Nana

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1880

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-6

Chapters 7-8

Chapters 9-11

Chapters 12-13

Chapter 14

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Background

Historical Context

Nana takes place in the final three years of the Second French Empire, 1867-1870. Sandwiched between the Second Republic and the Third Republic, the Second Empire lasted from 1852-1870. Prior to the Second Empire, a revolution in 1848 ousted the French monarchy and installed republican government instead. This only lasted four years, however, and in 1852, Napoleon III, the President of France at that time, staged a coup by dissolving the elected governing body, the National Assembly, and re-establishing the monarchy with himself as Emperor.

While the characters in Nana do not talk about politics extensively, the reader does get glimpses into their political opinions from time to time. Muffat, of course, is a staunch monarchist with complete loyalty to Napoleon III, as he is a member of court, a chamberlain to the Empress. In Chapter 10, Nana expresses support for the Emperor, which Muffat is relieved to hear. When Nana’s friends gather around her bedside in Chapter 14, Gaga recalls life during the Second Republic (1848-1852) as miserable, saying that she could never be certain that basic needs like food would be met during that precarious time, and praising Napoleon III for ensuring France’s prosperity.

The Second Empire came to an end in 1870 because of the Franco-Prussian War, a disastrous loss for France. In the years preceding the war, France grew worried about Prussia’s growing strength and obvious desire to unify the German states, which would enormously increase their power. Prussia was able to do just that when it defeated France in the year-long conflict. The novel ends on the day that France declares war. The characters, including the growing mob outside Nana’s bedside shouting rallying cries, are mostly optimistic, believing that France can easily triumph over Prussia. Zola’s readers in 1880, however, had the benefit of ten years’ hindsight, knowing that the mob is mistaken. Zola ends the novel with the beginning of the end of the Second Empire to show that the era’s excesses doomed it to fail.

Ideological Context

Émile Zola is now considered the father of literary naturalism. All 20 novels of his Les Rougon-Macquart series are models of literary naturalism, and his 1880 nonfiction text “The Experimental Novel” describes the goals and characteristics of a naturalist text. Naturalism, which sprang up toward the end of the 19th century, is an offshoot of but is not identical to its midcentury predecessor, realism. Realism seeks to portray normal lives rather than the extremely elevated characters of epic or the excessively low characters of caricature. Naturalism, however, has a bleaker, more deterministic outlook, with an emphasis on the biological and systemic factors that inevitably and unchangeably make a person who they are.

The main tenet of literary naturalism is that to depict the world the way it is means accepting that heredity and environment inescapably determine a person’s life outcomes. This ideology is tied to the rising secular scientism of the day, which sought explanations for phenomena in the natural, observable world rather than in divine or supernatural forces. In the naturalist worldview, humans have little to no power to change their trajectories; their paths are predetermined by the biological and social forces to which they have been exposed. While Zola believed literature should represent life as it really is, he did not believe literature should therefore be free of artistry or adornment. This ideology allowed for writers to use all the tools of their craft, including elaborate, decadent descriptions, as long as they also represented life accurately.

To Zola, then, it was important to depict Nana’s life without any romance or unrealistic hope; despite her wishes, the chances that she could ever become a respected woman in Parisian society are zero. Notably, Nana herself despises the naturalist tradition; in Chapter 10, Zola—with a knowing wink at the reader—has her insist that novels ought to be romantic, not grimly realistic. It comes as no surprise to the reader that Nana, a fantasist, dislikes the deterministic naturalism of authors like Zola. By the end of Nana, readers can see that Zola believes that like individuals, entire societies inevitably march in a fixed direction they cannot control, as shown in the Second Empire’s fateful march to its own destruction in 1870.