Other branch
born Louis Buteau Fouan
Buteau
Peasant farmer
The main antagonist of La Terre — Père Fouan's eldest son and the most ruthlessly land-hungry of the three children. Buteau is not a villain in a theatrical sense; he is simply a man for whom land is the only value, and who pursues it with a consistency that is almost logical given the world he inhabits. He marries Lise, Françoise's sister, primarily for the land Lise will inherit; he covets the portion of the farm that goes to Françoise; he rapes Françoise because she is there and he wants to. When Jean Macquart marries Françoise and she is set to inherit independently, the threat to Buteau's eventual control of the whole farm becomes intolerable. He kills Françoise in a struggle over the land — whether it is wholly intentional is one of the novel's deliberately ambiguous questions — and his wife Lise finishes her. He then murders his own father to prevent testimony. Zola does not frame Buteau as a monster; he frames him as what a certain kind of economic desperation, combined with the complete absence of any moral framework beyond possession, produces in a human being.
Antagoniste principal de La Terre. Fils aîné de Fouan, il est consumé par la faim de terre avec une logique presque cohérente dans son monde. Il épouse Lise pour la terre, convoite celle de Françoise, la viole parce qu'elle est là. Quand Jean Macquart l'épouse et l'isole de sa convoitise, il tue Françoise dans une querelle de succession — Lise achève. Puis il étouff son père pour effacer le témoin. Pas un monstre au sens théâtral — ce que la misère économique et l'absence totale de cadre moral produisent dans un homme.
Stocky, thick-necked, with the deliberate movements of a man who conserves his strength and the flat, evaluating eyes of someone who sees everything in terms of what it is worth.
Stocky, thick-necked, with the deliberate movements of a man who conserves his strength and the flat, evaluating eyes of someone who sees everything in terms of what it is worth.