Macquart branch
Adélaïde Fouque
Matriarch / 'Tante Dide'
The neurotic, visionary matriarch of the entire dynasty, born in 1768. Her marriage to the peasant Rougon produces one legitimate son, Pierre; her passionate liaison with the smuggler Macquart produces Antoine and Ursule, creating the two great branches of the family. What Zola calls la fêlure — the crack — runs from Adélaïde through every one of her descendants: a hereditary nervous instability that manifests as madness in some, alcoholism in others, violent passion or artistic obsession in others still. She raises her grandson Silvère after his mother Ursule's death, and it is she who witnesses his execution during the 1851 coup — raving 'le prix du sang!' (the price of blood!) as he is shot. She is immediately committed to the lunatic asylum at Les Tulettes near Plassans, where she lives on for more than twenty years in a deepening stupor, visited occasionally by Dr Pascal and others. She is still alive in Le Docteur Pascal, over a hundred years old, a hollow-eyed relic of the dynasty's founding sin.
Matriarche névrotique née en 1768. Son mariage avec Rougon et sa liaison avec Macquart créent les deux branches familiales. La fêlure héréditaire qu'elle transmet se manifeste différemment chez chacun de ses descendants. Elle assiste à l'exécution de son petit-fils Silvère en 1851 et est aussitôt internée aux Tulettes, où elle vivra plus de vingt ans dans un état de stupeur croissante.
Gaunt, pallid, with wide staring eyes and a fixed, otherworldly expression — the family's mark of nervous instability made visible in its source. In her extreme old age she sits motionless for hours, then erupts without warning into a fit of shuddering that seems to pass through her whole body.
Gaunt, pallid, with wide staring eyes and a fixed, otherworldly expression — the family's mark of nervous instability made visible in its source. In her extreme old age she sits motionless for hours, then erupts without warning into a fit of shuddering that seems to pass through her whole body.
Family & Relationships
- Parent Pierre Rougon
- Parent Ursule Macquart
- Parent Antoine Macquart
- Grandchild Silvère Mouret — She raised Silvère after Ursule's death.
Théodore Géricault, 'La monomane de l'envie' (c. 1820) — Public domain
Appears In
Details
- Branch
- Macquart
- Generation
- I