Germinal

15 years old when the novel begins, Catherine is the cheerful, hard-working daughter of Maheu and La Maheude. She is “a virgin child who had been prevented from maturing into full womanhood by the poor air and state of exhaustion in which she habitually lived” (49). She heads making lunch for the family and manages to feed everyone on mere scraps and crumbs. Down in the pit, Catherine is kind to Étienne, patiently offering him hints as he struggles to learn the difficult job. Étienne is astonished by her strength and persistence—she is able to perform the job easily despite her small stature—and by her crass talk about sex. Despite her own hunger, Catherine offers Étienne half of her lunch. When Étienne considers leaving the mine, the vision of Catherine’s face makes him change his mind.

Catherine and Étienne develop affection for each other but do not act on it, even when living together in the Maheus’ small house. The two do not give in to their love for each other until they are trapped together in the mine, neither wanting “to die before knowing happiness” (518). Shortly after, Catherine dies in Étienne’s arms. The tragedy of their love—their longtime pining for each other, only achieving happiness together on the brink of death—illustrates the tragic nature of happiness in Germinal: Joy and beauty are tinged with suffering, and happiness comes with a price.

Despite her early optimism and cheer, Catherine represents the theme of obedience in Germinal. In the mine, Catherine “worked without complaint, with the indifference of habit, as if it was everyone’s wretched lot to live like this beneath the yoke” (43). When Étienne tells her that he was fired from his last job for hitting his boss, Catherine is shocked, for “it offended her own inbred belief that one should be subordinate and do what one’s told” (46). Catherine accepts that she is subordinate not only as a miner but also as a woman. When Chaval rapes her, Catherine submits “even though she was not yet ready for him,” exhibiting “inborn passivity” (132).

As Chaval continues to berate, and beat her, a change takes place in Catherine. She loses her girlhood innocence, and her cheer and optimism are extinguished. Chaval manipulates Catherine into living with him, making “awful scenes” (196) and becoming violent until she concedes. She expresses regret for abandoning her mother by sneaking out to offer coffee and sugar. After passing out in the “dead air” of Jean-Bart, she is grateful for Chaval’s brief moment of kindness, crying that she wishes he was always so nice to her; when mere minutes later he goes back to his usual abuse, Catherine accepts “she would never be happy” (316). Her acceptance of her submission is perhaps best illustrated in her defending Chaval when he is taken prisoner by the mob: “[H]e was her man, the one who had had her first” (334). Unhappiness in women is, to Catherine, to be expected, just as poverty and obedience are expected in workers. Once Chaval claims Catherine, she stands by his side because “you d[o]n’t come across many happy women” (314). That she finally has her first period “under the shock of this terrible day” (445) represents the final loss of her innocence.

Despite her obedience, Catherine retains her strength. The day of the riots, Catherine defies Chaval by warning her father and Étienne that gendarmes are coming. During the protest at Le Voreux, “an absolute, desperate need to slaughter” overwhelms Catherine, as she has “had enough” (435) of abuse and starvation. Her final night of joy with Étienne shows not only that the oppressed retain the yearning for happiness but also that happiness is fleeting, destined to be tinged with tragedy.

La Maheude is Maheu’s indomitable wife whose determination helps sustain the Maheus. Readers first see her expressing concern to Maheu over how they are going to make it to payday; however, she also shows love and sensitivity by encouraging him to have a beer after work. Despite the family’s desperation, she refuses to beg, frequently threatening to beat her children for doing so. La Maheude swallows her pride when visiting the Grégoires, humbling herself to ask for money; when they refuse, she manages to convince Maigrat to give her more credit for food, despite his insistence that he would not give in. La Maheude is sensible and rational, though sometimes prone to fits of temper. To La Maheude, children’s value is wrapped up in their productiveness, for “her own harsh childhood” and “the heritage of destitution” has “made her see every child in the brood as a future breadwinner” (187).

When Étienne speaks to her and Maheu of rebelling, La Maheude is at first nervous. She is frightened when Étienne chooses Maheu to speak for the deputation at M. Hennebeau’s house, telling him, “[G]o and get yourself killed for everybody else’s sake” (217). She is afraid to have hope, for hope “just made life awful” (171) when dreams fail to materialize. Eventually, however, she falls “under the spell” and enters “a fairyland of hope” (171). She is drawn to the idea of “justice,” a time when she and her family can “enjoy life for once” (171).

At first, La Maheude is “in favour of the strike, but in a reasonable way” (230). She does not approve of Étienne’s “aggressive” language (231) and extreme measures but appreciates his sobriety and that she can depend on him to pay his rent on time. However, like many women, the fury of the mob sweeps away La Maheude. She helps destroy the lamp-room at La Victoire; in Montsou, she stuffs dirt into dead Maigrat’s mouth, yelling, “Go on, stuff yourself, like you used to stuff us!” (370).

As the strike goes on and their situation grows more and more dire, La Maheude loses her patience and moderation. Étienne “found her so changed that he no longer recognized the woman who had once been full of good sense” (400). As Alzire lays dying, La Maheude rails against Étienne’s suggestion they compromise with the Company, “calling for the return of the guillotine” so that they can “get rid of the bourgeoisie in one fell swoop” (400). She tells Étienne she wishes she had not stopped Bonnemort from strangling Cécile Grégoire. After Maheu’s death, La Maheude falls into great despair, suggesting Alzire was “fortunate” to have died and wondering what they did “to deserve this grief” (448).

La Maheude is industrious and, despite her despair, continues to fight for the survival of her family. The burden of responsibility at times feels too much to bear. Although stubborn and proud, La Maheude does not hesitate to do what is necessary. She sells her prized pink box, a gift from Maheu, so that she can buy food for her family. Despite threatening Catherine not to go back to the mine, she herself goes to work in Jean-Bart, telling Étienne, “Yes, I know I was going to strangle the first person in our house that went back down […] I ought to strangle myself, really, oughtn’t I?” (525). La Maheude seems to have given up, even speaking of a time when Lénore and Henri will work in the mine. However, La Maheude has quietly changed. She believes one day that “the day of reckoning” (526) will come for the bourgeois and is willing to wait for that day. When she says goodbye to Étienne, her handshake tells him, “See you again soon, and next time we’ll really show ‘em” (528). Although the difficulty of her life overwhelms her, La Maheude intends to survive, and she patiently awaits a time when justice will be served.

Maheu is a hard-working miner in charge of a team in Le Voreux. Although angered by the injustice of miners’ low pay, he is a believer in the “quasi-military hierarchy from overman down to pit-boy, which made them each subordinate to the person above” (54). When the novel opens, Maheu is described as having the most difficult job on the team, which he performs without complaint; despite the backbreaking nature of the work, which pays barely enough for his family to eat, Maheu believes “we mustn’t grumble” (29) but rather “[k]nuckle down and be grateful” (183). Indeed, when Négrel fines his team for timbering, Maheu accepts it, urging Chaval to refrain from arguing. Maheu is characterized by blind acceptance of the socioeconomic structure in which the humble worker performs his duty, which lines the pockets of the wealthy bosses.

Continually angered by Company reducing their wages, Maheu grows more and more interested in Étienne’s talk of revolt, though he hesitates to take action, for he is afraid of being fired. As his situation grows more dire, Maheu becomes more willing to entertain action. He speaks for the deputation at M. Hennebeau’s house, where despite his nervousness, “things that had been building up inside him […] came pouring out of him, straight from the heart” (220). Maheu participates in the protests but, even when swept up in the mob, he retains his self-control. However, the fury of the crowd even sweeps away Maheu, who feels “a surge of wild joy” (325) as the strikers cut the cages at Jean-Bart. He also bares his chest to the gendarmes at Le Voreux, daring them to kill him. A gendarme shoots and kills Maheu as the strikers return to the village.

Maheu, upstanding and decent, is representative of the miners in that he accepts his lot without question. He is awakened from this acceptance by Étienne, who he appreciates for his “good workmanship” and for the fact that he is “better educated” (139). His death represents the tragedy of the trapped miners, caught within a system that oppresses them indefinitely.

Étienne and Chaval, a young worker on Maheu’s team, hate each other from the beginning of the novel when Chaval complains that Étienne has been hired to work with them. Watching Étienne flirt with Catherine, Chaval grows jealous and forcibly kisses her. This animosity only grows throughout the novel and perpetuates even after Chaval’s death.

Chaval manipulates Catherine into walking with him through the darkness of the spoil-heap behind Réquillart by promising to buy her a ribbon; once alone, he rapes her. From that moment, he flaunts his possession of her. He remains possessive and abusive, beating and degrading her, accusing her of sleeping with Étienne, and growing furious with jealousy as time goes on. In one incident, he follows her to the Maheus’ home and berates her for using his money to buy them coffee and sugar; he accuses Étienne of sleeping with Catherine and with La Maheude, then shoves Catherine out and forces her back home. Catherine relates that she must work despite the strike because he does not share any of his money with her. Chaval shows a moment of kindness when he helps Catherine recover from her sickness in the mine; however, he defaults to his usual abuse as they climb the ladders of the escape shaft.

Chaval is jealous of Étienne not only for his flirtation with Catherine but also for his popularity with the miners, and he attempts to best him using any means necessary. To compete, he promises to initiate a strike at Jean-Bart, but he is easily manipulated by Deneulin who, seeing he is driven by “vanity” and “desperate envy” (304), offers him a promotion instead. Chaval immediately switches allegiance, figuring that in supporting the strike he will “always be playing second fiddle to Étienne” (304). At Rasseneur’s, when he and Étienne fight, Chaval cheats by kicking and then pulling a knife on Étienne.

After the collapse of Le Voreux, when Chaval, Catherine, and Étienne find themselves trapped together in a roadway, Chaval goads Étienne once more by offering Catherine food in expectation of sexual favors. Even after Étienne kills him, Chaval continues to torment them: His body washes up against them despite Étienne’s efforts to push him away, “preventing them from ever being alone together” (515) even in death.

Chaval acts as Étienne’s nemesis and is a foil for Étienne throughout the novel. By raping Catherine and bullying her into staying with him, he prevents Catherine and Étienne from being together. He often gets in the way of Étienne’s strike. The fact that Étienne and Catherine have their wedding night despite Chaval suggests that those like Chaval—those who cheat and abuse to have their way—will not win.

Vincent Maheu, or “Bonnemort,” so called because he has escaped death so many times, is the father of Toussaint Maheu and the first person Étienne speaks with at Le Voreux. Spitting black phlegm, Bonnemort tells Étienne his entire family has worked at Le Voreux and that many of them have died there. He jokes that in this way, he can trace his ancestry with more efficiency than the bourgeois. Bonnemort complains of having “gammy legs” and is ordered by the Company to stop working, thus enabling them to avoid paying his pension.

Bonnemort speaks of the Company with “a tone of almost religious awe” as if it were “a squat and sated deity to whom they all offered up their flesh” (14). This reverence for the elusive Company, even as it kills him and his family, is indicative of his attitude toward rebellion throughout the entire novel. Bonnemort, who has seen failed strikes before, scoffs at the idea of rebellion, believing “[y]ou take what you’re given” (168) and that there is “no point in worrying” because “there will always be bosses” (169). Talk of rebellion, he says, “never made a man’s soup taste any better” (172). Bonnemort follows the mob and watches silently with his friend Mouque, sometimes shaking his head. As time goes on, Bonnemort becomes less and less lucid, and as the family descends further into squalor, he is unable to do anything more than sit contemplatively before the cold fire, in silence.

Bonnemort’s attack on Cécile Grégoire demonstrates that, despite his obedience, he possesses a deeply rooted anger at the injustices he’s suffered. As the mob attacks Montsou, Bonnemort, devolving into an “old, sick animal,” responds to “inner promptings which he could not have described” (365) and chokes her, letting go only when Cécile escapes. He manages to kill her later at the Maheus’ home, when he is compelled by a “deep sense of grievance, unknown to himself” (498).

Bonnemort represents the older generation of miner who unquestioningly submitted to the Company. Even Bonnemort, though, retains a sense of his own humanity, despite the Company’s working him like cattle. In Cécile, Bonnemort sees a “plump and fresh-cheeked” woman who has enjoyed “long hours of idleness” and “sated well-being” (497). To him, Cécile represents what he has never had; she is the person for whom he and his family have sacrificed their humanity and even their lives.

Nephew of M. Hennebeau, the manager of the mine, Négrel is the engineer at Le Voreux who lives with his uncle and his uncle’s wife. He is “a young man of twenty-six, slim and good-looking” with “the look of an amiable ferret, an intelligent, sceptical air” and exhibiting “curt authority” (53). Readers first meet Négrel when he descends with Dansaert into the mine, scolding Maheu for failing to properly shore up the timbering; he asserts that if they all die, it will be the Company who suffers. He reprimands them for caring more about producing tubs of coal than about saving their own lives. Later, after the rock-fall that disables Jeanlin, Négrel reiterates his frustration with the miners, complaining “it was always the damned timbering” (193) and that the Company is going to have to pay.

Négrel is rumored to be having an affair with M. Hennebeau’s wife, Mme. Hennebeau, which M. Hennebeau confirms is true when he finds his wife’s perfume in Négrel’s unmade bed. Négrel is engaged to Cécile Grégoire, whom he finds “not unattractive” (212); however, he is not in love with her, and agrees to marry her mostly “to please his aunt” (212), who appreciates his “intelligence unfettered by scruple” and “the urgency of his pessimism” (205).

Négrel, who has “cheerful contempt” for “all men and all things” (428), exhibits dark, almost contemptuous humor, not only with the miners but with the bourgeois themselves. At the Hennebeaus’ lunch party the day the strike begins, Négrel enjoys tormenting M. Grégoire, telling him, “I would advise you to barricade yourself in at La Piolaine” (212). During the strikers’ march on the mines, he jokes with the women who are hiding with him in a barn, telling them to have their “[s]cent-bottles at the ready” (351). Despite his tendency to “mock the common man when he was in the company of the ladies” (351) and his “treating his workers with harsh discipline” (212), Négrel is described as having “republican leanings” (351). His sympathy for his workers is demonstrated by the fact that he “dressed like them” and in his “almost foolhardy courage” in “negotiating the most awkward spots in the mine” (53). Négrel’s loyalty to the men exhibits nowhere more clearly than in his eagerness to rescue the trapped miners after the collapse of Le Voreux. He is appalled when Dansaert leaves the mine with men still down there, telling him, “You don’t just leave your men like that!” (474). Spurred by the sound of their screaming, Négrel risks his own life to descend the shaft and diagnose the problem; upon finding the shaft blocked, he refuses to give up hope of saving them, devising a plan to rescue them through Réquillart and continuing the search even when he believes them be dead.

Upon Étienne’s rescue, Négrel tearfully embraces him, and they weep together, “shaken to the very core of their humanity” (520). Négrel’s pessimism and contempt prove superficial through his heroic deeds and determination. His embracing of humanity reinforces that even in dark times, the human spirit will prevail.

Rasseneur, “a jovial man” who is “the typical beer-drinker with a fat belly” (177), is the owner of a public house called the Advantage, which sits close to Le Voreux. He is a well-spoken, 38-year-old man. Rasseneur was once a good worker for the Company until he was fired for leading a strike. The Company now sees him as a “leader of the malcontents” (68). Étienne is first inspired to protest the low pay at the mine when he sits in the Advantage with Maheu and hears the two men discuss “poverty and revenge” (69). Although Rasseneur is wary of Étienne at first, upon learning Étienne is sympathetic with workers’ rights, he allows him to rent one of his rooms.

Unlike his wife, who proposes more extreme measures of protest, Rasseneur is “pragmatically minded,” advocating “the sensible approach of the man with a position in life” (145). As Étienne grows more involved with his protest, he and Rasseneur diverge in their thinking, and the two develop animosity. Rasseneur believes the workers and the Company should “come to some agreement” because “people who wanted ‘everything, and now!’ got nothing” (177). He infuriates Étienne by writing to Pluchart and telling him not to come. He is concerned that making trouble with the Company will only make things worse for the miners when they eventually go back to work. He also accuses Étienne of merely wanting to “play the educated gentleman” (243).

Rasseneur, who used to be popular with the workers, grows jealous of Étienne’s growing popularity. Now competing with Étienne’s visions of a just new world, the crowd shouts at Rasseneur and calls him a “scab” (289) at the forest meeting prior to the riots. Seeing that he is “a fallen idol” (289), he warns Étienne that he, too, will one day find himself on the wrong side of the people’s wrath.

Rasseneur and Étienne never recover their former closeness, though they share cautious mutual respect. After the mob riots, Rasseneur tells Étienne that despite the people’s belief that he is a “grass,” he has not turned him in to the gendarmes. Rasseneur enjoys renewed popularity after gendarmes shoot the miners outside Le Voreux. He invites Étienne into his public house to escape angry miners, then scolds the miners for not having listened to him earlier.

Rasseneur’s role in Germinal is twofold. Once a miner himself, Rasseneur used to be known as a rabble-rouser; now an establishment owner, he worries a strike will affect business. He illustrates how people’s perspectives change with their positions. Also, his voice is one of many in the discussion of how the workers should protest. Although Étienne moves beyond Rasseneur in his educational journey, the two men’s tentative acceptance for each other shows how different factions can coexist.

Monsieur Grégoire inherited stock in the Montsou mine and lives safely with his fortune, enjoying moderate luxury while not taking risks. He frequently brags about the cautiousness with which he lives his life, chiding Deneulin for risking his own money by investing in Vandame and reminding him that his own family is financially secure. M. Grégoire is appalled by Négrel’s suggestion that the strikers may resent him for being a shareholder, insisting his great-grandfather “earn[ed] it the hard way” (213).

Like many bourgeois and Company bosses, M. Grégoire lacks understanding of the miners’ suffering. When La Maheude goes to La Piolaine seeking charity, M. Grégoire tells her he never gives money, for “miners just drink and run up debts” (95) rather than putting money aside each month. He and Mme. Grégoire are critical of the number of children the Maheus have and find La Maheude’s “display of poverty increasingly tiresome and upsetting” (96).

Having inherited his money, and immune to the struggles of others, M. Grégoire believes wholeheartedly in the social hierarchy. He has full confidence that the miners will soon return to the pits, where they will embody “a fine example of their traditional willingness to knuckle under” (455). The Grégoires, while sympathetic to La Maheude after the loss of her husband, believe that her family “had partly deserved its misfortunes, because of its hateful attitude” (494). Their bringing La Maheude a pot of soup and some shoes—for which nobody has any use—is motivated partly by their desire to “demonstrate the broad-mindedness of their charity” (494).

M. Grégoire and his wife dedicate themselves to comfort and live to spoil their daughter Cécile. They are self-congratulatory and naive, believing their condition to be the result of their own wisdom, not considering that the workers have not had the luxury of a large inheritance. They enjoy their financial superiority, rejecting Deneulin’s request for a loan on the grounds that they want “to spare him an impossible struggle” (385). M. Grégoire grows concerned about the strike only when he is told it might impact him, and he takes his wife and daughter to visit the scene of the Le Voreux disaster to “follow the fashion” (493) of the bourgeois, with no concern for the workers affected.

M. Grégoire believes that he deserves uninterrupted comfort because he has managed not to squander his wealth. What he fails to realize is that his inaction has effects that ripple through the lives of others. His unwillingness to make true sacrifice and to consider that others have not had his privileges exemplifies the bourgeois in Germinal. That his daughter Cécile, the heir to this comfort, dies at the end of the novel, leaving him with no reason to live, is evidence that even he is not immune to the changing times.

Cécile, the Grégoires’ 18-year-old daughter, is doted on and beloved by her parents. Cécile, who looks “too wholesome” to be pretty, is “a spoiled child who had been indulged by her parents” (77). Cécile has “milk-white skin” and “a round face and an obstinate little nose buried between two plump cheeks” (77). When readers first see Cécile, her parents watch her adoringly as she sleeps, concerned the previous evening’s wind kept her awake. They all laugh delightedly to discover that Cécile slept for 12 hours straight. Cécile is, to her parents, “perfect, not at all too fat, indeed never adequately fed” (77). Her education at home leaves her in “a state of happy ignorance punctuated by childish whim” (81).

Cécile is portrayed as a girl who has been shielded from the slightest discomfort, preventing her from feeling pain and even from understanding it in others. Cécile feels sympathy for Lénore and Henri when La Maheude visits to beg for money and gives them each a slice of brioche; however, upon remembering their siblings, she does not give them more bread—she wraps up their slices to share. Cécile’s act of charity, though admired by her parents, is one of no sacrifice and is woefully inadequate to meet the needs of the children.

Her having been shielded from suffering is evident in the fact that she is easily scared. She refuses, unlike the Deneulin daughters, to watch the progression of the mob from inside the barn; later, when Négrel leads the members of her party into the Hennebeaus’ home, Cécile is so frightened that she turns back and ends up right in the midst of the mob. She begs the women not to hurt her and faints from terror. Her expensive clothing and perfect skin are the envy and fury of the women, who see her as “an idle creature who had never had to handle coal” (364).

Cécile appears destined to be murdered by Bonnemort, who attempts to strangle her during the riot but is prevented from doing so by La Maheude. Cécile, “plump and fresh-cheeked from long hours of idleness and the sated well-being of her sort” (497), brings forth in Bonnemort resentment of which even he is unaware, and the two are established as contrasts, with Bonnemort representing the generations of miners whose destruction has fed the bourgeois. Her comfort contrasts with Alzire’s illness when La Maheude, stating she wishes she had not prevented Bonnemort from killing her, asks, “After all, they’re happy enough to choke the life out of my kids, aren’t they?” (400).

Cécile’s contentment while visiting Le Voreux after the disaster illustrates her obliviousness to the people’s plight: While Étienne and others endure a nightmare below, Cécile, “quite pink with health and enjoying the pure fresh air,” is “laughing and joking” (493) with members of her party. She is so privileged and sheltered as to be helpless, an overgrown child who requires saving. As an innocent who never knows suffering, she is representative of a lifestyle that cannot stand.

A Russian of about 30 years of age, Souvarine, Rasseneur’s other lodger, is “slim, blond, with delicate features framed by thick hair and a light beard” (141). He has “the appearance of a determinedly sweet girl” (142). However, the “steely glint in his eye” shows that he also possesses “a more savage side” (142). Souvarine was studying medicine in St. Petersburg but joined the socialist movement; he fled Russia after attempting to assassinate Tsar Alexander II. He now works as a mechanic in Le Voreux.

Souvarine is an anarchist whose catchphrase is “nonsense”: He has little patience for intellectuals and incremental change, preferring instead to “[p]ut every town and city to the torch” until “there’s absolutely nothing left of this rotten, stinking world” (144). He calls for “a world washed clean by blood” (146), referring to the philosophers Étienne reads as “cowards.” Souvarine’s proclivity for violent change is matched only by his outward indifference. He sits quietly smoking, speaking with nonchalance despite the seriousness of his statements. He also goes to the Jolly Fellow to check out the meeting with Pluchart but grows bored with the “nonsense” (246) and soon goes home. Upon learning of the strikers’ plan to gather at Jean-Bart, Souvarine shrugs and declines to attend, saying it would only be “sentimental nonsense” when “all that was needed was to set fire to Montsou” (321).

Souvarine is “ready to sacrifice his own life” (242) and the lives of others, asserting to Étienne that “as long as there were rotten societies, there would have to be wholesale slaughters, until the last human being had been exterminated” (457). He does not believe the strike will have any effect, telling Étienne the miners will go back to work because “[y]ou’re all too cowardly” (459). Throughout the novel, Souvarine presents as so extreme as to be transcendent; he continues working even through the strike, bored by what he sees as tepid actions, waiting for the violence that will burn the system to the ground. He brings this vision of destruction to fruition when he risks his life to tamper with an already compromised section of tubbing in the Le Voreux shaft, then waits atop the spoil-heap to watch as the pit collapses.

Souvarine’s anarchy is the natural conclusion to Étienne’s increasing extremism. Étienne frequently consults with Souvarine for advice as he navigates the protest against the Company, and he is often left alarmed and confused by Souvarine’s obsession with violence. Étienne alternates between laughter and fright when Souvarine speaks of “destroy[ing] everything” (245) and of how blood is “good for the soil” (244). Étienne is mesmerized by him, as if “a mystic flame shone from his pale eyes,” even as he “reject[s] this dark prospect of global destruction” (245). By the time Étienne preaches to the miners in the forest, he too is talking of “a complete overhaul of society” (287) and of “drown[ing] the filthy swine in its own blood” (291).

However, Étienne never actually achieves Souvarine’s vision. After the execution of his girlfriend in Russia, Souvarine is left with “no parents, no girl, no friend, nothing to make my hand hesitate come the day when I shall have either to take other people’s lives or else lay my own down” (459). Étienne seeks these ties, even going back to work to be with Catherine during the strike that he created. It is this need for connection that causes Souvarine to disassociate himself from Étienne. Although he tried to make Étienne go home that morning, he lets him go when he sees Catherine, for “[o]nce a woman had got under a man’s skin, he was done for, he might as well die” (467).

Despite his almost frightening indifference, even Souvarine demonstrates moments of vulnerability. He takes a liking to Rasseneur’s rabbit Poland, who frequently sits in his lap as the three men chat in the Advantage; upon learning that Rasseneur and his wife have killed Poland, “two large tears began to wet up in his eyes” (407). Similarly, his attempt to prevent Étienne from entering Le Voreux shows he is not, despite his insistence, without human ties. Ironically, his indiscriminate killing of the miners mirrors the behavior of the hated bourgeoisie, which sees its workers as a faceless mass.

M. Hennebeau is the manager of the mine. Although his name appears several times early in the novel, readers do not meet him until Part 4, when on the day of the strike he prepares to host the Grégoires for lunch. His absence in the novel until this point is reflective of his personality in that he is passive and inconspicuous, even to his wife, whose insults and infidelity he tolerates. It is also reflective of his role in the Company as a servant to the Board. M. Hennebeau reprimands the deputation of strikers for being manipulated by troublemakers, and he insists the Company, who fronts the capital, is suffering more than they are. When pressed to come to a decision about the strikers’ pay, he claims not to have any power, hoping “not to become involved in the issues” (224). So eager is he to earn the Board’s approval that he would exploit the strike for his own benefit: If the strike continues, he can “use the situation” by acquiring Vandame from Deneulin “at a knock-down price” (214).

Although he suspects his wife and Négrel are sleeping together, he ignores signs, seemingly desperate to believe it isn’t true; however, when he finds his wife’s perfume bottle in Négrel’s bed, he is hurt and infuriated, thinking himself an “idiot” (346) for letting other men have “this woman who was rightfully his” (346). He hates himself for accepting his lot, thinking, “[h]e had already put up with one man, so why not this one too!” (355).

Just as M. Hennebeau compares the Company’s sacrifices to the sacrifices of the miners, he believes his own suffering is greater than theirs. He envies the miners’ “sexual freedom” (268), thinking he would “starve like them” (281) if only he could be with a woman who loved him. He feels anger toward the people for complaining about their hunger, for he would have “swapped his fat salary just to have their thick skin and their unproblematic sex” (356). His desire to be like the “lowliest among his own employees” (356) who beats his wife and sleeps with his neighbors shows his acknowledgment of his own lack of power, for in his fantasies, he is in control.

Like many characters in Germinal, M. Hennebeau is complex and multi-faceted. He demonstrates humanity when he weeps at Le Voreux, overwhelmed by the destruction and the evil. However, his acceptance of his wife’s affair with Négrel shows him to be as weak and self-centered as always. He is relieved when Cécile is murdered, for if Négrel’s wedding is off it means his wife will not take up with the coachman next. M. Hennebeau relates tragedies to his own life, thinking more of how events affect him than others—yet he never musters the strength to help himself, to take the control for which he desperately yearns.