Novel
Pot Luck
Pot-Bouille
Émile Zola · 1882
Synopsis
In 1861 the young Octave Mouret settles in Paris, in a bourgeois apartment building on the rue de Choiseul, and takes a job as a clerk at the Au Bonheur des Dames shop; he counts on women to make his way. Behind the respectable façade of the house, the Josserands, the Vabres, the Duveyriers and the Campardons hide affairs, marriages for money and quarrels over inheritance, while the maids, from one window of the courtyard to another, lay bare their employers' secrets. Octave ends up becoming the lover of Berthe, who is married to Auguste Vabre.
Context
The tenth volume of the Rougon-Macquart, just before the novel of the department store where Octave works, the book was serialised in Le Gaulois from January to April 1882, then published in volume form by Charpentier the same year. Zola turns the setting of respectability inside out: the priest, the doctor and the concierge see to it that nothing gets out, and only the servants say aloud what the house conceals. On 23 January 1882 Maupassant published an article about it entitled “L'adultère”. William Busnach adapted it for the stage as early as 1883, and Julien Duvivier brought it to the screen in 1957 with Gérard Philipe.
Who it is for
For a fierce satire of the Parisian bourgeoisie, between comedy of manners and naturalist novel.
Prizes and reception
Translated into English as early as 1885, it was retranslated in 1999 for Oxford World's Classics under the title Pot Luck.