Pot-Bouille

A fine house or even the domestic hearth (French Pot- Bouille ) is a novel by Émile Zola and also the tenth part of the Rougon - Macquart cycle. He first appeared in installments from January to April 1882 in the journal Le Gaulois. 1883 was followed by the edition with Charpentier.

The novel presents a picture of civil society under the Second Empire. The restoration efforts under President MacMahon with trying the " moral order " to restore the land, Zola inspired to the story. The action takes place mostly in a rented house in the Rue de Choiseul. The original title refers to a stew, in which various ingredients simmer together a long time and alludes to the various inhabitants of the house, which serve as representatives of the monarchical moral order, to.

The novel was adapted in 1883 by William Busnach as a play and first performed at the Théâtre de l' Ambigu -Comique. Julien Duvivier filmed the work in 1957.

Action

The twenty-two years of Octave Mouret, the Luck of the Rougon family and The Conquest of Plassans the reader is already known from the novels, moves into the said tenement. He has a job at a small nearby fashion store that has the name " Paradise of Women ". Octave is attractive and charming. He has success with the ladies and thus has several affairs with the residents of the house, including Madame Pichon. His Overture to his boss Madame Hédouin fails and has his dismissal result.

He finds a new job in the silk business by Auguste Vabre, which is located on the ground floor of the house. He begins an affair with August's wife Berte that lasts several months. Finally, Auguste caught the two. It is a scandal and the sacking of Octave, which is again employed in the paradise of ladies. His fate is described in the next novel of the same name.

The appearance of propriety in the fine house is only an external. Several residents have affairs with each other. A marriage was closed for financial reasons, the groom was cheated out of the dowry. The servants speak ill of their dominions. As the lawyer Duverdy been seriously injured in a suicide attempt, the first concern of his wife is not considered violating their man, but the avoidance of scandal. A single pregnant seamstress will be asked to leave the house. An ominous tenants who will be renting an apartment visits only once a week in order to "work" is tolerated until it turns out that he is not, as commonly believed, meets there with a lover. Rather, he is a writer who researched for a dirty book on the middle class ( Zola himself).