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 Open access under:
CC BY 4.0

A contribution to: Scrutinizing Beauty

Edited by Eleanor Dobson and Daisy Gudmunsen

MHRA Working Papers in the Humanities 12

Modern Humanities Research Association

open

Abstract.  This paper investigates the role of beauty in the last work of Émile Zola’s Rougon-Macquart cycle of novels, Le Docteur Pascal. As a writer, Zola professed an interest in representing the truth in all its forms, which includes subjects previously perceived as unworthy of representation, such as the lowly and the ugly. Zola also claimed to be inspired by the scientific method, as he believed that the writer should adopt the observing gaze of the experimenter. I show how Le Docteur Pascal allows for a more nuanced understanding of Zola’s naturalist project. Through the character of Clotilde, Zola integrates beauty into his worldview, as the scientist Pascal receives an aesthetic education. Though this education is not without dangers, beauty ultimately serves an ethical function alongside science and progress, and Zola acknowledges the limits of an exclusively detached scientific gaze.

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