Le Grand Transit Moderne: Mobility, Modernity and French Naturalist Fiction (review)

Larry Duffy's Le Grand Transit Moderne assesses Naturalism's exploration of movement in the physical and intellectual networks of nineteenth-century France. The author considers mobility, both real (continued advances in transportation) and abstract (textual, economic, sexual and social). Fittingly, each chapter leads the reader in a different direction, examining various types of movement in relation to a different set of texts and discourses. Although Zola's novels form the basis of four out of six chapters, Duffy works to counteract their dominance by paralleling them with Claretie, the Goncourt brothers, Huysmans and Schwob, amongst others. Breadth is added by the interesting, if perhaps slightly unusual, step of beginning a work explicitly on Naturalist fiction with a chapter on Flaubert's L'Éducation sentimentale. The links between this text and Zola's La Curée in relation to mobility are, however, teased out in such a way that their association proves compelling. The work closes with a chapter based on a range of Maupassant's fiction. Scope is also added to the proceedings by the variety of critical, theoretical, historical, scientific and sociological discourses through which Duffy moves. A profusion of discourses can diffuse the impact of a work. However, the author's ease with his sources, and the structure he has set in place, work to ensure that this does not happen. The chapters, in some senses, function in pairs. The first two chapters explore mobility, and the textual movement of this theme from Flaubert's work into that of Zola. The smooth functioning of the machine-like store in Au Bonheur des Dames is contrasted with notions of dysfunction enacted in Nana. Smooth circulation is set against convulsion. Chapters Five and Six unite in their exploration and re-evaluation of the pessimistic and euphoric views relating to travel and progress in nineteenth-century France. A sense of progression is palpable in structural terms. The work closes with an exploration of Maupassant's Duroy, whose success in Bel-ami lies in his ability to accept the complexities and inconsistencies of modernity. Frédéric, the character explored in the opening chapter on L'Éducation sentimentale, fails precisely as a result of his inability to see and accept these factors. The strengths of this book are clear. Its approach is fresh. The re-reading of the frequently studied Nana in Chapter Four is a highlight. Duffy argues that if there is a hysteric in Nana, it is not Nana, but Second Empire Paris. Moreover, using the different textual voices in La Curée and the intradiegetic narrative voices set up to be derided in Maupassant's fiction, a clear argument is made that the author and the narrator should not be conflated in Naturalist fiction. Although Flaubert's narrative stance has received extensive critical attention, this monograph raises intriguing questions about the problematic relationship between the author and the narrator in the fiction of Zola and that of Maupassant.