There is a controlled precision in the novel’s description of even the most violent scenes, which suggests that Zola was consciously trying to avoid the sensationalism that his subject matter could so easily engender. The violence contained within the novel emerges all the more forcefully as a result of this stylistic restraint. Joanna Richardson’s claim that ‘there is no beauty in La Bête humaine‘2is untenable. Contained within Zola’s closely restrained narrative there are moments of poetic expressiveness, when, like the pent-up forces that the novel describes, the language opens out and moves into a different register. The ‘Impressionist’ play of steam, mists and sunlight at the beginning of the novel, the sombre grandeur of the winter’s night as the express prepares to leave (chapter I), the idyllic picture of dawn rising over Le Havre with the last stars fading in the sky and a salty breeze blowing in from the sea (chapter III), the more macabre lyricism of Séverine’s confession in the still of the night as the stove casts a sinister red glow on the ceiling above (chapter VIII), these are moments of varied and intense suggestive power that serve to complement the stark realities around which the novel is structured. This translation attempts to recreate the balance of staid, measured narrative and poetic suggestiveness that distinguish Zola’s text. The title The Beast Within may appear somewhat gothic. It is based on an image that rears throughout the novel, applied initially to Roubaud (chapter I) and subsequently to the central protagonist, Lantier.

NOTES

1 Marcel Proust, The Guermantes Way, translated by Mark Treharne (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 2002), p. 498.

2 Joanna Richardson, review of Alec Brown’s translation of La Bête humaine, Time and Tide 39 (24 May 1958), pp. 650 — 51.

A Note on Money

Zola is determined to give his novel a sense of contemporary realism, and he is specific about money throughout. The figures he mentions would have made more immediate sense to readers of Zola’s time. Their force is inevitably diluted for the present-day reader. The following summary of incomes, expenditures, inheritances and property values gives an idea of how characters in the novel are placed financially relative to each other. The basic unit of French currency under the Second Empire was the franc.

At the upper end of the scale there are fortunes which are incalculable.

Grandmorin is put at 3,700,000 francs. In his will he makes bequests on a lavish scale. The property at La Croix-de-Maufras is valued at 40,000 francs. Séverine receives a dowry of 10,000 francs from Grandmorin when she marries Roubaud. When he is murdered, Grandmorin is carrying 10,000 francs on his person, money from a business transaction which he owes his sister.

Grandmorin’s sister, Madame Bonnehon, is also extremely rich, having inherited the château at Doinville from her parents and also large amounts of money from her deceased husband, a successful factory owner. Madame Bonnehon is beyond caring about money. ‘Money is not everything,’ she tells her niece, Madame Lachesnaye. She employs a full staff of domestic servants, gardeners and coachmen and uses the château to put on glittering receptions for the elite of Rouen.

Lachesnaye, a judge in the Court of Appeal, has inherited a fortune worth two million francs. His wife has also inherited an undisclosed amount from Grandmorin. Although they are well off, the Lachesnayes are not, like Madame Bonnehon, beyond caring about money, and they wish to contest the bequest of the house at La Croix-de-Maufras to Séverine.

Denizet, the examining magistrate, has no private income, his father, a once-prosperous cattle farmer, having gone bankrupt. Denizet is described as a poorly paid magistrate whose ‘meagre salary hardly sufficed to cover his immediate needs’. The novel does not specify his salary, but in his preparatory notes Zola records that the examining magistrate at Rouen earned 6,000 francs, whereas a judge in Paris earned 8,000 francs. Denizet, aged over fifty, covets promotion to Paris. The novel tells us that promotion would mean a rise in salary of 166 francs a month, which would enable him to pay his housekeeper a little more and to buy himself some new clothes.

The lady on the train to Auteuil, who is not named, having previously lived in something like penury, enjoys unexpected prosperity as a result of an advantageous marriage and is able to spend nearly half the year travelling from one holiday resort to another. The novel does not specify what her financial situation is, but she clearly enjoys a very comfortable life-style. She is an example of Second Empire ‘arrivisme’.

The rich and the affluent stand in the wings of the novel.