The Joy of Life

The Joy of Life by Émile Zola (1884)

The novel opens at the Chanteau household in the fishing hamlet of Bonneville, on the Normandy coast, as Chanteau, a gout-ridden former timber merchant turned mayor, and his son Lazare await the arrival of Madame Chanteau with her ten-year-old orphaned cousin, Pauline Quenu, whose guardianship the family has assumed after the deaths of her Paris pork-butcher parents, Quenu and Lisa. Pauline arrives during a violent storm that is flooding the village, wins over the household (except the gruff servant Véronique, who is initially jealous but later comes to love her), and settles into the modest brick house shared with the dog Matthew and cat Minouche. She brings with her a substantial inheritance—money and securities that Madame Chanteau locks away in a secrétaire drawer, to be preserved intact until Pauline comes of age. Pauline grows up at Bonneville alongside Lazare, nine years her senior, who drifts restlessly between grand ambitions: first music (an unfinished symphony, "The Earthly Paradise," later recast as a symphony on Grief), then medicine in Paris, which he abandons after repeated failed examinations, and finally chemistry, under the tutelage of the chemist Herbelin, leading him to found a factory at the "Golden Bay" to extract chemical salts from sea-weed, in partnership with the shady Boutigny. Pauline nurses Chanteau through his agonizing gout attacks, studies medical books she finds in Lazare's room, and takes her first communion under the tolerant priest Abbé Horteur. She and Lazare become inseparable companions—swimming, exploring the shore, and working together on his experiments—and their childhood affection gradually deepens into love, formalized as an engagement, though Madame Chanteau repeatedly postpones the actual marriage. Meanwhile the sea-weed venture devours nearly two-thirds of Pauline's fortune before collapsing; Boutigny seizes the works for himself and converts them to ordinary soda manufacture. The family's own finances also crumble when Davoine, who had taken over Chanteau's timber business, goes bankrupt. Madame Chanteau, increasingly dependent on her ward's money to cover daily household expenses, develops the habit of quietly withdrawing sums from Pauline's drawer, and resentment grows between aunt and niece even as Pauline continues to give generously, including funding the local poor children of Bonneville (the Houtelard, Prouane, Cuche, Gonin, and Tourmal families) out of pity for their misery. When the Paris surrogate-guardian Saccard, alarmed at the silence over the accounts, threatens to bring the matter before the family council, the Chanteaus scramble to protect themselves: Pauline is legally emancipated, and Doctor Cazenove, the kindly local physician, is installed as her trustee. At the formal accounting, it emerges that only seventy-five thousand of the original hundred-fifty-thousand-franc fortune remains, which is transferred into Pauline's own keeping. Rather than resent this, Pauline immediately begins lending further sums to Lazare, most significantly twelve thousand francs to finance his new scheme: a system of piles, planks, and stockades meant to protect Bonneville's cliffside houses from the encroaching, destructive tides, a project pursued with the hope of a matching subsidy from the General Council. As construction proceeds, the arrival of another young cousin, Louise Thibaudier—a delicate, fashionably raised banker's daughter with a substantial dowry—begins to unsettle the household. Louise had shown up as a child years earlier, provoking Pauline's first jealous rages against her, but their friendship was later patched up. Now grown into an alluring young woman, Louise draws Lazare's attention during a stay at Bonneville while Pauline is preoccupied nursing Chanteau through another gout attack. Pauline notices new, unfamiliar intimacy between Lazare and Louise—private laughter, a lingering arm at the waist—and grows increasingly wounded and suspicious, though nothing is said openly. The narrative's final scene depicts the first test of Lazare's sea-defense structure during a rising tide: Lazare and Louise take shelter together under his umbrella as rain pours down, while Pauline, refusing all appeals to join them, stands rigid and drenched on the exposed beach, transfixed by the sight of the piles holding against the waves, filled with mingled triumph in the engineering success and a deepening private anguish over her cousin's shifting affections. She falls feverish that evening but conceals her distress from the family. The surviving text breaks off shortly afterward, with the household's finances precarious, Chanteau's health declining, the sea-defense project newly begun, and the unspoken rivalry between Pauline and Louise for Lazare's heart left unresolved.

By Émile Zola · First published 1884 · Genre: Literary Fiction, Realism, Drama · 11 chapters · 152,711 words

First lines

When the cuckoo-clock in the dining-room struck six, Chanteau lost all hope. He rose with a painful effort from the arm-chair in which he was sitting, warming his heavy, gouty legs before a coke fire. Ever since two o'clock he had been awaiting the arrival of Madame Chanteau, who, after five weeks' absence, was to-day expected to bring from Paris their little cousin, Pauline Quenu, an orphan girl, ten years of age, whose guardianship they had undertaken.

'I can't understand it at all, Véronique,' he said, opening the kitchen-door. 'Some accident must have happened to them.'

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French Literature · Naturalism · Realism · Philosophical · Psychological Insight · Family Drama · Social Commentary · Tragic Love Story · Infidelity · Adultery · Marriage · Relationships

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