The 13th of the 26 Novel collection

By the time no.13 was being planned, Zola was financially prosperous. He decided to set
this life-and-death conflict between labour and capital in a coal mine. Miners strikes,
where strikes often involved hardship and violence; the dark tunnels of the mine offered
many dramatic and symbolic possibilities.

The impact of the novel
With 'Germinal', Zola succeeded in making the impact he had planned. He know that
a dramatic novel would get polite society talking, where boring reports of distant
strikes in newspapers were just ignored. Some critics were shocked at his brutish
portrayal of the miners, and deplored their morals - they "deserved what they got".
Others said it was an "old story" - things were no longer so bad. The novel was set
in the 1860s. By the 1880s when it was written, socialism and strikes were a political
force and had made some advances. Employing women down mines was forbidden in 1874,
though children of 12 still worked a 12-hour day until the 1890s. Unions were legalised
in 1884.

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