Rougon branch
Marthe Rougon
Housewife, religious devotee
Daughter of Pierre and Félicité Rougon, married to her cousin François Mouret. She carries the family's hereditary nervous instability — the fêlure from Adélaïde — in the form of an intense, slightly uncontrollable religious temperament. Before her marriage she was genuinely devout but manageable; her life with François, quiet and domestic, has suppressed it. Abbé Faujas recognises immediately what she is and what use can be made of it: he cultivates her religious devotion systematically, drawing her into his circle of good works, giving her religious feeling the outlet it has been denied. Marthe is not manipulated against her will — she goes willingly toward Faujas because what he offers her is real to her — and this is what makes her story so painful. She loses her husband's trust, her household, her children's respect, and finally her health; she dies broken, near the novel's end, a casualty of what she was shaped into. Zola treats her with sympathy even as he is precise about how she was used.
Fille de Pierre et Félicité Rougon, mariée à son cousin François Mouret. Elle porte la fêlure héréditaire d'Adélaïde sous forme d'un tempérament religieux intense. Faujas reconnaît immédiatement ce qu'elle est et ce qu'il peut en faire : il cultive sa dévotion, l'absorbe dans ses œuvres, la transforme en instrument. Elle y va volontairement, ce qui rend son histoire d'autant plus tragique. Elle meurt brisée, avant la fin du roman.
Pale, gentle, with the distracted look of someone whose inner religious life has become more vivid than the outer world — a look that deepens over the course of the novel into something closer to absence.
Pale, gentle, with the distracted look of someone whose inner religious life has become more vivid than the outer world — a look that deepens over the course of the novel into something closer to absence.
Family & Relationships
- Child Pierre Rougon
- Child Félicité Rougon
- Sibling Eugène Rougon
- Sibling Aristide Saccard
- Sibling Dr Pascal Rougon
- Sibling Sidonie Rougon
- Spouse François Mouret
- Parent Octave Mouret
- Parent Abbé Serge Mouret
- Parent Désirée Mouret