The degree zero of naturalist writing? The servant La-Teuse in Zola's La 'Faute de l'abbe Mouret'

In La Faute de l'abbe Mouret (1875), the character of the domestic servant provides Zola not only with comic relief but also with a way of reinstating realism in a novel where sociological observation has been replaced by myt hical, mystical and lyrical investigations of the self. Textual analysis sh ows how the servant, called la Teuse, serves as an allegory for popular wis dom, cultural identity (through her identification with the church bell), a s well as literary realism. Standing as the degree zero of naturalism, la T euse is Zola's way of confessing his inability to conform to his own aesthe tics.