The Dream

A new edition of one of Zola's lesser-known novels from the Rougon-Macquart Cycle

Finding the young Angélique on their doorstep one Christmas Eve, the pious Hubert couple decide to bring her up as their own. As the girl grows up in the vicinity of the town's towering cathedral and learns her parents' trade of embroidery, she becomes increasingly fascinated by the lives of the saints, a passion fueled by her reading of the Golden Legend and other mystical Christian writings. One day love, in the shape of Félicien Hautecoeur, enters the dream world she has constructed around herself, bringing about upheaval and distress. Although it provides a detailed portrait of provincial 19th-century life and it adheres to a naturalist approach, The Dream eschews many of the characteristics of Zola's other novels of the Rougon-Macquart cycle—such as a pronounced polemical agenda or a gritty subject matter—offering instead a timeless, lyrical tale of love and innocence.