ABSTRACT
The central theme of Emile Zola's final novel Verite (1903) is the struggle to speak the unspeakable. This chapter uses aspects of contemporary trauma theory, particularly the work of Cathy Caruth, to argue that the intersections between individual and national trauma played out in Verite offer one way of resolving the tension between the speakable and the unspeakable. The subject matter of Zola's novel is particularly appropriate in the light of Caruth's formulation of trauma. On the most literal of levels, Zephirin's rape and murder is the site of a very physical wound which then becomes the trigger for a series of emotional wounds which spread through the text like ripples. Secondly, by showing that the truth is related both to what is already known and to what is not yet known, Caruth's assertion echoes the dynamics of revelation and dissimulation played out in the hunt for the murderer, which is the central narrative focus of Verite.
