rike" and the politicalization of labor strife are here apparent in a French historical context. Further, critics have remarked on the peculiarly French 19th-century social vice of envy rather than fraternity. While the film seems to romanticize somewhat the landscape in the style of some French rural painting, the book integrates better the French preoccupation with smells, sex, and food as necessary parts of life. In any case, this is one novel that seems to have escaped from the confines of Zola's aesthetic philosophy of positivism and determinism in fiction to achieve a romantic greatness of its own not so much appreciated at the time. The word "Germinal" was used for a period after the French revolution of 1789 to refer to the calendar month corresponding to about March. Another point that may be confusing in the translation is the reference to ordinary people by their inflected last name: for example, "Moque" for the old man, "Moquet" for his son, and "Moquette" for his daughter. Toussaint Maheu's wife is thus called "Maheude" instead of "Mrs. Maheu" or "the Maheu woman." ...
