Émile Zola’s 1885 masterpiece Germinal depicts the plight of striking coalminers in Montsou, northern France, in the 1860s. The hard-hitting novel became so symbolic of working-class struggles that upon Zola’s death, miners followed his funeral cortège, shouting the book’s name aloud.
The ground-breaking author and journalist would’ve celebrated his 183rd birthday next month.
Zola spent most of his career cataloguing the lives of a single fictional family during the Second French Empire (1852–1870). And yet – in the current climate of public sector strikes and economic uncertainty – his wide-ranging work remains as pertinent as ever.
Keep reading for three important lessons Zola’s life, career, and mysterious death can teach you about managing your finances.
1. Meticulous planning is key but be sure to start early
Zola’s largest project, the Rougon-Macquart series of 20 novels (of which Germinal was the 13th) didn’t arrive by accident.
Zola took inspiration from fellow French novelist, Honoré de Balzac. Between 1829 and 1848, Balzac wrote more than 100 novels, novellas, and short stories under the title The Human Comedy.
But while Balzac grouped his earlier works retrospectively, Zola meticulously planned his Rougon-Macquart series from the outset. He spent three years compiling a fictional family tree, mapping the aristocratic Rougons, the working-class Macquarts, and the bourgeois Mourets.
By so doing, he ensured that the branches – and the stories they represented – would take in the whole of French life.
An early start with a methodical approach is the best way to plan your long-term finances too.
The sooner you begin planning for your future, the better. Starting early means you can afford to put a smaller percentage of your monthly income aside while benefiting from more years of investment returns and compound growth.
Think about your end goal now, and HDA can help you map the route towards it, giving you the best chance of success.
If you’d like to check in with your plans, get in touch now.
2. Your priorities might change but there’s room to be flexible
Zola planned Les Rougon-Macquart to take in all aspects of French life. This huge scope led to books covering Paris decadence within the aristocracy, family feuds among rural peasant farmers, and the Franco-Prussian War.
During the two decades it took to pen the books, Zola’s priorities occasionally changed.
Struggling to complete a planned novel about railway life, he chose to combine the story with another half-formed idea. The result was the killer-train-driver thriller, La Bête Humaine.
Other changes saw characters plucked from one novel to appear in another, and the introduction of completely new stories. Zola’s favourite book of the series, The Earth, doesn’t appear anywhere in his original plans.
Throughout your life, many milestones will change your priorities and alter your goals.
Births, deaths, marriages, and divorces are just a few of the life events that might mean you need to rethink your plans. By getting to know you, we can build a bespoke plan that is robust enough to adapt to life’s hurdles.
3. Remember returns on investment don’t have to mean compromising your values
In December 1894, a year after the publication of the final book in Les Rougon-Macquart, a scandal rocked France.
French artillery officer Captain Alfred Dreyfus was convicted (on scant evidence) of passing military secrets to Germany and imprisoned for life. The case became the talk of Paris, splitting families into “Dreyfusards” and “anti-Dreyfusards”.
Incensed by the perceived injustice, in January 1898, Zola wrote an open letter to the French President. It was published on the front page of the newspaper L’Aurore under the headline “J’accuse…” (“I accuse…”).
In the letter, Zola alleged antisemitism within the French authorities, attacked judicial processes, and claimed a cover-up by the French military. Zola was sentenced to libel and fled the country to avoid imprisonment. He eventually returned to Paris where he died in 1902 from carbon monoxide poisoning.
Half a century later, a Parisian roofer made a death-bed confession, stating that he had purposely blocked Zola’s chimney, raising the possibility that the author’s death was an assassination.
When it comes to aligning your wealth with your values, you won’t need a front-page spread or a planned escape route.
Back in 2021, you might have read our article ‘The “Greta effect”: ESG and changing attitudes to responsible investing’ and it’s an area that continues to grow.
If you have strong views on sustainability, social, or governance issues and would like to speak to us about investing in line with your values, speak to us now.
Get in touch
More than 120 years since his death, the work of Émile Zola – whether cataloguing the poverty of a forgotten mining community or tackling institutional racism – lives on.
If you’ve been inspired to start planning for your future or to revisit the financial plans you already have in place, we can help. Please get in touch via email at enquiries@hda-ifa.co.uk or call 01242 514563.
Please note
The value of your investments (and any income from them) can go down as well as up and you may not get back the full amount you invested. Past performance is not a reliable indicator of future performance. Investments should be considered over the longer term and should fit in with your overall attitude to risk and financial circumstances.
