The Conquest of Plassans - Emile Zola

At first, I told myself I’d read just one book a year from Émile Zola, but after finishing The Kill (La Curée) in a week, that plan didn’t stand a chance. I had to keep going. So I picked up The Conquest of Plassans, still within the Rougon family circle. This time, we follow Marthe Rougon, now married to her cousin François Mouret, living a quiet, orderly life with their children, Octave (The Ladies' Paradise), Serge (The Sin of Abbé Mouret), and Désirée. Zola gently introduces their domestic world, calm on the surface, but already hinting at something more fragile underneath.

Then comes the arrival of Abbé Faujas, a priest who rents rooms on the second floor. His presence is quiet, controlled, and strangely heavy, hard to read, yet impossible to ignore. There’s also something unexpectedly amusing in Mouret’s character. At first, he’s quite pleased to take in a lodger for the extra income, but almost immediately, he grows uneasy, suspicious in a way he can’t quite explain. It’s a subtle, almost ironic kind of humor. He wants the money, yet feels he may have invited something unsettling into his own home.

Who exactly is Faujas? What kind of priest is he, and how does he relate to the other abbés in town? Zola doesn’t rush to answer, but you can already feel that his role will be far from ordinary. A slow beginning, touched with irony and tension, I’m curious and a little uneasy to see where this goes.

From the glamorous life in The Kill, moving into The Conquest of Plassans feels like a shift I didn’t expect to enjoy this much. I find myself drawn to this quieter nuance. From watching the cold, ambitious Aristide Rougon, I now see Mouret as a domestic, almost gentle family man. From the vast, lonely mansion in Paris, the story brings me into a small, quiet house in the provinces. The scale becomes smaller, but somehow the tension feels closer, more intimate.

While reading this, I noticed that each main character is driven by a different kind of fear. Marthe fears spiritual failure, and Félicité fears losing status and control. But Mouret, most of all, fears being betrayed and surrounded. He loves his family and wants everything to remain orderly, just as it has always been. For him, the house with its beautiful and peaceful garden, also becomes a symbol of the stillness and stability he tries to protect. In contrast, Faujas and the Trouches seem almost fearless, which makes them even more dangerous in how they take control.

Zola shows that fear can grow into paranoia and eventually turn into aggression or violence. He also suggests that inherited tendencies can shape a person’s behavior. However, this raises a question: if someone lives a normal and peaceful life, might those impulses stay hidden instead of turning into madness?

Extras:

The fictional town of Plassans is generally considered to be based on Aix-en-Provence, where Émile Zola spent his childhood until about the age of ten. In 1858, the Zola family then moved to Paris.

Aix-en-Provence now

Ruang Buku Megga Rated : ✬✬✬✬✬ (5/5)
Title : The Conquest of Plassans
Author : Émile Zola
Publisher : Oxford World Classics
Year : September, 2014 (First Published in 1871)
Format / Pages : Softcover / 307 pages
ISBN : 9780199664788