Abbe Mouret's Transgression

by Émile Zola

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Members' Rating: from 7 Ratings and 1 Review

Tags: Classics, French, Novel

ISBN:1595690506

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Description

The hero of Émile Zola’s 1875 novel Abbe Mouret’s Transgression, Serge Mouret, is a passionate young priest. Just assigned to a rural and uneducated parish, Serge seems unable to reach his new community despite his forceful preaching. He seeks solace by immersing himself in his own spiritual fervor—one so powerful that it threatens his sense of reality and even his sanity. After a mental collapse, Serge is sent to recover at a private home. There, unable to remember anything of his former life, the young priest finds himself falling deeply in love with his gentle caretaker, a girl named Albine. As we soon find, Serge and Albine’s days of love are tragically numbered. When a senior priest arrives one day and discovers the two lovers in a passionate embrace, Serge’s memory comes flooding back and shame replaces joy as he realizes the consequences of breaking his vows. One of Zola’s best-known novels, Abbe Mouret’s Transgression is an emotionally vibrant work, full of conflicting passions that threaten to tear lives apart.

Opening Lines (Experimental)

As La Teuse entered the church she rested her broom and feather-brush against the altar. She was late, as she had that day began her half-yearly wash. Limping more than ever in her haste and hustling the benches, she went down the church to ring the _Angelus_. The bare, worn bell-rope dangled from ...

Member review

4/5

Reviewed by raderwoman on Dec 29, 2009

Abbe Mouret's Transgression

This was a perversely enjoyable read. While I spent much of the book wanting to slap the Abbe silly, I recognized the tale as Zola's fable pitting love of intellect/religion against love f all that is natural, passionate of feeling, delight in the sensual. Considered quite shocking in his own time, Zola doesn't hold a candle to current-day explicitness, but his sensual language and imagery are, to me, very evocative.