Emile Zola: Libido dominandi

Zola's fiction provides many examples of the structural device of the "attacker," an outsider who attempts to dominate some group, some social entity, for ends that may be either good or evil. Sometimes the "attacker" is successful, as in La Fortune des Rougon, Nana, and Au Bonheur des dames, but more often he-or, very frequently, she-fails, as in La Curée, Germinal, La Terre and L'Argent. Success usually comes when the group under attack is only loosely organized and has little moral force; but failure often results when the assault is made on an entity that is cohesive, strong and determined. Failure is not, therefore, always attributable to individual deficiency or error; often Zola seems to say, the "attacker" fails because he is opposed to a force beyond him and because his time has not yet come. (RJN)