Did the moral values of the characters in Emile Zola’s novel Germinal change in the face of hunger and misery, and what did they do to survive?
Émile Zola’s Germinal is not only an example of social realism; it is also a deep philosophical inquiry into the moral orientation of man in borderline situations. As the characters are dragged beyond classical moral categories in the grip of hunger and misery, the question of whether morality is universal and unchangeable constantly comes to the fore.
- Étienne Lantier – The Evolution of Morality into Class Consciousness
Étienne acts with an individualist ideal of justice and humanity at the beginning of the novel. However, as he sees the misery of the miners, this ethical approach gives way to a collective morality of liberation. Calls for strikes, violent resistance and the desire to change the system transform his individual morality into a class-centered morality of struggle.
Moral Transformation: The transition from the Kantian morality of individual duty to the class ethics expressed in Marx’s historical materialism.
Survival Practice: By embarking on a struggle aimed not at reforming the system but at destroying it, he reduces “morality” to social liberation.
Philosophical Foundation: The idea that morality is shaped by social conditions; that poverty and hunger subject the individual conscience to historical necessity.
Zola’s message through Étienne: In a world shaped by hunger, virtue is not individual, but revolutionary.
- Maheu – The Worker Caught Between Conscience and Necessity
Maheu is a classic worker figure: honest, hardworking, and devoted to his family. However, systematic exploitation gradually renders these “virtuous” characteristics dysfunctional. His family’s hunger shakes his traditional moral stance. In joining the strike, he not only demands a right, but also questions his own value system.
Moral Transformation: A transition from the Christian ethic of patience and work to an ethic of social anger and struggle.
Survival Practice: He stops submitting to the system and chooses to defend the right to life through the strike.
Philosophical Foundation: Morality includes not only obedience; it also includes the courage to resist injustice. This comes out of Aristotle’s understanding of virtue and approaches more of a Hobbesian ethics of necessity.
The idea conveyed by Zola through Maheu: When morality loses its livability, people defend life itself against morality.
- Maheude – Transition from Mother Morality to Rebellion
Maheude lives moral values primarily through motherhood and religious devotion. However, for her, a mother’s inability to feed her children is not a moral collapse, but the immorality of the system. At this point, she does not reckon with herself, but with the order she is in. She continues the struggle even after her husband’s death.
Moral Transformation: Transition from the patient mother figure to the resisting woman figure; from passive virtue to active justice.
Survival Practice: She prefers to support the strike rather than pray in the fight against hunger.
Philosophical Justification: She stands close to an existential understanding of ethics: Morality requires taking on life and responsibility together.
What Zola points out with the character of Maheude: If morality does not understand hunger, it is not a conscience but a tool for punishment.
- Souvarine – The Nihilist Rejection of Morality
Souvarine is not an attempt to reform the order, but rather a figure who wants to destroy it from the foundation. For him, misery is not just a mistake, but an indicator of the moral rottenness of the entire system. Therefore, even the sanctity of individual lives loses its validity in his eyes.
Moral Transformation: A nihilism that fundamentally rejects moral values.
Survival Practice: It aims to destroy the entire order, not the lives of individuals, by sabotaging the system.
Philosophical Justification: It is close to the view that the current moral system is “slave morality” in the Nietzschean sense. In order for a new order to emerge, current values must die.
The tragic truth that Zola presents through Souvarine: In an immoral world, morality will eventually be replaced only by power.
- Catherine – Moral Decay Embodied in Silence
Catherine represents the gendered face of misery. Hunger takes hostage not only her stomach but also her body. Concepts such as sexuality, love or honor are no longer luxuries for her, but survival strategies. Her silence shows how immoral the system she is in is.
Moral Transformation: A character whose values have never been recognized is stripped of her right to speak and resist within the system.
Survival Practice: She uses love, work and her body as tools to keep her alive.
Philosophical Grounding: When evaluated in the context of feminist ethics, her silence is not a “choice” but a state of “deprivation.”
What Zola is saying with Catherine: Even the privilege of having moral values is class-based — for some, this luxury has never been possible.
