Other branch
La Maheude
Miner's wife, later surface worker
Toussaint Maheu's wife and one of Germinal's most powerful characters. She runs the household with fierce love and practicality, feeding seven children on a miner's wages. When the strike ruins her family — killing her husband, her son Zacharie, and her daughter Alzire — she continues to live, with a bitterness that Zola renders as one of the novel's most sustained acts of moral witness.
Femme de Toussaint Maheu dans Germinal. Elle nourrit sept enfants avec un salaire de mineur et survit à la grève qui détruit sa famille.
Raw-boned, large-handed, with the permanent lines of exhaustion in her face and the indestructible stubbornness of a woman who has never stopped fighting.
Raw-boned, large-handed, with the permanent lines of exhaustion in her face and the indestructible stubbornness of a woman who has never stopped fighting.
Jules Férat, 'La Maheude se baissa', illustration for Germinal (1886) — Public domain
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- Branch
- Other
- Generation
- III