A study of the reason for the ineffectiveness of labor strikes in Emile Zola's Germinal

Abstract EN

This article deals with Emile Zola's use of cultural hegemony to preclude labor strikes in France.

His novel Germinal (1885) is about the social Marxists' attempt to organize a strike in Montsou, France.

However, the strike, unlike what is expected, fails.

The aim of this research paper is to investigate the reason why the social Marxists fail in their attempt.

I argue that the strike fails as Zola is a conservative writer and not a radical.

His aim is to preserve the status and power of the capitalist system and hinder the spread of the revolutionary thought.

In order to accomplish this, he makes use of ideological and cultural hegemony to manipulate his readers into believing that labor strikes will turn into violent social movements.

In this article, I use Antonio Gramsci's theory of cultural hegemony to study the way Zola builds his theory of naturalism upon the narrative of social Darwinism that supports the status of capitalism and hinders the spread of the revolutionary thought.