Fiction as a Medium of Social Communication in 19th Century France

Normal 0 false false false EN-GB X-NONE AR-SA This article will present the extent to which literature could be viewed as means of social communication – i.e. informing and influencing society – in 19 th century France, by analysing the appearance of three authors at different points: the beginning, the middle and the end of the century. The first is the case of Balzac at the beginning of the 19 th Century who becomes the most successful novelist of the century in France and who, in his prolific expression and rich vocabulary, portrays society from various angles in a huge opus of almost 100 works, 93 of them making his Comedie humaine. The second is the case of Gustave Flaubert whose famous novel Madame Bovary, which depicts a female character in a realist but also in a psychologically conscious manner, around the mid-19 th century reaches French courts together with Les Fleurs du Mal by Charles Baudelaire and is exposed as being socially judged for its alleged immorality. The last is the political affair of Dreyfus and its defender Emile Zola, the father of naturalism. This case confirms the establishment of more intense relations between writer and politics and builds a solid way for a more conscious and everyday political engagement in the literary world from the end of the 19 th century onwards. These three are the most important cases which illustrate how fiction functioned in relation to society, state and readership in 19 th century France. /* Style Definitions */ 
 table.MsoNormalTable 
 {mso-style-name:"Table Normal"; 
 mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0; 
 mso-tstyle-colband-size:0; 
 mso-style-noshow:yes; 
 mso-style-priority:99; 
 mso-style-parent:""; 
 mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt; 
 mso-para-margin-top:0cm; 
 mso-para-margin-right:0cm; 
 mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt; 
 mso-para-margin-left:0cm; 
 line-height:115%; 
 mso-pagination:widow-orphan; 
 font-size:11.0pt; 
 font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif"; 
 mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri; 
 mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; 
 mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri; 
 mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; 
 mso-bidi-font-family:Arial; 
 mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi; 
 mso-fareast-language:EN-US;}


th Century France
The social and intellectual life of nineteenth-century France was marked by abrupt social, historical and political changes that gave social communication an increasing importance. In 1799, Napoleon Bonaparte was proclaimed emperor with unlimited power. After 1815, the reign of the Bourbons was re-established and Louis XVIII became King. The country was struck by two revolutions in the first half of the century: one in July 1830, and the other in February 1848. With the Second Republic, new demands were made for both liberal and democratic reforms. The organised workingclass emerged. The dictatorship regime of the Second Empire followed, and its power gradually weakened in the 1860s. In 1871, after proclaiming of the Third Republic, France returned to the values and objectives of the famous French Revolution from 1789, which created a new political rhetoric and developed new symbolic forms of political practice (Hunt 1986).
Exposition Universelle, the most important cultural event in 19 th century France took place in Paris exactly one hundred years after The Revolution. In front of the Tour Eiffel, villages from all over the country were presented, in order to illustrate the international character of la capitale. Visitors came from the whole world. Paris was `un lieu national`, a meaningless cosmopolitan mix `faite de toutes les races et de tous les pays` [made of all the races and all the countries] 3 . Fiction was widely influenced by this monumental commemoration, which glorified technological progress, capitalist expansion 4 , and provoked, in a way, the imperial reign. Le Tour Eiffel was a symbol of the `concord of nations` (Prendergrast 1992: 8) and `prophetic vision of a future European nation-state of which Paris… would be the crowning glory` (ibid.: 15). 3 This translation into English contained in the square brackets (and all other similar translations) in this article were made by myself, whereas I left the more commonly used French terms which reappear in use in the English language and whose meaning remains known or easy to guess for a reader in italics and without translation. The titles of works originally published in French and French institutions are also given in italics and in French. 4 The colonialist expansion contributed to another characteristic of France during this period. Consequently, both culture and language made their impact in the new territories, establishing a kind of two-way colonisation-discourse (i.e. both the colonised territories and the colonisers influenced one another) which extended throughout the 19 th and 20 th century. Universal Exposition of 1889.
In literature of the 19 th century, we can notice two different kinds of images of the city that were dominant. On one side, there was the Republican image, with its shared sense of belonging and purpose, and on the other side, the Imperial. This division in the image of the city was followed by political divisions, such as, for example, the one created between republicans and royalists by the Dreyfus affair. This helped to establish the term 'intellectual', which denotes the conscious citizen who criticizes the actual happenings on the political scene, eventually shares his opinions more or less knowledgably with his fellow citizens, and pronounces or at least holds political or social views about various actualities. The republican ideal was widespread and authors like Victor Hugo, who went into exile and had a personal hatred for Napoleon III, portrayed the `city as the focus of a unifying political culture consisting of free and equal citizens` (Prendergast 1992: 7).
However, in these times of political unrest, the city became more divided and started to reflect, perhaps more directly, the social status and the accompanying political affiliation of its citizens. There was the obvious gap between eastern rich quarters of Paris and its western poor areas inhabited by working and lower classes. Revolution gave more importance to the marginal citizens who had tendency to act differently, if compared to those at or near the centre. This marginal and peripheral outsider created psychological consequences for society and emerged as a new character in fiction after the French Revolution. 5 Parisian house 1845 Whereas the republican city was the `expression of a high degree of homogeneity`, parks and markets were the places of divisions, social hierarchy and class conflict (Prendergast 1992: 8). Parts of the new infrastructure were the typical French apartment houses. They `undressed the bourgeois family and exposed its dirty laundry to view` (Sharon 1999: 5 Paris gained its political significance because of the fact that the Revolution brought back the seat of government from Versailles. It was the time of mercantilism, capitalism and mobility of wealth. Napoleon III and Baron Haussmann, completely transformed the French capital into a physically more coherent and true Western metropolis. Paul Verlaine, who often wrote about urban boredom, said about the architecture of Haussman that it was bric-à-brac confus. New architecture demolished the slums, made boulevards, refurbished facades and expanded parks, as the spaces where people could meet and talk. 165) and consequently `life threatened to become public` (ibid. : 139). Generally, in such houses and mansions private reading was difficult; there was little privacy and housing was overcrowded. Candles were considered a luxury, which meant scarcity of light for reading. Still, the novel primarily portrayed this private and domestic life.

Balzac and the Rise of the Novel
The greatest change of the period was the rise of the novel, and it happened `after the Humaine and the omniscient portière, who sometimes becomes identified with the narrator. The setting of his novels in prisons, hospitals, slums, brothels, all make or reflect the social and psychic identity at the time as uncertain and problematic 6 Newly conquered worlds are often mentioned in books published during the 19 th century. Either the characters travel, like Nana to Egypt, or the authors themselves, like Flaubert in his Sentimental Journey. Opening towards new worlds and cultures is characteristic for many states since the 18 th century, the era of Enlightenment, not just for France or England, and confirmed by the fact that foreign fiction was being translated in French and English, and by the reverse process, or the fact that the authors wrote in foreign languages during and after their travels. In addition, English and French texts were being translated into other foreign languages.
During this period, advertisements, dedications or prefaces, giving additional explanations and sometimes warnings were included in the publication of such novels.
The opening of a text is a critical moment both for the author and for the reader who share social and moral experience through the text. The foreword or preface sometimes provided information about the destinies of real people or revealed the true story behind the work. The last attempt of the author to monitor the reading of his work or to give his own views about the text can be contained in the postscript or postface, which also became a common addition for some books of the period. For example, in the preface to Comédie Humaine, Balzac speaks of `sens-caché` [hidden meaning] of the modern world. Author and reader could be considered as two strangers communicating through a printed book and in this way, a book becomes a medium of social communication, which also involves the transition between oral world of daily life and the written world of the book.
In terms of style and language, like other French realists, Balzac insisted on an almost scientific scrutiny of life, true correspondence and imitation of the `real`. History was present in his text, syntax and vocabulary. With active engagement in the text, pages were transformed into paysages. The diversity of social speech, later crowned in Zola`s dialogues of the working-class, was contributing to verity of the fictional discourse. The authors tended to believe that: `He who masters the languages of the city rules the city` (Prendergast 1992: 4 and 23).

Page from one of Balzac`s works with handwritten corrections
Intellectual claims in philosophy of this period included the view that an individual can discover the truth only through his senses (e.g. Locke and Reid), which had great influence on the novel. In addition, the novel is `distinguished from other genres by the amount of attention it habitually accords both to the individualisation of its characters and to the detailed presentation of their environment' (Watt 1957: 18). The plot of the 19th century novel in France was the complete opposite of the classical and renaissance epic, based on history, myth or fable. In order to be authentic the realist writer used poor formal conventions of description in detail and `the function of language was much more referential than in other literary forms` (ibid.: 230). For example, Balzac's Père Goriot contains pages of descriptions minutieuses [detailed descriptions] of furniture, clothes, houses and city's sites. Its blurred contours, together with the social preference for festivity and fashion were presented in the paintings of Édouard Manet and other impressionists. The role of language was the social constitution of reality, and the preoccupation of Balzac was the ephemeral and contemporary `outside'. Balzac's linguistics was characterized by the `ornate`. Figurative language became much rarer and linguistic 'ornate' became very common. In France, critics recognized the elegance and concision in writers' expression. The novel was regarded as most translatable because it was the most referential and it required less historical and literary commentary. The formal realism of Balzac can be regarded as a recognizable realist narrative method par excellence. Eugène Rastignac conflates his sexual success with urban when he cries 'A nous deux' [For the two of us] to the one he was in love with. Heroes in many novels tend to use a woman to gain a foothold of the city (Sharon 1999: 171).

Mid-19 th Century and the Trial of Madame Bovary
`In 1812, the first cylinder press was invented: it was considerably improved in the following years and could print 4000 to 5000 copies an hour by 1827` (Couturier 1991: 147). Paper became a great deal cheaper and censorship legislation was developed.
Authors lived close to, or even with their publishers, but quarrels were not rare. In 1830s, Société des gens de lettres was founded and aimed to secure better terms for the profession. A printer and bookseller needed the protection from those who tried to reissue a book or make fraudulent copies of it. The known fact is that the book-trade started to be run in a businesslike manner only in the 19 th century, not before. 'The novel was widely regarded as a typical example of the debased kind of writing by which the booksellers pandered to the reading public. The booksellers brought literature to the control by market place and they could as well encourage the author' (Watt 1957: 54).
Complicity between the Crown and the Church was much greater in France than in England. The novel therefore developed in England with ease compared with France because of this absence of the legal instruments and allegedly more spirit of tolerance.
On the eve of revolution, following Code Michaux, there were 178 censors and `Bastille often hosted the authors, the booksellers, or simply the carriers of banned books` (Lough 1978: 297). Another function invented for better control was the surveyor, and this regime had 'appalling effects on printing profession and reduced the number of printers at work in London from sixty to twenty' (Couturier: 26). The Catholic Church censored and listed novels with `bad influence` in its Index Librorum Prohibitorum. One of the novels listed, for example, in the 18 th century was Pamela, a novel by Samuel Richardson, which was thought to be a bad influence on the 'weaker' sex. Although the other books like Michel Millot's L'école des filles, Nicholas Chorier's L'Académie des dames and Jean Barrin's Venus dans le cloître 7 ran into difficulties, they continued to circulate and to reach their readership.
In France, the law was less tolerant and religious struggles were bitter. However, and although it seems contradictory, some critics claim that French writers had greater freedom of expression than their English counterparts. In England, permission to allow a written work of art was needed from the Chancellor, but for a long time nothing was done to define literary property. Only one century earlier, those who wrote religious literature could be sentenced to death. Law was not only meant `to prevent the publication of seditious books … but also that of obscene literature in general' (Couturier 1991: 26). It required that books should contain nothing 'contrary to good life or good manners', a phrase which seems to echo the French description of obscene literature as contraire aux bonnes moeurs [contrary to the good manners] (ibid.). According to some critics, this genre contributed to what could be called the degeneration of the century by questioning the established morals of society. For instance, Couturier mentions the novel as also subversive. Censorship developed on a grand scale since the 17 th century. The above mentioned Code Michaux of 1629 made it compulsory to submit all manuscripts to censors appointed by the Chancellors. The problem with Code Michaux was that the printer or the bookseller usually did not bother to ask the author's permission to publish a book, once he had the permission from the Chancellor.
The 18 th century was characterised by the difficult relationship between the law and the book trade and the French language was subjected to very strict regulations and censorships. Author's rights were recognised much earlier in England which explains why the novel bloomed half a century earlier in England than in France. However, French authors `had more power and influence socially than the authors on the other side of the Channel` (Couturier 1991).
After the Revolution, freedom of expression was officially recognized in article 11 of the Déclaration des droits de l`homme [Declaration of human rights], but printing wasn`t run in a businesslike manner until the very middle of the 19 th century. Du Camp, who bought Madame Bovary for 2000 francs to publish it in his Revue de Paris in 1856, asked Flaubert to remove some passages because they were perceived as immoral or dangerous. Flaubert refused and sold the rights to Michel Lévy, who decided to publish the book complete. The case finally reached Tribunal Correctionnel, where Flaubert appeared in court alongside Baudelaire on the same charge of immorality for his Fleurs du Mal: `Flaubert was acquitted, though the court offered some criticism of the morality of Madame Bovary, but Baudelaire was found guilty, fined 300 francs with costs, and ordered to remove six poems from subsequent editions of Les Fleurs du Mal' (Lough 1978: 285). Baudelaire`s aggressive stance contained all kinds of provocative images and it conveyed emphasis on modernité, both social and artistic.
A couple of controversial erotic scenes that were skilfully painted and made lascivious by deliberate use of expressive language in Madame Bovary were discussed in the trial.
It stated that what the author exhibited was the very poetry of adultery (Couturier 1991).
`The frivolous pages of Madame Bovary could fall into the more frivolous hands of girls, and even of married women sometimes and they could be induced to follow Emma`s example. It was a matter of public health and safety to ban the book. The attorney of the defence insisted that although the reader might have felt that Flaubert was on Emma`s side, the book also showed how she suffered for her sins and instructed young girls to be good and pure. The novel of the time was expected to have the `double mission of amusing and teaching' (Iknayan 1961: 85). Flaubert scored immediate success with Madame Bovary, `partly because of the publicity given to the book by prosecution ... none of his later novels had the same sales` (Lough 1978: 359).
Writers couldn`t control the flow of the information generated, once the book was published. Ever since, the difficulties with publishing sexually explicit fiction appeared, many books, although they were banned, continued to circulate. Perhaps this book by  (Iknayan 1961: 35).
Madame Bovary was peinture des moeurs [painting of the customs] of the time and though the trial may seem absurd to some contemporaries, it stays exemplary in many respects (Iknayan 1961: 20).
Gradually, as writers started to earn more, patronage became another great source of income. The popular interest in reading increased and several factors affected the composition of the book or newspaper-buying public. ` The Education Act of 1870 in England and the Lois Jules Ferry of 1880-1 in France did not immediately change the structure of the book market, but they substantially increased the potential audience of all books, and of novels in particular` (Couturier 1991: 147). `Being able to read was a necessary accomplishment … for those destined to the middle-class occupations` (Watt 1957: 39-40), whereas in Shakespearean England one needed a penny to stand in the Globe, `the price of a novel… would feed a family for a week or two` (ibid.:42). There were still literary forms available for small amounts of money: ballads, new stories of criminals, accounts of extraordinary events and pamphlets. Newspapers stayed quite cheap until taxation was imposed.
Women, especially from the upper and the middle class, presented a large portion of the reading public. The main character of Flaubert`s masterpiece was reading Balzac so enthusiastically that 'she even brings the novels to the dining table` (Prendergast 1992: 1). However, as their virtue could suffer from overexposure to books that can excite the passions, they had to read in secret. Borrowing a book from a library was safer and more practical than buying it. Consequently, circular libraries sprang up all over Europe. The first circulating library in London was established after 1740, and it contributed to an increase in number of readers. Still, much cheaper and more popular than novels were innumerable entertainments such as plays, operas and masquerades. While the cheap books and poetry were read in veillées [social evenings by the fire], novels required silence, comfort and isolation. The veillées also secured symmetrical positions of author and reader in silent communication. According to Barthes, the pleasure of the text largely derives from this magic distance between the author and the reader imposed by the medium of the printed book or a distance which guarantees their respective privacy.
For this purpose, new kinds of furniture were invented. Heroines of the novels are often shown reading in a boudoir, that is a private space in a Georgian house, adjoining the bedroom, and consisting of a writing desk. Virginia Woolf called it `a prime requisite of woman`s emancipation`.
As the confidence of the middle class was rising, authors came from all kinds of backgrounds. Emma Bovary herself, had prix de lecture, which she shows to Charles when they meet. Sometimes, they wrote very explicitly and tautologically, so that the less educated readers could understand. With the development of print, author and reader began to find themselves in symmetrical positions, 'silently communicating with each other through the printed text, often over many centuries` (Couturier 1991:-46).
The difference in authors' education and ability explains some of the technical weaknesses of the written production. But this was not the case with Balzac, Flaubert and Zola. The middle class proved to be the most self confident at this time, and new standards of form and content appealed to large audiences and corresponded to the new public indigence. In 18 th century England annual production of novels increased from seven at the beginning to 80 at the end of the century. In 19 th century England and France, the new taste for sentimentalism and gothic horror, both provoking easy indulgence, began to correspond to public requirements.
In France, the relation between the literature and life in fiction remained more distant than in England. Mme de Staël in her famous essay De la littérature in 1800 writes about the literary rapport with social institutions. There is the close connection between the French realists who wrote in the beginning of the century and romanticists who wrote later, and both demonstrate emphasis on individualism and originality.

Zola and the End of the Century
Rhetoric, persuasion, and competition of ideas enter fiction that becomes more politically active. L`Education Sentimentale by Flaubert, repeated inherited slogans of 1789, and in the context of the nineteenth century, we have the example of `un roman qui aura pour cadre le monde ouvrier` [the novel that gives the context of the world of the working class] like Gérminal, a claustrophobic novel about the mine-workers` strike. Objectivity and truth of representation in Zola's work were more striking than in the realist novels of the time. Zola was writing as part of the literary movement of Naturalism, where the aim of the novel was to record fact. Naturalist writers refuse sentimentality and sensationalism.
In the 1877 preface to L`Assommoir, `Zola defends himself against criticism of the vulgarity of much of the language` (Flower 1983: 20 and 9). Dialogue was charged with exclamations, dropping syllables, popular expressions and slang. Themes were rape, ugliness, alcoholism and murder, while backgrounds were markets and factories.
Although the descriptions had moral, social and political weight, the narrator remains detached. For instance, at the end of Gérminal, Etienne leaves Montsou and the surrounding region, and whatever hope there may be that the social revolution will one day come about, the mine has been reopened. He finds out, in a kind of self-exploration that he missed the intellectual capacity and resolution in order to be the leader, and he decides to go to university. Re-establishment of bourgeoisie control takes place and there is no alternative for the workers.
`The new faculties of arts and science set up by Napoleon in 1808 had for decades virtually no students in the modern sense of the term but they were, in fact, strengthened in 1880s' (Lough 1978: 281). In his writings, Zola analysed the collective consciousness of the working-class. He drew attention to their miseries and suffering and portrayed l`odeur du people. Unlike bourgeoisie literature, 'the language of political revolution is in principle directed towards turning the sphere of public discourse into a democratic forum, and the issues and forms of contestation become the most important` (Prendergast 1992: 25). Although the working-class press existed earlier in 1830s and 1840s with newspapers like L`Atélier, the industrious worker was a new figure on literary scene, and Zola`s argument was that workers were victims and powerless to struggle for a better life.

The Court of Appeal during the Zola affair
Working-class female characters of naturalist novels often found comfort in religion (Flower 1983: 13). Fear of law was generally present and characters were often totally degraded, depraved of intelligence and the chance to rise above mediocrity. There is the strong criticism of bourgeoisie, who `for their part, distanced themselves rigorously from the people` (Habermas 1989: 72). Zola worked as a journalist and for Hachette publisher, where he became increasingly aware of the problems in society. His transition from journalism to the literary world was certainly favourable because 'there would always be more respect for authors of books than for the mere journalist' (Zeldin 1977: 506).
Commercialisation of the press imposed and encouraged a uniform and standard French. According to analysis by Watt, the newspaper buying public in nearby England tripled by the middle of the 19 th century from less than one newspaper buyer in 100 persons per week.
The social and political environment in which the novel appeared and in which literature experienced the break with the old-fashioned romances, involving traditional plots of classical, renaissance epic, myth, legend or history, matters for the communicationoriented approach to fiction: The novel attempts to portray all the varieties of human experience, and not merely those suited to one particular literary perspective. Its realism does not reside in the kind of life it presents but in the way it presents it. French Realists drew attention to an issue which the novel raises more sharply than any other literary form and the main problem of the correspondence was the one between the literary work and the reality which it imitates. (Watt 1957:11) Realists built on the philosophical ideas of Locke and Reid in order to attain the fidelity of human experience, and the idea was that the truth can be discovered by individual through his senses. Lynn Hunt analysed the political culture of the French Revolution and its consequences, as well as the accompanying adequate system of representation in institutions and symbols used in this new political discourse. Speaking about fiction, she argues that textual communication prevails because the novelist remains more engaged with the text and less with the audience. However, the author can transform the oral communication into written by weaving it into his fictional story and once the book is available to the reader, this fiction becomes a powerful tool of social communication.
The cases of Balzac's opus, Flaubert's trial and Zola's defence of Dreyfus remain illustrative of the novel as a medium of social communication in 19 th century France, by showing how the language used in novels reflected the language of the society, the customs, interior and exterior decors, architecture, even political movements and opponents. 'The novel's conventions make much smaller demands on the audience than most literary conventions, and this surely explains why the majority of readers in the last two hundred years have found in the novel the literary form which most closely satisfies their wishes for a close correspondence between life and art' (Watt 1957:32-33).
Politics connects with fiction more intensely through political happenings like the Dreyfus affair, which causes refashioning of the society, and makes stronger social references to the customs of the past and regenerating nation or nations, in this particular case, French and Jewish. Alternatively, this gives rise to self-conscious political principles that we can trace back to the writings of the Enlightenment thinkers that were common to many educated people like Zola. Writers of this period became like brokers of culture, people whose profession is of prominent social standing and therefore more capable of directly playing a role in social communication, through their writings or their intellectual position. This entire process of interaction among writer and reader, society, reality, imagination, as well as language, constitutes what we call social communication.