Undermining Body and Mind? The Impact of the Underground 197
himself escapes, almost 150 miners are killed. Deaths and accidents in
the course of underground labour are also both portrayed and alluded
to in A. de Gériolles’s reworking of Germinal for young readers, Sous
Terre (1910).
21 When a tunnel caves in midway through the text, one
miner is killed and two are injured, while at the end of the novel, the
flooding of the mine kills forty-eight men. As a result of his wife’s
earlier death by drowning in the mine, one of the secondary characters, Rabier, has been driven to drink so that mining accidents are
shown to have moral repercussions. The underground is also a place
where lives are lost and injuries sustained in R. M. Ballantyne’s Deep
Down: A Tale of the Cornish Mines (1868). In addition to the various
references to accidents and deaths, the narrative also includes two explosions which blind or kill the workers involved. As in both Sans
Famille and Sous Terre, there is also a flood, a “terrible catastrophe”
that causes several deaths, five of which are particularized and reported directly.
22 Many other deaths and near-fatal incidents arising
from the negligence or foolhardiness of the miners are also reported.
If all of the texts highlight the occupational hazards of mining,
there is far less in the way of consensus as to the nature of underground working conditions and the long-term effects of the underground environment on the physical health of the miners. In Sous
Terre, mining work is as horrific as in Germinal. Working in sodden
clothes, in cramped conditions and extreme temperatures, with bleeding feet and knocks to the head, all the time breathing in coal-dust,
this is truly an “existence d’enfer” (p. 45).
23 The effects of underground labour are wholly debilitative: the miners are thin, pale and
“voûté” although not old, their faces “creusée[s] par la fatigue”, (p.
33) their legs unnaturally swollen (p. 46). They develop coughs, angina and bronchitis. Similarly in Deep Down, underground labour,
which takes place in high temperatures and bad air, is “toilsome” (p.
118). The local doctor states that such conditions are by no means
___________________________
21 For the text’s intertextual status, see Kiera Vaclavik, “‘Un Petit Costume de
Mineur’: Class and Gender Cross-Dressing in a Reworking of Germinal for Young
Readers”, Romance Studies, 21 (2003), 115-26.
22 R. M. Ballantyne, Deep Down: A Tale of the Cornish Mines (London: Thomas Nelson, n.d.), p. 237. Subsequent references are to this edition and are given after quotations in the main body of the text.
23 A. de Gériolles, Sous Terre (Paris: Hachette, 1923), p. 45. Subsequent references
are to this edition and are given after quotations in the main body of the text.
himself escapes, almost 150 miners are killed. Deaths and accidents in
the course of underground labour are also both portrayed and alluded
to in A. de Gériolles’s reworking of Germinal for young readers, Sous
Terre (1910).
21 When a tunnel caves in midway through the text, one
miner is killed and two are injured, while at the end of the novel, the
flooding of the mine kills forty-eight men. As a result of his wife’s
earlier death by drowning in the mine, one of the secondary characters, Rabier, has been driven to drink so that mining accidents are
shown to have moral repercussions. The underground is also a place
where lives are lost and injuries sustained in R. M. Ballantyne’s Deep
Down: A Tale of the Cornish Mines (1868). In addition to the various
references to accidents and deaths, the narrative also includes two explosions which blind or kill the workers involved. As in both Sans
Famille and Sous Terre, there is also a flood, a “terrible catastrophe”
that causes several deaths, five of which are particularized and reported directly.
22 Many other deaths and near-fatal incidents arising
from the negligence or foolhardiness of the miners are also reported.
If all of the texts highlight the occupational hazards of mining,
there is far less in the way of consensus as to the nature of underground working conditions and the long-term effects of the underground environment on the physical health of the miners. In Sous
Terre, mining work is as horrific as in Germinal. Working in sodden
clothes, in cramped conditions and extreme temperatures, with bleeding feet and knocks to the head, all the time breathing in coal-dust,
this is truly an “existence d’enfer” (p. 45).
23 The effects of underground labour are wholly debilitative: the miners are thin, pale and
“voûté” although not old, their faces “creusée[s] par la fatigue”, (p.
33) their legs unnaturally swollen (p. 46). They develop coughs, angina and bronchitis. Similarly in Deep Down, underground labour,
which takes place in high temperatures and bad air, is “toilsome” (p.
118). The local doctor states that such conditions are by no means
___________________________
21 For the text’s intertextual status, see Kiera Vaclavik, “‘Un Petit Costume de
Mineur’: Class and Gender Cross-Dressing in a Reworking of Germinal for Young
Readers”, Romance Studies, 21 (2003), 115-26.
22 R. M. Ballantyne, Deep Down: A Tale of the Cornish Mines (London: Thomas Nelson, n.d.), p. 237. Subsequent references are to this edition and are given after quotations in the main body of the text.
23 A. de Gériolles, Sous Terre (Paris: Hachette, 1923), p. 45. Subsequent references
are to this edition and are given after quotations in the main body of the text.