ABSTRACT
The idea of a social body at once dispersed and locatable, particular and representative, informs Massin Zola's plan to explore a series of social spaces and institutions through the fortunes of the Rougon-Macquart family and of those who make up their social world. This chapter focuses on transformations in the social body are embodied in individual subjectivities and bring about changed conditions for particular bodies. Zola portrays a society in thrall to new modes of production and consumption, and informed by 'modern' values. As social identities become more indeterminate, they become more culturally problematic, triggering the breakdown of traditional class distinctions. The concept of the social body in the Rougon-Macquart series is actualized through the family as the embodiment of histoire, both as 'history' and as 'story'. An initial step in tracking the actualization of the social body in the Rougon-Macquart is to consider how the social body is visualized by the narrator, by characters and by the reader.
