Fiction
as a Medium of Social Communication
in 19th Century France
Sabina
Pstrocki-Sehovic
Abstract
This
article will present the extent to which literature could be viewed as
means of
social communication – i.e. informing and influencing society
– in 19thcentury
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 19th 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 Comédie 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-19th
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 19th century onwards. These three are
the most
important cases which illustrate how fiction functioned in relation to
society,
state and readership in 19th century France.
Keywords:
social
communication; textual communication; books on
trials; censorship; 19th century France; Dreyfus affair; the
novel; interactions
between literary world and society
Introduction[1]
The need to communicate in
society has existed ever
since the emergence of humanity. It is often claimed that for
communication to
be successful, it must be informative. Therefore, communication must
indicate
an intended direction of thought or action. The readership of 18th
and 19th century shows sensibility for informative reading,
but also
for improving, entertaining and easy reading and this is why readers of
the
time searched for the new and most appropriate fictional form to
respond to
their needs.
Communication can also be
subtle, which means that
it can more or less conceal its intentions and its instrumental goals.
Written
or textual communication – which is in the focus of this analysis
– is
posterior to oral, which is from time-to-time transformed into written
communication, a process encouraged by the noticeable emergence of
literacy in
the general public. Oral communication was also more straightforward
than
written communication, but with the development of print, the process
of
communicating became more complex as exposure to written communication
increased.
Several definitions refer
to social communication as
a language used in social situations with the aim of establishing
mutual
understanding, informing or influencing society as a whole.[2]
Here we will analyse one particular literary genre, the novel, as a
powerful
tool of social communication in 19th century France. This
article
will briefly mention (i) what were the other most popular genres and
why, (ii)
what kind of language the authors used to represent their fictional
worlds,
(iii) what was the social surrounding and the atmosphere in which this
reception by the public happened, (iv) what problems the authors
experienced
with the state authorities and (v) how they developed their
communicative
relationship with the readers.
19th
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
working-class 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 19th 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).
Universal Exposition of 1889
In literature of the 19th
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: 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 French Revolution placed the
middle-class
in a position of social and literary power which their English
counterparts had
achieved, exactly a century before` (Watt 1957: 301). Its emergence was
related
to certain social phenomena: the development of the printing press and
journalism; the increase of the reading public ― especially in terms of
female
readers ; and the laws of censorship imposed by either state or church
in order
to keep stable political and religious order. The works of Honore de
Balzac,
the most important writer of the beginning of the 19th century,
can
demonstrate the impact of this literary genre on society and its
function in
social communication.
The works of Balzac
illustrate French society from
all angles and are capable of dealing with the totality of life,
presenting
stories which captured some of the moral values of the century.
Balzac’s works
demonstrate the strong connection between distinctive literary
qualities of the
novel and those of society in which it began to flourish. The rise of
the novel
meant the break with the tradition of old-fashioned romances, taking
inspiration instead from real-world characters and events. Therefore,
Balzac`s
opus of approximately one hundred books could be considered one of the
most
truthful portrayals of the society in the first half of the 19th
century.
Balzac’s characters represented a great variety of human
experience, including
all kinds of nomads, thieves, vagabonds, fornicators and
prostitutes,
working or unemployed, beggars or sometimes criminals who inhabited
Paris. We
could draw an interesting parallel between the particular choice of
characters
in Balzac’s with those in Charles Dickens’ novels in
England. Sharon (1999)
quotes figures of bachelors like Rastignac in Balzac’s Comédie
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 19th 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 18th 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.
The novel was a fresh genre
in character and style,
and there was the complete subordination of the text to the patterns
perceived
immediately. Sometimes the characters were named exactly in the same
way as
particular individuals in ordinary life and they were verbal
expressions of
identity both in society and in the novel. In contrast, classical
renaissance
literature favoured historical or type names and Molière`s
theatre favoured
social representatives with characteristic names and surnames like Tartuffe,
Le Bourgeois Gentil homme or Malade Immaginaire. Rablais
started the
practice of giving his characters names that denoted particular
qualities and
some later fictional characters could have also been related with one
particular and the most prominent trait of character, Moll
Flanders thief, Pamela
hypocrite, Tom Jones fornicator (Watt
1957). This change of character can be traced as replacement of the
knight-errant hero by a fine gentleman (Day 1987). Particularisation
and naming
of the character constitute verbal expressions of a particular identity
in
social life and in the novel.
Character also acts as the
bearer of social
communication between the reader and the author. There is no such
wealth of
detail accumulated in text or such abundance of minor references as in
Balzac’s
work. His sketchy portraits and the way he handles the text give full
portrayal
of the characters of his society. ‘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). In his typical characterisation, Balzac was famous for
melancholy
attributed to his fictional characters and by physiognomy or the
aptitude of
recognising people by their physical appearance. He owed as much to
observation
as to imagination. In several novels there are personnages
reparaissants [reappearing characters], sometimes a bit
altered and the editions with illustrations were often suggestive about
the
outer looks of these ‘society-representatives’ and with the
illustrations they
could be better comprehended. These illustrations functioned in the
same way as
frontispieces accompanying numerous
editions of books in 19th century, and particularly some
collections
of fairy-tales. They were often there with the primary intention to
influence
the imagination of the reader. It was sometimes the author’s
pleasure to make
and write the additional eulogium,
therefore further influencing the reader. Fictional plot of the novel
had some
of the features of detective story, one of the most typical urban
genre.
However, the virtues of citizenship were not really exercised by the
characters
in novels of the early nineteenth century. Their inner world as well as
their
revelations stay mainly metaphysical in nature.
Whereas in Renaissance
literature, shaping of man’s
individual history was the expression of the collective history, and
timeless
stories were used to mirror unchanging moral verities, in the novel,
the temporal
dimension of human life was denied and the `space of a day` replaced by
the
`space of a lifetime`. Balzac, together with Stendhal was the first
great
efflorescence of the novelistic genre. For example, in the beginning of
Le
Père Goriot, Paris presents for a hero an opaque city with
no readability
or possibility of interpretation. `Paris est un
océan. Jetez-y
la sonde, vous n`en connaîtrez jamais la profondeur` [Paris
is an ocean. Even
if you
throw the anchor, you will never find out the depth] (Prendergast 1992:
110).
In his essay `Paris en 1831`, Balzac called it `la capitale
du monde,
sans égal dans l`univérs` [the capital of the world
without equal in the
universe]. The revelation of nature of the city as complex, intractable
and
impossible to master comes in the decisive moment of the funeral of
Le Père
Goriot, when the main character grasps and conquers for a moment
the
seditious and secret world of the city. 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-19th
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 19th
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 18th
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 17th 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 18th 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 19th 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 Flaubert looks
didactic,
when compared to the obscenity of The Crimes of Love, written
by Marquis
de Sade and published in 1800. His erotic ten-volume books like La
Nouvelle
Justine or Histoire Secrète d’Isabelle had
additional political
connotations. Although Flaubert only just escaped the death penalty and
spent
most of his life exiled in mental hospitals and prisons, he continued
to look
for assistance, in order to have his works published. `La
littérature est
l`expression de la société` [Literature is the expression
of society] writes
Bonald, about the fiction of this period (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 18th
century England annual production of novels increased from seven at the
beginning to 80 at the end of the century. In 19th 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. The spread of literacy inside
the
country was improved by better roads and the development of the
national
railway. The technological revolution helped expansion of books,
periodicals
and newspapers, and stimulated the growth of reading public. In the
course of
Dreyfus Affair,[8]
Zola published ‘J`accuse’,
a vehement open letter in a Paris Newspaper in 1898 and defended
Dreyfus, who
was accused of spying for Germany, which led to the case being
reopened. At the
time, Jews were generally considered people without fatherland and
insufficiently loyal to the countries where they lived. Dreyfus was
sentenced
to life imprisonment and a crowd emerged with anti-Semitic press,
shouts and
slogans. Nevertheless, in politics, bureaucracy and industry,
favouritism and
personal recommendation remained of great importance.
The conviction was a
miscarriage of justice based
upon espionage and anti-Semitism, particularly in a social context
conducive to
hatred of the German Empire following its annexation of Alsace and part
of
Lorraine in 1871. The implications of this case were numerous and
affected all
aspects of French public life: politics (the affair established the
triumph of
the Third Republic and became its founding myth), the renewal of
nationalism,
both military and religious (it slowed the reform of French Catholicism
and
republican integration of Catholics), social and legal domain, press,
diplomacy
and culture. However, the opposition served the republican order
according to
most historians and there was indeed, remarkable strengthening of
parliamentary
democracy and a failure of monarchist and reactionary forces. The
affair
engendered numerous anti-Semitic demonstrations, which in turn affected
the
emotions within the Jewish communities of Central and Western Europe.
After
France was split in two by this affair, with the conservative
government,
church and army on one side, and progressive critical forces on the
other, Zola
in fact managed to save Dreyfus who was declared innocent of the
charges decade
later. In 1896, Theodor Hertzl, a Jewish journalist from Vienna, who
covered
the trial, published a book The Jewish State,
where he expressed the opinion that Jews would remain
strangers in their countries of residence and that they needed the
country of
their own. It marked the beginning of Zionism.
Conclusion
Maurice Couturier described
the rise of the novel as
a ‘textual communication’ and he points out Lacan’s
theory which insists on the
role of the author and Foucault’s analysis of discourse. He calls
it the ‘most
subversive product of the typographic age’ (Couturier: 32) whilst
referring to
the omnipresent necessity of the time to create written language that
was
appealing to learning and recognition. Additionally, the development of
journalism increased the role of textual communication in social
communication.
The rise of the novel and journalism both caused the changes in the
organisation and the nature of the reading public and the general
interest in
reading increased, but still far from the nowadays phenomena of the
mass
reading public and mass communication. According to analysis by Watt,
the
newspaper buying public in nearby England tripled by the middle of the
19th
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 communication-oriented
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 19th 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.
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[1] Many thanks to members of my family and colleagues at previous and present working places and universities for their support; to professor Dr. Stephen Lovell, for help finding suitable Bibliography, whilst supervising the first version of this article, written as a longer text for the course Communications in Modern Europe; and to the Philosophy Department of Warwick University for a warm welcome at the Literary Conference held in March, 2014, Theories of literature: Essence, Fiction and Value and for sharing with us the relevant information about the Exchanges: Warwick Research Journal and other literary - research publishers.
[2]
See Klaus Fiedler’s Social Communication
for examples of such definitions of ‘social communication’.
[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 19th and 20th century.
[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.
[6] Splendeurs et misères des courtisanes` makes up part of Balzac’s Comedié Humaine and it is preoccupied with the underworld. Zola’s Nana shows `uneasy interaction between high society, theatre and prostitution` (Moretti 1998: 90).
[8] The Dreyfus affair was a political scandal
that divided France for about 12 years, from the affair's inception in
1894
until its resolution in 1906. The affair is often seen as a modern and
universal symbol of injustice for reasons of state and remains one of
the most
striking examples of a complex miscarriage of justice.