Marx’s Concept of Class Struggle in Zola’s Germinal.

To discuss this topic fully, one must first examine the ideas behind Marx’s “class struggle.” For Marx, class struggle is the social and economic conflict between the proletariat and the bourgeois classes. This conflict is constant and inevitable in a society in which one class—the ruling class—controls the means of production. In turn the lower class, or the laboring class, can merely sell its labor to the ruling class in order to survive. In this way, the laboring class is in a constant struggle.

[...] Marx’s Concept of Class Struggle in Zola’s Germinal. To discuss this topic fully, one must first examine the ideas behind Marx’s “class struggle.” For Marx, class struggle is the social and economic conflict between the proletariat and the bourgeois classes. This conflict is constant and inevitable in a society in which one class—the ruling class—controls the means of production. In turn the lower class, or the laboring class, can merely sell its labor to the ruling class in order to survive. [...]

[...] Thus, their class struggle is of a different form. They struggle to reach the elevated status of the Grégoires by marrying into the Grégoire family, emulating them in general (the Hennebeaus are often shown pandering to them), and accumulating more wealth. For example, Madame Hennebeau is characterized as follows: began complaining . [about] the salary of forty thousand francs—a mere pittance that was hardly sufficient to run the house. Couldn’t he [Monsieur Hennebeau] have done what others had done and demanded a partnership, bought shares . [...]