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The mythical theory of impregnation in Zola's Madeleine Ferat and L'assommoir.

Article Excerpt
Promulgated by the French physician Prosper Lucas in nineteenth-century France, the theory of impregnation, an imagined physiological process, relates to the indelible mark left on a woman by her first lover, who even influences inseminations in which he does not participate. In this paper, I will start by looking at the origins of this scientific myth, and after analyzing its occurrences in Madeleine Ferat and L'assommoir, I will conclude with its crucial repercussions on the conception of the body and with its status as a scientific legend.

Before its publication as a novel in 1868, Madeleine Ferat appears as a series entitled La honte in L'Evenement. The newspaper considers certain passages on the theory of impregnation scandalous and prosecutes Zola. However, in his preface to the novel, the naturalist author underlines the highly moral purpose of this text:

Cette etude tend a' accepter les liens du manage comme eternels, au point de vue physiologique. La religion, la morale disent a l'homme: >; et la science vient lui dire a son tour: > J'ai simplement mis en oeuvre cette theorie scientifique. Je crois avoir ecrit un livre utile, honnete. (Madeleine 24)

In Emile Zola raconte par sa fille, Denise Le Blond-Zola discloses her father's deep interest in Jules Michelet and his theories of pure love (24). Michelet publishes L'amour, a guide to love, in 1859, which influences Zola remarkably before he writes Madeleine Ferat. In a letter to his friend Baille in January 1860, Zola praises L'amour: "Une tache grande et belle, une tache que Michelet a entreprise, une tache que j'ose parfois envisager, est de faire revenir l'homme a la femme.... Michelet fait un dieu de la femme dont l'homme est l'humble adorateur" (Correspondance 129). Michelet indeed forms the basis of Zola's sexual morals, and in the same way as Michelet, Zola thinks that promiscuity is a major social problem: "La maladie, a mon avis, depend surtout de ceci: les jeunes gens menent une vie polygamique. Je disais tantot que, dans l'amour, te corps et l'ame sont intimement lies, le veritable amour ne peut exister sans ce melange" (Correspondance 136). In other words, leading a dissolute life does not relate to Michelet's notion of real love.

In L'amour, Michelet gives more details on the theory of impregnation by referring to Prosper Lucas' s study, Traite philosophique et physiologique de l'heredite naturelle. Michelet claims that the first insemination has a lasting influence on woman: "La femme fecondee une fois, impregnee, portera partout son marl en elle" (325), and that marriage makes a woman become man, become her husband:

L'epouse impregnee se fait homme. Envahie de la force mille qui une fois a mordu en elle, elle y cedera de proche en proche. L'homme gagnera, la penetrera. Elle sera lui de plus en plus. Un an, deux arts,...

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