*** Welcome to piglix ***

Pot-Bouille

Pot-Bouille
Pot Bouille.jpg
First edition title page.
Author Émile Zola
Country France
Language French
Series Les Rougon-Macquart
Genre Novel
Publisher Charpentier (book form)
Publication date
1882 (serial); 1883 (book form)
Media type Print (Serial, Hardback and Paperback)
Preceded by Nana
Followed by Au Bonheur des Dames

Pot-Bouille is the tenth novel in the Rougon-Macquart series by Émile Zola. It was serialized between January and April 1882 in the periodical Le Gaulois before being published in book form by Charpentier in 1883.

The novel is an indictment of the mores of the bourgeoisie of the Second French Empire. It is set in a Parisian apartment building, a relatively new housing arrangement at the time and its title (roughly translating as stew pot) reflects the disparate and sometimes unpleasant elements lurking behind the building's new façade.

Like Zola's earlier novel L'Assommoir, the title is extremely difficult to render in English. The word pot-bouille is a 19th-century French slang term for a large cooking pot or cauldron used for preparing stews and casseroles and also the foods prepared in it. The title is intended to convey a sense of disparate ingredients, the various inhabitants of the building mixed together, to create a potent and heady mix like a strong stew. The impression is to hint at the greed, ambition and depravity which lies behind the pretentious façade of the outwardly well behaved bourgeois apartment block. There is no equivalent word in English to convey this. The closest English term would probably be an expression such as melting pot.

In the film The Life of Emile Zola, the novel's title is rendered as Piping Hot.

Pot-Bouille recounts the activities of the residents of a block of flats in the Rue de Choiseul over the course of two years (1861–1863). The characters include:

Condoning the behaviour of these characters are the local priest and doctor, who use their positions to cover up everyone's moral and physical failings. The characters' habits and secrets are also guarded by the concierge, who turns a blind eye to everything going on. The sham respectability of the residents is contrasted with the candour of their servants, who secretly abuse their employers over the open sewer of the building's inner courtyard.

The novel follows the adventures of 22-year-old Octave Mouret, who moves into the building and takes a salesman's job at a nearby shop, The Ladies' Paradise (Au Bonheur des Dames). Though handsome and charming, Octave is rebuffed by Valérie Vabre and his boss's wife Madame Hédouin before beginning a passionless affair with Madame Pichon. His failure with Madame Hédouin prompts him to quit his job, and he goes to work for Auguste Vabre in the silk shop on the building's ground floor. Soon, he begins an affair with Berthe, who by now is Auguste's wife. Octave and Berthe are eventually caught but over the course of several months, the community tacitly agrees to forget the affair and live as if nothing had happened, thereby restoring the veneer of respectability. Octave marries widowed Madame Hédouin and life goes on in the Rue de Choiseul the way it has always done, with outward complacency, morality and quiet.


...
Wikipedia

...