L'Assommoir

What fascinates us in Gervaise Macquart's "simple and quiet" life? Why is the fate of this little whitewasher who has been raised from Provence to Paris so much so today? What do the excluded people say to us in the "Goutte-d'Or" version of the Second Empire? Gervaise's painful existence is above all a passion where there is an intense desire to live, a generosity without flaw, a keen sense of intimacy as well as of party. And so much so, the fatality that helps, various "shammoirs" - an accident of work, alcohol, "others", hunger - are finally reason for her and her own. Gervaise has gone through a glorious trajectory in her very demise. Let's read L'Assommoir, this "passion of Gervaise", this amazing masterpiece, with new eyes.