La Terre

Plot introduction

Plot summary

Characters

• Badeuil, Charles - married Laure Fouan, and went to live at Chartres. He tried commerce without much success, and, haunted by a desire for rapid fortune, acquired a house of prostitution which had fallen into bad repute through mismanagement.
• Badeuil, Madame Laure - wife of Charles, was the youngest daughter of Joseph Casimir Fouan. She was the sister of La Grande, of Padre Fouan, and of Michel Fouan, known as Mouche. When her father's estate was divided, she got no land, but received an indemnity in money instead. After she and her husband acquired the prostitute establishment in Chartres, she assisted ably in its management.
• Badeuil, Estelle - daughter of Charles and Madame Badeuil, was educated by the Sisters of the Visitation at Chateaudun, and at eighteen was married to Hector Vaucogne, by whom she had one daughter, Elodie.
• Bécu - gamekeeper and bell-ringer at Rognes, was a man of fifty years of age who had at one time been in the army. He was an intense Bonapartist, and pretended that he had met the Emperor. Himself a confirmed drunkard, he was on friendly terms with Hyacinthe Fouan, whose poaching expeditions he overlooked.
• Bouteroue, Hilarion - second child of Vincent Bouteroue, and grandson of Marianne Fouan. Hilarion, who was of weak intellect, was looked after from childhood by his sister Palmyre, who wore herself out in his service.
• Bouteroue, Palmyre - sister of Hilarion, worked like a slave to support her brother, and died completely worn out by toil and hardship at the age of thirty-five.
• Buteau - second son of Père Fouan ; brother of Hyacinthe and of Fanny Delhomme ; cousin and husband of Lise Mouche ; father of Jules and Laure. He was a true son of the soil, knowing nothing of the world beyond the narrow district in which he was born, and possessing that fierce passion for the land which is the characteristic of so many peasants.
• Chédeville, De - deputy for Eure-et-Loir under the Empire. He was an old beau who had flourished in the reign of Louis Philippe. His political career was cut short by a scandal which gave offense at the Tuileries, and he was defeated by Rochefontaine, who was nominated by Government as the official candidate.
• Cognet, Jacqueline, alias La Cognette - daughter of Cognet. She went to La Borderie at the age of twelve years, and before long had several lovers. She made her fortune, however, by resisting her master, Alexandre Hourdequin, for six months, and when she ultimately became his mistress she had made her position so secure that he was afterwards unable to part with her.
• Delhomme - was the son-in-law of Père Fouan, whose daughter Fanny he married. He was the owner of a small farm, which he managed so well that he became one of the richest of the peasant proprietors at Rognes.
• Delhomme, Madame, also known as Fanny Fouan - wife of Delhomme. At first kind, she became hardened, and eventually the cleanliness of her house became a mania with her.
• Fouan, Hyacinthe, also known as Jesus Christ - the elder son of Père Fouan and Rose Maliverne, his wife. He was an idler and drunkard, who, when he had left the army, after having seen service in Africa, had taken to tramp the fields, refusing to do any regular work, but living by theft and poaching, as though he were still looting a trembling nation of Bedouins.
• Fouan, Joseph Casimir - the father of Marianne, Louis, Michel, and Laure. Born in 1766, he belonged to a family of peasant proprietors which for centuries had owned land, in varying quantities, in the neighborhood of Rognes. They were originally serfs of the Roques-Bouqucval family. Bit by bit they acquired their land, until, when the Revolution of 1789 arrived, the Fouan of that day, Joseph Casimir, was the owner of twenty-one acres — the conquest of four centuries from the seigneurial territory. When, in 1793, the rest of the estate was declared national property and sold in lots by auction, he was too timid to purchase any, and had the mortification to see La Borderie sold to Isidore Hourdequin, a citizen of Chateaudun, for a fifth of its value. When he became old he divided his twenty-one acres between three of his family, Marianne, Louis, and Michel, and gave a corresponding sum of money to his younger daughter Laure, who had been brought up as a seamstress and was in service at Chateaudun.
• Fouan, Laure - younger daughter of the preceding. See Madame Charles Badeuil.
• Fouan, Louis - known as Père Fouan. He was the son of Joseph Casimir Fouan, and married Rose Maliverne, by whom he had three children, Hyacinthe, Buteau, and Fanny. He received seven acres of land from his father, and his wife brought him twelve acres more. This land he cultivated well, and with a passion for the soil, as such, which amounted to frenzy. It alone had his love, and his wife and children trembled before him under a rude despotism. At seventy years of age he was still healthy, but his limbs were failing, and he reluctantly decided to divide his land between his children. He retained his house and garden, which had come to him with his wife, and his family undertook to pay him a rent for the land handed over to them. Upon this along with a nest-egg of three hundred francs per annum, known to no one, the old people would be able to live comfortably.
• Fouan, Madame Rose - wife of Père Fouan and mother of Hyacinthe, Buteau, and Fanny. She worked hard on the farm, rising first and going to bed last.
• Fouan, Olympe, also known as La Trouille - daughter of Hyacinthe. Her mother, who was a tramp, ran off when the child was three years old, leaving her to grow up as best she could. She was passionately fond of geese, of which she had a large flock.
• Grande, La - elder daughter of Joseph Casimir Fouan, and sister of Père Fouan, Michel Mouche, and Laure Badeuil.
• Hourdequin, Alexandre - born 1804, was the only son of Isidore Hourdequin. He studied at the college of Chateaudun, but made little progress, as his only interest was in farming, for which he had an absolute passion. On the death of his father he became master of La Borderie, which he cultivated on the latest principles of agriculture, spending large sums upon it. He married a sister of Bailliehache, the notary, who brought him a considerable sum, which also went into the land. His wife died in a few years, leaving him with two children, a son named Leon, who to his great disappointment became a soldier, and a daughter who died young. In spite of these misfortunes he retained all his passion for the land, and in it he gradually sunk all his fortune, getting little from it in return. A liaison with Jacqueline Cognet, followed, and she gradually acquired complete influence over him.
• Hourdequin, Leon - son of Alexandre Hourdequin. He had an intense hatred of the soil and became a soldier, being promoted Captain after Solferino. He did not visit his home more than once a year, and was much annoyed to discover the liaison between his father and Jacqueline Cognet.
• Lengaigne - a dealer in tobacco and tavern-keeper at Rognes. He cultivated a small piece of land, while his wife weighed tobacco and looked after the cellar. He also shaved and cut the hair of the village. He has a wife, a daughter Suzanne and a son Victor.
• Macquart, Jean - born 1831, son of Antoine Macquart, was apprenticed to a carpenter. A quiet, industrious lad, Jean's father took advantage of his simple nature and made him give up his whole earnings to assist in keeping him in idleness. Like his sister Gervaise, he ran off soon after the death of his mother. He entered the army, and, after seven years of soldiering was discharged in 1859. When he had left the ranks he turned up at Bazoches-le-Doyen with a comrade, a joiner like himself ; and he resumed his occupation with the latter's father, a master carpenter in the village. But his heart was no longer in his work, and having been sent to La Borderie to make some repairs, he stayed on to assist at the harvest, and eventually became a regular farm servant. He was not popular, however, with the peasants, who resented his having had a trade before he came back to the soil. He became acquainted at Rognes with Mouche and his daughters, Lise and Françoise, and eventually married the latter, in spite of the determined opposition of her brother-in-law, Buteau. Notwithstanding his marriage, he remained a stranger, and, after the death of his wife, went away, leaving everything in the hands of her relatives. The war with Prussia had just broken out, and Jean, disgusted with his life, again enlisted in the service of his country..
• Macqueron - a grocer and tavern-keeper at Rognes. He was a municipal councilor, and deputy Mayor. Having succeeded in undermining Hourdequin's position as Mayor, Macqueron succeeded him. His wife is Coelina and has a daughter Berthe.
• Mouche, Le Père - the nickname of Michel Fouan, the third son of Joseph Casimir Fouan, and brother of La Grande, Père Fouan, and Laure Badeuil. When his father's estate was divided, he received the family dwelling house and some land, but was dissatisfied with his share and continued to accuse his brother and sister, though forty years had elapsed, of having robbed him when the lots were drawn.
• Mouche, Françoise - youngest daughter of Michel Fouan, alias Mouche. Her mother died early, and she was brought up by her sister Lise, to whom she was devotedly attached. She had a passion for justice, and when she had said "that is mine and that is yours", she would have been prepared to go to the stake in support of her rights.
• Mouche, Lise - elder daughter of Père Mouche, and sister of the preceding. She had a son to her cousin Buteau, who, however, did not marry her for three years afterwards, when the death of her father made her heiress to some land.
• Rochefontaine - proprietor of a large factory at Chateaudun. He was desirous of serving as a Deputy, but did not secure the support of the Government, and, standing as an independent candidate, was defeated. Later, in consequence of the disgrace of M. de Chedeville, he became the official candidate, and in spite of a brusqueness which made him unpopular, he was elected.
• Soulas - an old shepherd at La Borderie, where he had been for half a century. At sixty-five he had saved nothing, having been eaten up by a drunken wife, "whom at last he had the pleasure of burying." He had few friends except his two dogs, Emperor and Massacre, and he especially hated Jacqueline Cognet.

  Major themes

Literary significance

Adaptations

• La Terre, a silent movie shot in rural locations, directed by André Antoine and starring Armand Bour
• Wouja'e Trabe, a 30-episode Moroccan television series created by Chafik Shimi, which aired on 2M TV