La Curée (1871-2) is the second novel in Émile Zola's twenty-volume series Les Rougon-Macquart. It deals with property speculation and the lives of the extremely wealthy upper classes, against the backdrop of Haussmann's reconstruction of Paris in the 1850s and 1860s. Émile Zola ( April 2, 1840 – September 29, 1902) was an influential French novelist, the most important example of the literary school of naturalism (literature), and a major figure in the political liberalization of France. ... Les Rougon-Macquart is the collective title given to French novelist Emile Zolas greatest literary achievement, a monumental twenty-novel cycle about the exploits of various members of an extended family during the French Second Empire, from the coup détat of December 1851 which established Napoleon III as... A social class is, at its most basic, a group of people that have similar social status. ... Georges-Eugène, Baron Haussmann (March 27, 1809 – January 11, 1891) was a French civic planner whose name is associated with the rebuilding of Paris. ... The Eiffel Tower has become the symbol of Paris throughout the world. ... Events and Trends Crimean war (1854 - 1856) fought between Imperial Russia and an alliance consisting of the United Kingdom, the Second French Empire, the Kingdom of Sardinia and the Ottoman Empire. ... Events and trends Italian unification under King Victor Emmanuel II. Wars for expansion and national unity continue until the incorporation of the Papal States (March 17, 1861 - September 20, 1870). ...

Vastly different from its predecessor and prequel La Fortune des Rougon, La Curée - literally "the quarry", as in an animal being hunted, and usually translated more evocatively as The Kill - is a tightly-focussed character study centred on three distinctive personalities: Aristide Rougon (renamed "Saccard"), his young second wife Renée, and Maxime, Aristide's dilettante, dandyish son from his first marriage. La Fortune des Rougon, originally published in 1871, is the first novel in Emile Zolas monumental twenty-volume series Les Rougon-Macquart. ... Saccard is a fictional character created by Emile Zola in his 20-novel cycle Les Rougon-Macquart. ...

Although the novel was translated (very poorly and with many bowdlerisations) and reissued by the Vizetellys in the 1880s and 1890s under the title The Rush for the Spoil, a far superior translation was undertaken by the poet and critic Alexander Texeira de Mattos for publication in a limited edition of 300 deluxe copies in 1895. This excellent and extremely readable translation, titled The Kill, has been reissued countless times and is widely available nowadays in paperback. Events and Trends Technology Development and commercial production of electric lighting Development and commercial production of gasoline-powered automobile by Karl Benz, Gottlieb Daimler and Maybach First commercial production and sales of phonographs and phonograph recordings. ... The 1890s were sometimes referred to as the Gay Nineties, under the then-current usage of the word gay which referred simply to merriment and frivolity, with no connotation of homosexuality as in current-day usage. ... Alexander Louis Texeira de Mattos (Texeira often spelled Teixeira) was a literary critic and publisher, who gained his greatest level of fame as a translator. ... 1895 was a common year starting on Tuesday (see link for calendar). ...

Synopsis

The book opens with scenes of astonishing opulence, beginning with Renée and Maxime lazing in a luxurious horsedrawn carriage, very slowly leaving a Parisian park in the 19th Century-equivalent of a traffic jam. It is made clear very early on that these are staggeringly wealthy characters not subject to the cares and difficulties faced by the everyday public; they arrive back at their enormous mansion and spend hours being dressed by their legions of servants prior to hosting a banquet attended by the richest and most powerful people in Paris. There seems to be almost no continuity between this scene and the end of the previous novel, until the second chapter begins and Zola reveals that this opulent scene takes place almost fourteen years after the end of the first book. Zola then rewinds time to pick up the story practically minutes after La Fortune ended. Alternative meaning: Nineteenth Century (periodical) (18th century — 19th century — 20th century — more centuries) As a means of recording the passage of time, the 19th century was that century which lasted from 1801-1900 in the sense of the Gregorian calendar. ... Traffic jams are common in heavily populated areas. ...

Following Eugene Rougon's rise to political power in Paris as mentioned in La Fortune, his younger brother Aristide - featured in the first novel as a talentless journalist, a comic character unable to commit unequivocally to the imperial cause and thus left out in the cold when the rewards were being handed out - decides to follow Eugene to Paris to help himself to the wealth and power he now believes to be his birthright. Eugene promises to help Aristide achieve these things on the condition that he stay out of his way, and change his surname to avoid the possibility of bad publicity from Aristide's escapades rubbing off on Eugene and damaging his political chances. Aristide chooses the surname Saccard, and Eugene gets him a seemingly mundane job at the city planning permission office. The renamed Saccard soon realises that, far from the disappointment he thought the job would be, he is actually in a position to gain insider information on the houses and other buildings that are to be demolished to build Paris' bold new system of boulevards and wide avenues. Knowing that the owners of these properties ordered to be demolished by the city government were compensated handsomely, Saccard contrives to borrow some money in order to start buying up these properties before their doomed status becomes public knowledge, and then raking in the compensation for massive profits. Imperialism is the policy of extending the control or authority over foreign entities as a means of acquisition and/or maintenance of empires, either through direct territorial or through indirect methods of exerting control on the politics and/or economy of other countries. ...

Saccard is at first unable to make much headway because he cannot lay his hands on the money to make his initial investments, but then his wife falls victim to a terminal illness. Even while she lies dying in the next room, Saccard - in a brilliantly written scene of breathtaking callousness - is already making arrangements to marry a rich country girl, Renée, who is pregnant with the child of a local labourer and whose family wishes to avoid any scandal by offering a huge dowry to any man who will marry her and claim the baby as his own. Saccard accepts this role, and his career in property speculation is born. He sends his youngest daughter back home to Plassans in the south of France, and packs his older son Maxime off to a Parisian boarding school; we meet Maxime again when he leaves school several years later and meets his new stepmother Renée, who is only a couple of years older than he is.

The flashback complete, the rest of the novel takes place after Saccard has made his enormous fortune, against the backdrop of his luxurious mansion and his astounding profligacy, and is concerned with a three-cornered plot of sexual and political intrigue. Renée and Maxime begin a semi-incestuous love affair, which Saccard suspects but appears to tolerate, perhaps due to the almost purely commercial nature of his marriage to Renée in the first place; at the same time, Saccard is trying to get Renée to part with the deeds to her ancestral family home, which would be worth millions to him but which she refuses to give up. The novel continues in this vein with the tensions continuing to mount, and culminates in a series of bitter observations by Zola on the hypocrisy and immorality of the upper-class nouveau riche.

A near-penniless journalist at the time of writing La Curée, Zola himself had no experience whatsoever of the scenes he describes in the novel. In order to counter this lack of first-hand knowledge he toured a large number of stately homes and gardens around France, taking copious notes on subjects like architecture, ladies' and mens' fashions, jewellery, garden layouts, greenhouse plants (a very erotically-charged seduction scene takes place in Saccard's cavernous hothouse), carriages, mannerisms, servants' liveries and so on; these notes (many volumes of which are preserved amongst the novelist's papers) were time well spent, as many contemporary reviewers and observers praised the novel for its realism.