Emile Zola has always been attached to his Provençal roots: Aix-en-Provence where he spent his youth, l'Estaque near Marseille and Marseille which he celebrates in his work The Mysteries of Marseille.
Why Zola started writing Mysteries of Marseille ?
Léopold Arnaud, owner of the Marseille newspaper Le Messager de Provence , commissioned Émile Zola to write a work intended as a counterpart to Eugène Sue's Mysteries of Paris , which had captivated all of Paris in 1842. Having financial difficulties finishing his new novel, Thérèse Raquin , he accepted the commission. He was paid two sous per line, a considerable sum at the time.
How Zola constructs the novel Mysteries of Marseille ?
This popular novel, with its many unexpected twists and turns typical of the genre, already reveals Zola's style and taste for colorful life, as well as his indignation against injustice, and his art of representing the diversity of social strata. Léopold Arnaud provides him with legal documents from recent criminal trials that took place in the south.
Zola seized upon this to write a striking dramatic work, displaying the shames and virtues of a great city given over to the excesses of modern industry. He devoted his mornings to writing Thérèse Raquin and his afternoons to writing The Mysteries of Marseille.
The history of Mysteries of Marseille
This novel tells the love story of Philippe Cayol, a destitute republican, and the young Blanche de Cazalis, niece of Mr. de Cazalis, an all-powerful millionaire deputy in Marseille. Marius, Philippe's brother, protects the two lovers and the child that Blanche had before entering the convent from the anger of M. de Cazalis.
Marseille is given pride of place; the clash of social classes against a backdrop of financial malfeasance during the 1848 revolution, particularly the bloody workers' riot, recalls the setting of Germinal . This "contemporary historical novel," in which the character of Lorette foreshadows that of Nana, was later adapted for the stage.
" The Mysteries of Marseille is a contemporary historical novel. I took all the facts they contain from real life; I selected the necessary documents here and there, I brought together in a single story twenty stories of different form and nature, I gave a character the traits of several individuals whom I was allowed to know and study. This is how I was able to write a work where everything is true, where everything has been observed from life."
