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The Goncourt brothers are among the founders of naturalism in French literature, and Germaine Lacerte is perhaps their most controversial work. It is the story of the fall of the maid Germaine, described from her sad youth to her equally sad death, a story that is hopeless, musty, and imbued with filthy physiology. Almost on a par with Germaine, there is another protagonist - perhaps the only positive one in the story - Mademoiselle de Varandeille, Germaine's mistress, whose image embodies all the Goncourt brothers' ideas about virtue and a righteous way of life. The Goncourt brothers have managed to dissect the life of the lower class in nineteenth-century France so well that the descriptions of filth, immorality and debauchery make one physically sick.