Naturalism in Nana Novel by Emile zola

By Ann Mariya CF

Introduction to Emile Zola

Emile Zola (1840-1902) . He was a French novelist and journalist known as one of the most
famous and controversial figures ever known on the French literary scene. Aside from his great
literary output, which includes novels, dramas, poetry, and criticism, he also dominated the
theoretical side of literary endeavour.
Zola was born in Paris, the only child of an Italian immigrant father and a French mother. When
Zola was about nine years old, his father’s absence has left the mother and Emile in extreme
financial straits. After failing to pass the examinations for his baccalaureate, Zola lived what
might be accurately called the life of the poverty-stricken poet. He learned a great deal about
poverty, which often appears in many of his subsequent novels.
Zola began his career as a poet. After obtaining a clerical position, he was able to write on the
side and in a few years had published enough to allow him to devote his full time to literary
endeavors. From 1862 until the appearance of L'Assommoir in 1877, Zola struggled along,
publishing about a novel a year. Zola’s “Rougon-Macquart” series is his great contribution to
French literature.This is twenty volumes which depict various aspects of life and society under
the second empire in France. Not all of the novels are as successful as Nana, but as one reads
from one novel to another, one is struck by the tremendous imagination of the author. Zola was
equally famous for his views about naturalism, and he asserted that the novelist could utilize the
scientific method in creating characters for fiction. His theoretical criticism influenced the course
of modern literature even though it is not considered profound or original. Ultimately, Zola’s
reputation rests upon the tremendously imaginative feat connected with the conception of the
“Rougon-Macquart” series.Zola’s theories are often viewed as being somewhat naïve and
insignificant. He himself claimed no originality for his own theories, but any historical account
of naturalism must take into account his beliefs. However simple, naïve, or invalid they might
seem, they had a tremendous effect upon the development of not just French literature, but upon
world literature. Because of his theories, he became one of the most abused and most
championed figures on the literary scene, and the degree to which he was vilified indicates the
amount of influence he wielded.
Summary
Nana is a part of a large series of novels that Zola was at the time writing, called the Rougon-
Macquart series, which consists of twenty novels published between 1871 and 1898. Nana is the
ninth novel in the series, and it was published in 1880. In the novel, Nana is the daughter of
Gervaise Macquart, whose husband died of alcoholism, and her mother died of starvation in the
novel L’Assommoir (1877).

The novel begins with Monsieur Fauchery, a journalist and drama critic, taking his cousin, La
Faloise, to the theater for the opening of a new musical featuring the title ‘The Blond Venus’, an
exciting new star known simply as Nana. At the theater, the two men recognized many people
from the fashionable world; among them, the pious Count Muffat de Beuville and his wife,
Countess Sabine, were present. When Nana appears onstage, though she is not a talented actress,
she possesses one outstanding quality: being the epitome of physical beauty and sexuality. At
first, the audience laughs at her acting until a young boy, Georges Hugon, cries out, “She’s
wonderful.” From then until the end of the play, Nana is in control of the audience. At
intermission, everyone agrees that the production is idiotic, but the main subject is Nana. During
the final act, Nana appears on the stage virtually naked and is astonished. Everyone, especially
the male audience, is captivated. The next day, while Nana is making arrangements to receive her
lovers, men who witnessed her last-night performance at the theater begin to call upon her.
Among the visitors are Count Muffat and his father-in-law, the Marquis de Chouard, who pretend
to come to collect money for a charitable organization. They become anxious but excited by the
presence of Nana. A wealthy banker named Steiner also comes, and even though he has a
reputation for spending fortunes on actresses, Nana refuses to see him. The following week,
Count Muffat throws a party, but the discussion between the men concerns the party that Nana is
giving after her performance. She has told Fauchery to invite the count to the party, but most of
the men think that he will not accept. At the party, more people came than Nana had expected;
her house became congested, and Nana was not comfortable with that. Everyone was presented
except Count Muffat. At the end of the party, Nana decides it is time to look after her own
interests; since Steiner offered her a huge amount of fortune, she let him be her lover. Out of
nowhere, Nana's reputation spreads, and soon foreign dignitaries begin to come to the theater to
see her. Count Muffat accompanied an English prince to the theater, and while there, he could
hardly constrain himself because Nana had aroused in him unknown desires. Before the prince
takes her away for the evening, the count discovers that Steiner has bought her a country house
close to a family he often visits. She asked him to come see her. It was Madame Hugon's own
country house; she is the mother of Georges, who shouted in the theater that Nana was
wonderful. When Georges hears about Nana’s visit, he goes to see her. He is such a young, 17-
year-old boy, so Nana rejected him as a lover, but later she agreed. This new relationship pleases
her so much that she decides to postpone her affair with Count Muffat. After a week, George’s
relationship is discovered by his mother, and she forces him to remain at home. Then Count
Muffat slips into Nana’s bedroom and begins his love affair with her.
Three months later, Nana begins to resent the fact that Count Muffat never gives her much
money. In fact, she has exploited his wealth and advances. Furthermore, she has formed an
infatuation for an actor named Fontan. When Muffat and Steiner arrive and find her in bed with
Fontan, Nana throws both her old lovers out and decides to be true to Fontan. However, the actor
soon tires of Nana and begins beating her brutally. Fontan is the only man Nana couldn’t
dominate. Finally, he even locks her out of her apartment. Nana now decides to renew her
relationship with Count Muffat, but she makes it clear to him that she expects much more than
she previously received. The count agrees to all her demands, buys her an expensive mansion,
furnishes it elegantly, and gives her twelve thousand francs a month for expenses. Still, Nana is
not satisfied; she begins to have relations with other men, even men whom she picks up from the
streets. In fact, she has promised Muffat that she won’t fall into other affairs. Out of boredom,
she begins to experiment with lesbian love and finds that it is rather pleasant. Count Muffat must
learn to accept all of her vagaries, or else leave. He was forced to buy the most expensive bed for
her. Nevertheless, he is so completely enslaved to her that he cannot deny her anything.At the
famous race, the Prix de Paris, one of the horses is named Nana. Everyone comes to the race, and
many bet on the filly. The race was won by Nana, but the owner of the stable, Count Vandeuvres,
is suspected of some shady transactions and commits suicide by setting fire to himself and his
stables. Nana, however, is celebrated because her namesake won the race.No amount of money
or pleasure seems to satisfy Nana. She has completely turned into a materialist, beastly woman.
She begins to spend money so wildly that she has to have many more lovers to supply her
insatiable demands. She has plundered many men and left them bankrupt. Those men picked by
Nana are mostly aristocrats; Nana left them as beggars; she enjoyed doing this.Through all of her
experiences, the count remains imprisoned by her capricious behavior. One day, he was stunned
to discover his father-in-law sharing a bed with Nana. He quickly realized his mistake. But by
then, he too was a broken man. One day, Nana disappears from Paris. No one knows her
whereabouts, but rumors begin to grow about her. Nana had returned from Russia and discovered
that her child, Louiset, whose father is unknown, was dying of smallpox. She apparently caught
the disease from her son while nursing him. Two days after Louiset’s death, Nana came down
with the disease. All of the rumors concern huge sums of money and fantastic lovers for Nana.
One day, it is discovered that Nana is in a hotel, dying of smallpox. Rose has taken her to the
hotel in Paris. Before Rose leaves, she places a candle by Nana’s body. It illuminates Nana’s face
in such a way that the women see the horrors caused by smallpox. Many of the old actresses and
courtesans go to see her, but they are too late. Now, only Nana’s body, corrupted by the ravages
of the disease, lies unclaimed in the austere hotel room.
Zola and naturalism
Naturalism is a late 19th-century literary movement in which writers focused on exploring the
fundamental causes for their characters’ actions, choices, and beliefs. These causes centered on
the influence of family and society upon the individual and all the complications that exist which
in a view that environmental factors are the primary determinant of human character. Naturalism
is in many ways interconnected with realism, but realism is primarily a style of writing, while
naturalism is a philosophy in writing.
Emile zola has been called as the father of naturalism moreover, he is best known for his theories
and defense of naturalism. Many critics fail to make a distinction between “realism” and
“naturalism.” Realism simply explained as an attempt to realistically present life. As a
movement, realism preceded naturalism, and the latter movement is essentially an attempt to
carry the position of the realist to a further degree. Sometimes naturalism is called “stark
realism.” Jules-Antoine Castagnary, a French art critic, first used the term naturalism to describe
a style of lifelike painting that became popular in the early 1860s. Émile Zola then applied the
term to literature. Zola’s seminal essay “The Experimental Novel,” published in 1880, presents a
detailed examination of the novel as a preeminent naturalistic literary art form.
According to zola, naturalism was the systematic, objective, and scientific extension of realism.
Novelist are expected to present accurate picture of life as possible. This was to be accomplished
by having the novelist function as scientifically and as objectively. The subject matter of art
should include some representatives of the working class, and the purpose should be to present
an understanding of the contemporary social conditions. Thus, many of Zola’s novels have a
social idea as their basis, which is then presented with scientific objectivity. That is, the working
class is not romanticized rather, all the trials and difficulties are presented realistically.
As a naturalist expert,Zola demanded a great degree of verisimilitude in his novels, but he never
claimed that the novel should be purely photographic. He once explained that art is a “corner of
reality seen through a temperament” The value of verisimilitude lies in the fact that, through
exact descriptions, the artist could present his subject more accurately and consequently be more
truthful to his subject. When the artist presents his subject faithfully, then, for Zola, the character
would be shown as a product of his environment and of his heredity. People’s actions, like those
of a beast, are controlled by the traits they inherited and by the environment from which they
sprung.
Science and Naturalism
Charles Darwin was a British naturalist who proposed the theory of biological evolution by
natural selection.Darwin defined evolution as “descent with modification,” the idea that species
change over time, give rise to new species, and share a common ancestor.The mechanism that
Darwin proposed for evolution is natural selection. Because resources are limited in nature,
organisms with heritable traits that favor survival and reproduction will tend to leave more
offspring than their peers, causing the traits to increase in frequency over generations. The
Darwinian naturalist is one who thinks not just that the sciences are important for informing
philosophy, but that the evolutionary sciences con- stitute an especially rich set of philosophical
resources.
Darwin’s discovery of evolution not only affected the science of biology but rippled throughout
the culture as a whole. In literature, Darwin’s discovery led to a viewpoint that relied heavily on
the influence of one’s environment. This is known as Naturalism Darwin laid the foundation for
all modern work on sexual selection in his seminal book The Descent of Man, and Selection in
Relation to Sex. In this work, Darwin fleshed out the mechanism of sexual selection, a
hypothesis that he had proposed in The Origin of Species. He went well beyond a simple
description of the phenomenon by providing extensive evidence and considering the far-reaching
implications of the idea. Here we consider the contributions of Darwin to sexual selection with a
particular eye on how far we have progressed in the last 150 years. Darwin discusses types of
models have commonly been described as indirect-benefits models because the female’s choice
of males provides her with no immediate, measurable benefits. Rather, the female’s fitness
increases as a consequence of her offspring having higher fitness if she pairs with a preferred
male. In relation to Darwin's ideas, we can attempt a scientific reading of Nana which itself a
naturalist method. In the novel the female protagonist Nana is being a femme fatale, she made
the powerful aristocrats into powerless by using her sexuality as a deconstructive power.
Naturalism in Nana
Nana, the female protagonist in the novel, was born as a poor girl on the streets of Paris, whose
father died of alcohol and her mother from starvation. Since she was born in the downtrodden
section of society, she has been marginalized and oppressed due to the division between different
classes in society. So she realized that people who belong to the upper class own privileged
positions in society, so she desired to be worshipped by everyone, especially the dominant class
(aristocrats). In order to fulfill this desire, she turned into an erotic love goddess who embodies
the concept of extreme sexuality. Nana is the product of the gutters of Paris, and her environment
influences her actions throughout the novel. According to Zola, he emphasizes that, through
naturalism, writers focused on exploring the fundamental causes of their character’s actions,
choices, and beliefs. These causes are centered on the influence of family and society on the
individual and all the complications that exist, with the view that environmental factors are the
primary determinants of human character. Thus, she can never escape the environment from
which she came. Regardless of how much luxury or elegance she is surrounded by, she
periodically returns to the streets to pick up men at random, merely to relieve her sense of
boredom. When the artist presents his subject faithfully, then, for Zola, the character would be
shown as a product of his environment and of his heredity. People’s actions, like those of a
beast, are controlled by the traits they inherited and by the environment from which they sprung.
So Nana possesses no particularly outstanding traits. She has no wit, no talent, and no intellect.
At times, she can respond spontaneously, as when she tries briefly to be true to Georges Hugon,
or she can have a perverse sense of loyalty, as when she adheres to Fontan in spite of his
brutality. But in general, she is a simple girl from the gutters of Paris who, by accident,
possesses the most magnificent and lustful body of the age.
Zola views that What you become in life, the choices that made you in life can be a reflection of
the heredity you have. He also uses Nana's character to demonstrate that our life is sort of
determined by heredity and the environment itself. Since naturalist aimed at exposition of
working class people’s life, he meditates on discussion of such a life through the character of
Nana as an working class women. According to Zola, the development of character determined
by his/her Social environment, economic possibilities, professional background etc. So Zola who
in fact attacks the degenerative nature of second empire in France under the rule of Napoleon
Bonparte. ( degeneration in the sense as a drawbacks of Modernity) Thus he presents Nana as the
product of degenerative nature of the society
Nana as a product of her environment and heredity
Nana is a professional harlot, so she belongs to the working class society. So basically speaking,
Nana gained popularity when her physical body was such that it excites and arouses the most
basic and elemental lustful drives in a male. It was her choice to becomes a prostitute, and she
took her sexuality as a powerful weapon to repress in fact exploit the unrestrained lust of men
especially the aristocrats. Sexuality emanates from her every pore and appeals to the animal
instincts of the opposite sex. In the novel, we further discuss a particular chapter that
encapsulates the ‘animal imagery’ that delves into the naturalistic portrayal of human character.
She brings about the corruption of love by appealing to the lower and more bestial instincts in
men. As a product of her environment, Nana has also adopted the values of that environment,
which are actually no values. She has never been true to anyone; she constantly deceives
everyone she associates with; she will sleep with anyone at any time; and most importantly, she
drags everyone else down to her level. Nana can at times be capricious, generous, hateful, or
spontaneous. She advances on the power of her sexuality. Her sexuality worked as a
deconstructive power aimed at the oppressive aristocrats. This is in one sense, can be read as
the degenerative nature of the working class in French society.
Details and Description (Scientific understanding)
As a naturalist, Zola delves into the most minute details in the novel. He depicts sensory images
such as sound, smell, and sight on particular occasions and describes how people deal with them.
The subjective representation of reality is what he comprehends through such a naturalist
method.
Chapter 4 presents another of Zola’s magnificent crowd scenes as people flow into Nana’s
apartment for the dinner party that she is giving. The room became filled with people who barely
could breathe, while The animal imagery became more dominant as Georges kneeled on the floor
“with his hands buried in her skirt.” This image also serves to suggest the manner in which
Nana’s sexuality is worshiped, but the animal image is equally important. For a naturalist such as
Zola, man is in constant danger of reverting to the bestial instincts inherent in his nature. Any
particular incident can bring out the brutish animal nature in an otherwise civilized person.
Nana’s whimsicality is also revealed in these chapters. She wants to be respected as a lady and
yet does not return anything to command respect. Justifying his title as a naturalist, Zola does not
allow one detail to escape his notice. He catalogs all the various odors, sounds, and details
connected with the theater. For eg: In chapter five, “While he feels perfectly at ease backstage,
Count Muffat is extremely nervous and uncomfortable in the presence of so many strange and
mysterious objects. He begins to sweat and feels suffocated by the heavy female odors that
permeate the place.”
Here Zola describes how a man like Muffat is perceived by the odors of women. As readers, we
can even perfectly experience what exactly count feels. Naturalism offers a deep level of
scientific understanding of real life, so “heavy female odors” enhance the sensory stimulation of
the olfactory membrane of the nose. Certain body odors are connected to human sexual
attraction. Count Muffat became uncomfortable and sweated because he caught a sensual feeling
instantly from the odors.
Count Muffat, who had never even seen his wife put on her garters, “was now exposed to all the
intimate details of a woman’s toilet.” He slowly realizes that Nana is taking possession of him,
but he is determined to fight against her.
Critic of Second empire French society
Zola, who attacks the backdrop of French society, Second Empire, (1852–70) period in France
under the rule of Emperor Napoleon III (the original empire having been that of Napoleon I). In
its early years (1852–59), the empire was authoritarian but enjoyed economic growth and
pursued a favourable foreign policy. But in fact French society is being corrupted as much as
they grow out of modernity. Zola scrutinizes the sexual favour of male that unveils their
animalistic nature. The men during the time was overtly sexual, especially aristocrats. Nana who
represents the proletarians by being a professor prostitute. Due to the class division, aristocrats
were the oppressors. The unending repressed sexual instinct of men made them oppressed under
the revenge of working class people against aristocrats. The French society extremely corrupted
and distorted moral or ethical values. So, as one of his naturalist method, Zola hold a mirror
against the follies and failure of French society.
Natural illustration of character
In Chapter 6, Zola juxtaposes scenes of the aristocrats with scenes of the courtesans. One method
of natural illustration of a character’s instinct is being incorporated in this particular chapter. As
long as the novel progresses, Nana’s corrupting influence increases through the actions of young
George Hugon. He lies to his mother for the first time and deceives her by pretending to have a
severe headache. He then slips over to see Nana. Zola depicts Georges as a young and innocent
boy who is afraid of being scolded by Nana. To blend with this general pastoral scene, he also
depicts Nana responding to her new house with all the enthusiasm of a child. Georges and Nana’s
actions together are more or less innocent and childlike, thereby reducing the corruption they
hold. For example, Nana dresses Georges in her nightwear so that he looks like an innocent
young girl. Nana portrayed as a degenerated working class women, who has become corrupted
by the negative influence of the French society under Napoleon Bonparte.
“Nana was moved and felt like a child again.” At first, she resists Georges because she feels it is
wrong to seduce someone so young. Then “that woman’s nightgown and negligee made her
laugh again, as though a girl friend were teasing her.” Under this influence, she yields to the
young Georges. This scene indicates to readers that Nana may soon enter into a lesbian
relationship.
Exposition of inner bestiality
In Chapter 8, Zola points out that naturalists emphasize the animal nature of humans. Count
Muffat cannot control his basic urges. “Until today, Count Muffat “had been living in such a
whirl of sensual excitement that he had no very distinct impressions beyond the need to possess,”
Nana said. He frantically watches every possible exit at the theater in order to stop her from
keeping an assignment with someone else. Earlier, the count would never have allowed himself
to be seen parading before the theater or becoming a man of the streets. Now, however, in his
anxiety, he commits actions foreign to his nature. Realizing this, he becomes aware of just how
much Nana has made him an object of humiliation and scorn.”
Another instance shows the animal imagery: Muffat’s manliness and his resolution have deserted
him, and he is reduced to the level of an animal. Count Muffat’s reactions and emphasize how
trapped he is by Nana’s sexuality. “In three months, she had corrupted his life; he already felt
himself tainted to his very marrow by filth hitherto undreamed of. Everything inside him would
soon be rotten. For an instant, he understood the effects of this evil; he saw the ruin caused by
that ferment; he saw himself poisoned, his family destroyed, a segment of the social fabric
cracking and collapsing.” Yet there is some animal instinct in him that draws him further and
further into this corruption.
In spite of the overt implications of the article and in spite of Nana’s disgusting exhibitionism,
Muffat cannot control himself and resorts to brutality as he seizes Nana. Again, Zola is
emphasizing the brutal or animal instinct that controls humanity’s actions at the sacrifice of
higher values.
For the first time in the novel, Nana feels a sense of being trapped in a situation. Earlier, in her
relations with Steiner, she could send him off to bed pleading sickness and then go to sleep with
Georges. But with Count Muffat, she has entered a career where she must answer for her every
action and where each moment is evaluated. She particularly resents Count Muffat because “he
did not know how much a man ought to give a woman, so she could not hold his stinginess
against him.” Nana must, then, corrupt him completely before she can dominate him. So Count
muffat became a puppet like creature for her.
Man is an animal ( Animal imagery)
Chapter 8 presents a change and a climax in the career of Nana. She tries to discard her old life
and attempts to become a subservient or obedient housewife, but she discovers that she cannot
hold a man on such terms. Her success is determined by dominating a man. Fontan, her co-actor,
who has a reputation for stinginess, offers to contribute half of his share of the expenses, but
when Nana has spent her portion, he takes all of his back. He is the only man in the novel whom
Nana does not dominate, and the irony is that he is the only person whom Nana wants to accept
as equal. Fontan chooses to treat her more brutally than she treats her own victims. Zola shows
the sadism involved in Fontan’s beating Nana within animal imagery. This final act against Nana
causes her to throw herself into the arms of Satin. Nana then experiences her first lesbian
relationship. From the tenth chapter to the end of the novel, Zola begins to load each chapter
with animal imagery. The involvement of animal imagery is dominant in this novel as the major
reference to naturalism. The method of assimilating beastly nature with human character is what
naturalists intended to discuss through novels. It doesn’t matter if a person climbs up the social
ladder or is in a dominant class; he or she will appear refined in spite of the concealed bestiality
within themselves. Nana begins to swallow and devour Count Vandeuvres’ last farms, and he has
a “frenzied appetite” for ruin. He later says to Nana that if he does not win money from the great
race for the Prix de Paris, he will lock himself up with his horses and set fire to himself and his
horses.
Nana the HORSE won the race
The use of the name Nana to apply to both the main character and the horse In the race provides
Zola with ample ironies. From the humorous side, Nana delights in referring to the horse as
“Nana, the nag.” But more important are the various uses of the animal imagery to imply the
destruction of Count Vandeuvres and to clarify varying opinions about Nana the courtesan.
Chapter 11 presents another of the crowd scenes. Unlike the opening chapters in the theater, Zola
doesn’t present the mass reaction in as effective a manner as he does here during the racing
scenes. The entire chapter captures the madness and frenzy of a society whose values are
disrupted by attention to pleasure. In the horse race, Count Vandeuvres’s horse was named after
Nana. The use of the name Nana to apply to both the main character and the horse in the race
provides Zola with ample ironies, which is a naturalist technique. The animal image of Nana is
symbolized through ‘Horse’. According to Frederick Nietzsche, the horse is viewed as a maternal
archetype, and it might also symbolize “impulsiveness, impetuosity of desire, and the instinctive
impulses that motivate man. This association of the horse with darker human drives, such as
virility and sexuality, has been resented by numerous writers. Nana’s sovereign sexuality adheres
to the bestiality of horses. From the humorous side, Nana delights in referring to the horse as
“Nana, the nag.” But more important are the various uses of the animal imagery to imply the
destruction of Count Vandeuvres and to clarify varying opinions about Nana the courtesan.
Count Vandeuvres ends his life because of some shady transactions made in connection with the
filly Nana, leaving Nana, the courtesan, as an equal partner in his destruction. Her sexuality
gained strength as a deconstructive force.
Crisis between religion and Nothingness
In Chapter 12, Nana’s basic sexuality is again emphasized by the opening sentence of this
chapter, which describes Nana in bed with Count Muffat. Nana suddenly shows her fear of God,
and her fear of death perhaps signals her actual death in the final chapter. Nana’s fear that
“people are ugly when they’re dead” also prepares us for the awesome ugliness of Nana’s own
death. Naturalists view nothingness as the state of non-existence. They believe that when a living
being dies, there is no consciousness or awareness that continues after death, resulting in a state
of nothingness. Naturalists assume disbelief in an afterlife and propose that meaning can be
found in commitment to a better future for man on earth. Thus, man must struggle against the
forces by which his life is determined and against the evils that plague him, among which are
injustice, sickness, and death. Nana has been leading a corrupt way of life by indulging in her
vitality, sexuality, and physicality. She has been leading the most extravagantly materialistic life.
The comic ending of the chapter underscores the corruption of the entire society as Daguenet
comes to sleep with Nana on his wedding day. Nana has been sharing a bed with Daguenet,
which is concealed from Muffat. She has promised him that she will help him get engaged to
Count Muffat’s sister, Estelle. In this scene, Zola exposes the corrupted aristocrats. Zola, as a
naturalist, subjectively illustrates the corruption and promiscuity of aristocrats, influenced by
their marital relationships.
Nana and her animal instincts
Through it all, Count Muffat still retains his passion for Nana, despite her promiscuity, who now
has “an instinctive urge to debase everything.” One night, she makes him get down on all fours
and pretend to be a bear. At first, it is just a game, but soon the game turns into bestiality as Nana
begins to treat him like an animal, “beating him and kicking him around the room.” The count
even liked “his baseness; he savored the enjoyment of being a beast. He longed to descend still
lower.” Nana then has him bring his distinguished chamberlain’s uniform, which she has him
utterly debase with all types of obscene actions. Naturalism rejects the essence of earthly life.
They believe in nothingness; the life of man on earth is hollow. Nana had an ill-fated ending,
though she was extensively lulled by her earthly pleasures and needs. Her moral decay is
symbolized by the physical decay of a deadly disease like pox. Naturalists capture the truth of
life, where they subjectively poignantly ask to remind us that life is nothing out of everything.
Description of Naturalist fictional world
In “Nana,” Zola depicted a picture of a naturalistic fictional world in which the character’s
surroundings and social environment were described. Through the incidents that happened to
those characters, it lets us figure out insights and beliefs about French society in the 19th century.
The conflict between religious mysticism and sensuality is the point of discussion in “Nana.”
Sexual empowerment and desires were heavily emphasized in the novel as the sensorial images
and descriptions regarding those characters were portrayed. Zola used a naturalistic way to depict
the character’s life, unlike other literature where the emotions of characters and idealism were
artificially distorted by the narrator. Zola showed us the natural instinct of characters to satisfy
the need for sexual desire and other things devoid of morality.