The Water of the hills ( Jean de Florette and Manon of the Springs)

Jean de Florette is the story of ‘le bossu’, a hunchbacked former tax collector who inherits a farm in the hills above the fictional village of La Bastide in Provence and, together with his wife and young daughter, dreams of making his fortune by raising rabbits. However his intricate plans and hard work are constantly thwarted by a relentless drought and the deception of his neighbours, the Soubeyrans, two grasping and unprincipled farmers who block the farm’s spring to trick the naïve newcomer out of his land. Their plans eventually succeed when Jean works himself to death and his widow is forced to sell the land to the Soubeyrans for a fraction of its value. Unfortunately for the farmers the dead man’s daughter Manon sees them unblocking the spring which would have saved her father and vows revenge.[5]

Manon of the Springs (Manon des Sources), which takes up the story some ten years later, is the tale of Jean de Florette’s daughter Manon, now reduced to living in a cave with a local shepherd and his wife. After locating the source of the village water supply she exacts a suitable revenge, both on the Soubeyrans for the inadvertent death of her father and on the other inhabitants of the village for the mean spirited way they had treated her family and helped to drive her father to an early death.

Keywordswater scarcity, land access, environmental crisis