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The Jewish Question in Zola's L'argent

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Richard B. Grant*
Affiliation:
Duke University, Durham, N.C.

Extract

Coinciding roughly with the establishment of the Third Republic, there developed in France a wave of anti-Semitism that was to lead ultimately to the Dreyfus affair. Thousands of Jews had moved to Paris, Marseilles, and Lyons after Germany took Alsace and Lorraine, bringing with them competition in finance, as well as a thick accent and coarse manners. It was also at this time (1882) that the great Catholic bank, the Union Générale, failed, ruining thousands of small investors. The action of the government in suddenly arresting for fraud the President and the Director of the firm just as they were attempting to rebuild their bank, and the subsequent accusation by the President, Eugène Bontoux, that the Jews, in league with the “Freemason” government, were responsible for having ruined him because he was a Christian, gave rise to one of the great anti-Semitic myths of the age. It was fully exploited by Edouard Drumont in La France juive (1886), a book that was widely sold and passionately discussed.

Type
Research Article
Information
PMLA , Volume 70 , Issue 5 , December 1955 , pp. 955 - 967
Copyright
Copyright © Modern Language Association of America, 1955

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References

page 955 note 1 Robert Byrnes, Antisemiiism in Modern France, Vol. i; The Prologue to the Dreyfus A fair (New Brunswick, N. J.: Rutgers Univ. Press, 1950). This book gives an excellent general treatment of French anti-Semitism for the perida 1870–94. It also deals, in not too great detail, with the literature of this era which treats the Jews.

page 955 note 2 Emile Zola's letters to J. van Santen Koljf, ed. Robert J. Niess, Washington Univ. Studies, New Ser., Lang, and Lit., No. 10 (St. Louis, 1940), letter of 12 Sept. 1890.

page 955 note 3 The novel was finished on 30 Jan. 1891 and published by Charpentier on 4 March 1891.

page 955 note 4 Letter from Alphonse Daudet to Zola, 26 April 1886. The postscript begins: “Comme vous avez été cruel pour Drumont l'autre jour …” (Correspondance 1872—1902, Bernou-ard Ed. [1927–29], p. 657). All further citations from Zola are from this edition.

page 955 note 5 I am indebted to my father, Professor Elliott Grant, for the information on Chercusac's novel.

page 955 note 6 Cited from the worksheets to L'Argent which are bound in two volumes at the Bibliothèque Nationale under Fonds franĉais, nouvelles acquisitions, Nos. 10268 and 10269, hereafter referred to by their number alone. The reference here is to 10268, feuillets 380–381.

page 955 note 7 L'Union Générale: sa vie, sa mort, son programme (Paris: Savine, 1888).

page 955 note 8 10268, f. 341. The reference is to Ernest Feydeau, Mémories d'un coulissier (Paris: Librairie nouvelle, 1873).

page 955 note 9 This projected study was never written.

page 955 note 10 10269, ff. 102–103. Italics mine.

page 955 note 11 This feeling that the Bourse was a mysteriously attractive but evil place was a widespread attitude of the era. A book endeavoring to explain stock-market operations to the layman, by one Eugène de Mirecourt, is entitled La Bourse: ses abus et ses mystères (Paris: priv. publ., 1858). Interestingly enough, Zola makes reference to it in the worksheets and the book itself is very anti-Semitic.

page 955 note 12 Byrnes, p. 109, refers to Zola's repeated use of the term, but he seems uncertain how to evaluate it.

page 955 note 13 Zola was aware of this fact from Feydeau's book, which discusses the Rothschild-Péreire struggle at length.

page 955 note 14 A transitional viewpoint is to be found in an article Zola wrote for the Figaro, 16 May 1896 (included in Zola's Une Nouvelle campagne, pp. 107–113). In it, while Zola still attributes some Jewish differences to racial causes, the emphasis is heavily on the idea that sociological pressures from the Gentile world have made the Jew what he is.