Rougon branch
born Renée Béraud du Châtel
Renée Saccard
Bourgeoise, socialite
Aristide Saccard's second wife — a woman of good family (née Béraud du Châtel) whom he married primarily to cover a social embarrassment, settling her inheritance debts in exchange for the respectability of her name. She is beautiful, intelligent, and utterly without occupation: Aristide provides everything except a reason to live. In the tropical hothouse of the Saccard mansion — its overheated air thick with exotic plants and artificial perfume — she drifts into an affair with Maxime, her stepson, who is nearly her own age. Zola renders the affair with unflinching clarity: it is not passion, exactly, but the boredom of a woman who has been given everything except genuine feeling. When she finally understands that Aristide has known about the affair and simply calculated its usefulness — that she is no different from the properties he buys and sells — her recognition is the novel's moral centre, and one of Zola's most pitiless endings. She dies shortly after the novel closes, undone not by scandal but by the simple realisation of what she has been worth to the people around her.
Née Béraud du Châtel, elle épouse Aristide Saccard qui rachète ses dettes en échange de sa respectabilité. Belle et désœuvrée dans leur hôtel particulier, elle glisse dans une liaison avec Maxime, son beau-fils. Quand elle comprend qu'Aristide connaissait cette liaison et l'a tolérée par calcul — qu'elle n'est qu'un actif parmi d'autres — sa prise de conscience est l'un des moments les plus implacables du cycle.
Magnificent, extravagantly dressed, with the glittering eyes of a woman on the permanent edge of nervous collapse — and, increasingly, the look of someone who suspects she is the only person in her world who feels anything genuinely.
Magnificent, extravagantly dressed, with the glittering eyes of a woman on the permanent edge of nervous collapse — and, increasingly, the look of someone who suspects she is the only person in her world who feels anything genuinely.
Family & Relationships
- Spouse Aristide Saccard
- Lover Maxime Saccard