Reading Order
L'AssommoirL'Assommoir Reading Order
L'Assommoir (1877) by Émile Zola is the seventh novel in the Rougon-Macquart cycle and Zola's first major popular success — the novel that established him as the foremost practitioner of literary naturalism in France and that remains the most powerful nineteenth-century novel about working-class urban poverty, addiction, and the degradation of environment upon character. The novel follows Gervaise Macquart, a laundress in the Parisian working-class district of La Goutte-d'Or, whose initial energy and ambition are gradually destroyed by her husband Coupeau's alcoholism and her own subsequent surrender to drink. Zola's original contribution was his use of working-class argot and his unflinching representation of the physiology of alcoholism — the title refers both to the local brandy shop and to the still (the 'thumper') that dominates the shop floor.
Where to start
L'Assommoir (1877) — the complete novel; no prequel is required
Complete L'Assommoir Book List
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L'Assommoir
Émile Zola·1877
L'Assommoir — Frequently Asked Questions
What does the title L'Assommoir mean?
L'Assommoir is working-class Parisian slang for a cheap brandy shop — specifically the kind with a large copper still on the floor — but the word also derives from assommer, meaning to knock out or to beat senseless. Zola uses both meanings: the novel is set partly in the shop run by the distiller Colombe, and the title simultaneously names the place and describes its effect on the people who frequent it. The shop's enormous copper still, which Zola describes in extraordinary detail near the opening, becomes one of the novel's central images — a mechanical god that consumes human lives.
How does L'Assommoir fit into the Rougon-Macquart cycle?
L'Assommoir is the seventh novel in the twenty-novel Rougon-Macquart cycle, which traces the fortunes of two branches of the same family across the Second Empire period (1851-1870). The cycle is organized around Zola's naturalist thesis that heredity and environment determine character, and L'Assommoir is the novel in which that thesis is most powerfully demonstrated: Gervaise Macquart, the novel's protagonist, is the daughter of Antoine Macquart, an alcoholic, and Zola treats her eventual alcoholism as both environmentally and hereditarily determined. Her son Étienne appears in Germinal (1885) and her daughter Nana appears in the novel of that name (1880).
Is L'Assommoir part of a series?
L'Assommoir stands alone as a novel but is part of the twenty-volume Rougon-Macquart cycle. You do not need to read the other novels to understand it — Zola designed each novel to be self-contained while also fitting into the larger tapestry. The novels most closely related to L'Assommoir are Nana (1880), which follows Gervaise's daughter Anna (Nana) into her career as a courtesan, and Germinal (1885), which follows Gervaise's son Étienne into the mining town of Voreux and the great strike. Reading L'Assommoir first gives you the family background for both of those novels.
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