Celebration and Power: Zola's Representation of the Ball

Abstract

Whether an upper- or lower-class celebration, the ball is a common chronotope in the nineteenth-century novel. This paper analyses Zola's best-known ball scenes: the costume ball given by the wealthy Saccard in La Curée, the lower-class ball in Germinal, and a less conventional one: the children's ball in Une page d'amour. The argument is based on Bakhtin's definition of the chronotope and responds to Alain Montandon's call for a new cultural and literary anthropology by analysing the dynamic role of the ball scenes within these novels. I explore how these scenes actually fulfil a dual strategy involving both author and characters, for the ball serves as an ideal spatial and temporal representation that exposes two sometimes concomitant forms of power: social power (material ostentation, political and economic tactics and confrontations) and corporeal power (sensuality, instinct, physical release, bestiality, sexuality). Ultimately, these instances reveal Zola's authorial power, for each ball is a highly concentrated dynamic spatio-temporal construction around which the plot turns; each exposes the constitution of the characters, and each offers an exemplary scene where time, space, and objects fuse in a compelling literary representation.