Abstract: Allying the biological knowledge of an era with political and social considerations, La Fortune des Rougon carries the mark of Zola’s scientific ideology, that trial-and-error pre-sociology borrowing from natural history. What effect does biological data have on conceptions of the social bond? To answer this question, this article studies three sites of sociability – the family, the city, and political associations – and the unarticulated assumptions about community that they reveal.
