Relation To The Other Rougon-Macquart Novels
Zola's plan for the Rougon-Macquart novels was to show how heredity and environment worked on members of one family over the course of the Second Empire. All of the descendants of Adelaïde Fouque (Tante Dide), Saccard's grandmother, demonstrate what today would be called obsessive-compulsive behaviors to varying degrees. Saccard is obsessed with money and the building of wealth, to which everything in his life holds second place. In Le docteur Pascal, Zola describes the influence of heredity on Saccard as an "adjection" in which the natures of his avaricious parents are commingled.
Two other members of the Rougon-Macquart family also appear in L'argent: Saccard's sons Maxime (b. 1840) and Victor (b. 1853). If his father's obsession is with building wealth, Maxime's obsession is with keeping it. A widower, Maxime (who played a central role in La curée) lives alone in opulence he does not share. In Le docteur Pascal, Maxime is described as prematurely aged, afraid of pleasure and indeed of all life, devoid of emotion, and cold, characteristics introduced in L'argent. Maxime is described as a "dissemination" of characteristics, having the moral prepotency of his father and the pampered egotism of his mother (Saccard's first wife).
Victor, on the other hand, brought up in squalor, is the furthest extreme Zola illustrates of the Rougon family's degeneracy. Like his great-grandmother Tante Dide, Victor suffers from neuralgic attacks. Unlike Jacques Lantier (his second cousin, see La bête humaine), he is unable to control his criminal impulses, and his disappearance into the streets of Paris is no surprise. Victor is described as a "fusion" of the lowest characteristics of his parents (his mother was a prostitute).
In Le docteur Pascal (set in 1872), Zola tells us that Saccard returns to Paris, institutes a newspaper, and is again making piles of money.
Rougon is the protagonist of Son Excellence Eugène Rougon, the events of which predate L'argent. Saccard's daughter Clotilde (b. 1847) is the main female character in Le docteur Pascal.
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