Masculine discourse exerts on Zola’s texts a power as strong as it is discrete, in particular in the definition of feminine characters and in their allocation to destinies considered normal. The hero and the narrator, who is frequently hidden behind him, often confuse their authoritarian voices. The absence of clear l imits between free indirect speech and authorial voice thus contributes to genderising the omniscient narrative and to validating the assertions of the observers of the feminine. From there the point will be to wrap the heroin up in reassessm ents capable of countering the feminine mystery both necessary to maintaining a novelis tic aura and unacceptable to the naturalistic novel’s universe of transparency and perfect legibility.