Undermining Body and Mind? The Impact of the Underground 199
genoux”),
24 but the work is not only not difficult (a point made several
times), but, as in Les Indes Noires, has various advantages:
Le métier de mineur n’est point insalubre, et, à part quelques maladies causées
par la privation de l’air et de la lumière, qui à la longue appauvrit le sang, le
mineur est aussi bien portant que le paysan qui habite un pays sain; encore a-t-il
sur celui-ci l’avantage d’être à l’abri des intempéries des saisons, de la pluie, du
froid ou de l’excès de chaleur. (p. 52)
The illnesses, confined to a subclause, are easily missed and never expanded upon. Here, it is the surface and not the underground where
the heat is problematic. The fact that Rémi decides not to pursue a career in mining is for temperamental and personal, not to mention narrative, reasons (the story must go on), not because mining is a
debilitative, degeneration-inducing occupation to be avoided at all
costs.
As in Sans Famille, where Rémi eventually ends up en famille
in the upper echelons of English society, each of the mining narratives, as well as Les Indes Noires, The Princess and the Goblin and
“The Day Boy and the Night Girl”, have happy endings. This is even
the case in Sous Terre, where, as we have seen, mining receives a
wholly negative portrayal. Here, underground labour is simply left behind: the central family are plucked from the mine and set up in a grocer’s shop by a benevolent fairy grandfather figure. For his part, the
hero retains a connection with the mine since he becomes an engineer,
but he spends little time underground. Indeed, his visit to the underground towards the end of the text, during which the mine is flooded
and he is trapped, is undertaken simply in order to humour his friend
(and future wife), Marthe.
Underground labour may be presented as being difficult and
dangerous in these texts, but, with a couple of easily overlooked exceptions (such as Rabier’s alcoholism), it has absolutely no moral repercussions. What a difference from Zola’s portrayal of Jeanlin
Maheu in Germinal, a novel which is intertextually related in various
ways to several of the texts discussed in this article.
25 The pernicious
___________________________
24 Hector Malot, Sans Famille, 2 vols (Paris: Gallimard, 1997), II, p. 44. Subsequent
references are to this edition and are given after quotations in the main body of the
text.
25 Zola, Verne and Malot all drew extensively on Simonin’s La Vie Souterraine
(1867) (see Henri Marel, Germinal: Une Documentation intégrale (Glasgow: Univer-
genoux”),
24 but the work is not only not difficult (a point made several
times), but, as in Les Indes Noires, has various advantages:
Le métier de mineur n’est point insalubre, et, à part quelques maladies causées
par la privation de l’air et de la lumière, qui à la longue appauvrit le sang, le
mineur est aussi bien portant que le paysan qui habite un pays sain; encore a-t-il
sur celui-ci l’avantage d’être à l’abri des intempéries des saisons, de la pluie, du
froid ou de l’excès de chaleur. (p. 52)
The illnesses, confined to a subclause, are easily missed and never expanded upon. Here, it is the surface and not the underground where
the heat is problematic. The fact that Rémi decides not to pursue a career in mining is for temperamental and personal, not to mention narrative, reasons (the story must go on), not because mining is a
debilitative, degeneration-inducing occupation to be avoided at all
costs.
As in Sans Famille, where Rémi eventually ends up en famille
in the upper echelons of English society, each of the mining narratives, as well as Les Indes Noires, The Princess and the Goblin and
“The Day Boy and the Night Girl”, have happy endings. This is even
the case in Sous Terre, where, as we have seen, mining receives a
wholly negative portrayal. Here, underground labour is simply left behind: the central family are plucked from the mine and set up in a grocer’s shop by a benevolent fairy grandfather figure. For his part, the
hero retains a connection with the mine since he becomes an engineer,
but he spends little time underground. Indeed, his visit to the underground towards the end of the text, during which the mine is flooded
and he is trapped, is undertaken simply in order to humour his friend
(and future wife), Marthe.
Underground labour may be presented as being difficult and
dangerous in these texts, but, with a couple of easily overlooked exceptions (such as Rabier’s alcoholism), it has absolutely no moral repercussions. What a difference from Zola’s portrayal of Jeanlin
Maheu in Germinal, a novel which is intertextually related in various
ways to several of the texts discussed in this article.
25 The pernicious
___________________________
24 Hector Malot, Sans Famille, 2 vols (Paris: Gallimard, 1997), II, p. 44. Subsequent
references are to this edition and are given after quotations in the main body of the
text.
25 Zola, Verne and Malot all drew extensively on Simonin’s La Vie Souterraine
(1867) (see Henri Marel, Germinal: Une Documentation intégrale (Glasgow: Univer-