`The Dream' is the sixteenth volume in Zola's Rougon-Macquart series of novels of the Second Empire. Perhaps as a reaction to the criticism received by his preceding books - works of almost unrelenting, gritty realism - Zola here shows that his talents range beyond describing the corruption and oppression of the second, farcical, Napoleonic regime, and the daily struggle for survival. Here he portrays the very heart and feelings of an idealistic young girl, raised in a cloistered corner of a disappearing France, and now emerging from a childhood of security, love and certainty, into beautiful womanhood. ...On the morning after Christmas, as a snowstorm is burying the town of Beamont-l'Eglise, a young girl is found huddling in the doorway of the cathedral. She is taken in and raised by a childless couple - ecclesiastical embroiderers - in happy innocence and far from the harsh realities of the world. While she learns her trade and becomes a highly-skilled embroideress, she loses herself in dreamlike visions inspired by her confused religious belief, legend, fantasy and hope. Her only education comes from reading stories in the `Golden Legend' about the martyrs of the early Catholic Church . Her life is guided by the example of virgin saints - Agnes, Genevieve, Dorothy, Christine and Cecilia - who she believes watch over her, to help make her dream come true. She can see no reason why her dream of love and marriage to the most handsome and richest man in her little world, even if he is a Bishop's son, and a nobleman, will not be turned into miraculous reality. But, can a foundling girl, abandoned by her mother -now lost in the Parisian underworld, fallen into a life of depravity and crime - really rise to such heights from her lowly place, or dare even to think such thoughts? Especially when those all around her think her dream can never, must never, come true? And, if it should ever be realised, can her innocence and saintliness, can she herself, in her ignorance and naivety, hope to survive the world outside?

The Dream (The Rougon-Macquart)

Literature & Fiction

Zolá, Emile

World Literature

Lansdown Books

<p>Doctor Pascal is the final volume in Zola's monumental Rougon-Macquart series of novels. It is, in Zola's own words, both a summary and a conclusion of all his work. Shortly after the fall of the Second Empire in the town of Plassans in torrid, stormy Provence, Dr Pascal Rougon is nearing retirement from his general practice, but is still deeply interested in ground-breaking research in the new science of heredity, in which he is a prominent authority. He wants to know what causes the creation of such widely varying types of people from the same parents and family lines. What better source of research material than his own extended family, the Rougons and Macquarts, whose tales are told in the previous volumes of the series? Yet, even though he is nearly sixty, he finds his passions awakening and, after a life spent alone with only his servant and young niece for company, he now yearns to know a woman's love. On both counts, he must deal with his mother, the formidable Felicité Rougon, who is determined that the family name will not be besmirched either by Pascal's revelations of its secrets in the cause of science, or his growing passion for life and all its joys. A tale of love, faith and betrayal, of passions as stormy as the mistral, plays itself out under the sweltering sun of the French Midi. Doctor Pascal is a fittingly dramatic denouement to the sprawling story of the Rougon-Macquart.</p>

Doctor Pascal (The Rougon Macquart)

Genre Fiction

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The Dream (The Rougon-Macquart)

Doctor Pascal (The Rougon Macquart)