This preface helped define the overall goals of Naturalism, which Zola championed as a “methodical” and unflinching way of exploring human life and reality through a scientific lens. To the contrary, he indulged the scandal, and some historians believe that he even encouraged certain critics to write scathing reviews of the book, thus giving him the opportunity to publish his own thoughts about the novel in a preface that was included in the second edition. Zola was cast as an immoral writer of pornography, but he didn’t shy away from the public uproar. He wanted to represent his characters with the same indifferent objectivity that a scientist or doctor might use when observing subjects in an experiment, so he didn’t shy away from telling a very dark tale in Thérèse Raquin-so dark, in fact, that it unsettled the general public. But Émile Zola was interested in establishing Naturalism, a literary movement that grew out of Realism but was much more concerned with things like science, objectivity, and determinism (or the idea that everything is determined by preexisting causes). He died four years later of carbon monoxide poisoning due to a poorly ventilated chimney.īefore the serialized publication of Thérèse Raquin in 1867, the literary scene in Paris was accustomed to tales that avoided straightforward examinations of misery, violence, and sexual excitement. By the time Zola wrote J’Accuse! (in 1898), the majority of his celebrated literary career was already behind him. The influence of this open letter signaled a shift in French society, making it clear that the country’s prominent artists and intellectuals possessed the power to sway the general public against the government and the Catholic Church. The letter led to uproar throughout France, as people rallied against the wrongful conviction. Zola is also famous for J’Accuse…!, the open letter he penned in defense of Alfred Dreyfus, a Jewish officer in the French army who was wrongfully accused of treason and sentenced to life in prison.

His first notable work was Thérèse Raquin, in which he began to develop his ideas about human behavior and disposition-ideas he would explore in more depth in Les Rougon-Macquart, a series of 20 novels considered to be some of the foundational works of the Naturalist literary movement. Zola eventually started working in the sales department of Hachette (a publishing house), but he left that job in 1866 to devote himself to writing. A little more than a decade later, Zola and his mother moved to Paris, where they lived in poverty.

When his father died in 1847, the family was left with very little money. He grew up in Aix-en-Provence, where he became lifelong friends with the painter Paul Cézanne. Émile Zola was born in Paris in 1840, but his family moved three years later to Aix-en-Provence, in southern France.

Thérèse Raquin by Émile Zola