

A key chapter depicts Gervaise's birthday party, held at a time when she was making a decent living doing laundry -- she even had employees. (Another amazing talent of Zola's was describing manual labor, such as exactly how Gervaise and her workers heated the water, scrubbed the filthy articles of clothing and linen, used bluing or bleach, dried them, starched them, ironed them, and delivered baskets of folded laundry to their customers). Ominously, her husband, after a bad fall, had never returned to steady work as a metal worker who installed roofs and gutters, but who took money from her and spent his days drinking. 

Nevertheless, Gervaise must have a birthday party with an over-the-top feast, which Zola spends an entire chapter describing. We learn details of the discussions of what food is to be served, the purchasing of provisions, the preparations, the presentation, the way that everyone sits down (but Coupeau is late), and then everyone overeats to nearly being sick and drinks to excess. One passage to illustrate this amazing meal:

"On the Saturday, whilst the workwomen hurried with their work, there was a long discussion in the shop with the view of finally deciding upon what the feast should consist of. For three weeks past one thing alone had been chosen— a fat roast goose. There was a gluttonous look on every face whenever it was mentioned. The goose was even already bought. Mother Coupeau went and fetched it to let Clemence and Madame Putois feel its weight. And they uttered all kinds of exclamations; it looked such an enormous bird, with its rough skin all swelled out with yellow fat. 

"'Before that there will be the pot-au-feu,' said Gervaise, 'the soup and just a small piece of boiled beef, it's always good. Then we must have something in the way of a stew.' 

"Tall Clemence suggested rabbit, but they were always having that, everyone was sick of it. Gervaise wanted something more distinguished. Madame Putois having spoken of stewed veal, they looked at one another with broad smiles. It was a real idea, nothing would make a better impression than a veal stew. 

"'And after that,' resumed Gervaise, 'we must have some other dish with a sauce.' 

"Mother Coupeau proposed fish. But the others made a grimace, as they banged down their irons. None of them liked fish; it was not a bit satisfying; and besides that it was full of bones. Squint-eyed Augustine, having dared to observe that she liked skate, Clemence shut her mouth for her with a good sound clout. At length the mistress thought of stewed pig's back and potatoes, which restored the smiles to every countenance." (Kindle Locations 2795-2806). 

After the party, the characters lives deteriorate steadily. Zola describes each step of their years of increasing oblivion, as they forget their trades, lose their self-respect, pawn or sell all their possessions, and decline in every way. The title, referring to being knocked-out as well as to the bar where they drink, can apply to their entire lives. Finally, they are utterly degraded:

"Ah! the death of the poor, the empty entrails, howling hunger, the animal appetite that leads one with chattering teeth to fill one's stomach with beastly refuse in this great Paris, so bright and golden! And to think that Gervaise used to fill her belly with fat goose! Now the thought of it brought tears to her eyes. One day, when Coupeau bagged two bread tickets from her to go and sell them and get some liquor, she nearly killed him with the blow of a shovel, so hungered and so enraged was she by this theft of a bit of bread." (Kindle Locations 5482-5485). 

L'Assommoir was highly popular when first published in 1877, and has become a classic, read and discussed ever since, as are many of Zola's novels. I'm posting this review as a contribution to the ongoing blog event "Paris in July," hosted at the blog Thyme for Tea (link). All content is copyright by Mae at maefood dot blogspot.com. If you are reading this at another blog, it's been stolen.