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This book analyses Zola’s fiction from a psychoanalytical standpoint, focusing in particular on the author’s family secret. The study scans for sub-textual issues of sexual insecurity and anxiety, which are analysed through the psychoanalytical theories of Abraham, Toroks, Freud and Lacan.

Rita Oghia-Codsi obtained a doctorate in nineteenth-century French studies from Royal Holloway, University of London for a thesis on the return of the female phantom in selected novels from Zola’s Rougon-Macquart series. Her main research interests are the relationship between psychoanalysis and literature, feminist literary theory, comparative literature and the history of philosophy. Her recent publications include ’Exploring the Origins of Creativity in Zola’s La Fortune des Rougon’, for the Bulletin of the Emile Zola Society. She is currently working on Henry James, Octave Mirbeau and Emile Zola.