Emile zola novels the ladies paradise
The Ladies' Paradise: A Realistic Novel
Le grand magasin Au Bon Marché en
Denise Baudu est arrivée de Valognes avec ses frères pour trouver une place auprès de son oncle après la mort successive de leur mère et de leur père. La jeune femme découvre rapidement que le petit commerce végète tandis que les grands établissements – qui pratiquent une forme moderne de publicité, de diversification dans les rayons, de renouvellement fréquent des articles, mise en concurrence des vendeurs par le biais de primes sur les ventes – emportent un succès de raz-de-marée. Elle en vient à travailler pour l'un de ces grands bazars, Au Bonheur des Dames, tout au bas de l'échelle. L'existence est difficile, les perspectives incertaines, jusqu'à ce qu'un grand personnage s'éprenne d'elle.
Mon avis:
Pour moi, les grandes réussites de ce roman sont les descriptions quasiment mythologiques de ce grand magasin, à la fois machine, ogre, temple, et femme Créature formidable où toute la vie du propriétaire Octave Mouret se fond, dans sa quête passionnelle de conquête universelle des femmes qui forment sa clientèle. Dans cette synthèse colossale apparaît quelque chose de quasiment luciférien, qui rapproche notre homme d'un Ahab ou d'un Némo, sublime et terrible devant la foule séduite, qui s'amasse dans l'adoration de son œuvre titanesque.
Ici, les passions sensuelles, l'appât du gain, l'attrait du luxe et leurs névroses s'entremêlent et se confondent en une âpre séduction qui est aussi celle de la lutte pour la vie, une image ensorcelante qui taraude souvent Denise, à la fois angoissée et fascinée par la croissance gigantesque du magasin, qui écrase dans sa marche implacable les petites boutiques, avale les bâtiments, transfigure intégralement le quartier d'où il est sorti.
Autre point d'intérêt exceptionnel à mon avis : le roman de Zola décortique le fonctionnement d'horlogerie d'un magasin moderne, qui s'apparente de plus en plus,
After reading and loving Germinala few years ago, I decided that The Ladies Paradisewould be the next novel by Emile Zola that I would read. I was told by other bloggers that it was excellent but very different from Germinal.
On the surface, these two books couldn't be more different--Germinalis set in a company mining town and involves the lives and struggles of the miners, and The Ladies Paradise is about a department store in Paris. Both set in the late 19th century.
However, I was constantly reminded of Germinalas I was reading The Ladies Paradise. Zola depicts both the mine in Germinal and the department store (which is called The Ladies Paradise) in Paris as monsters and machines, consuming the traditional way of life of the countryside and city, feeding on the energy of the workers, exploiting their dreams, and crushing their lives. A few survive and thrive, a few survive and limp along, but most are swept away by the inhuman ferocity of the machine.
The version I read was renamed The Paradise, and is a tie-in to the mini-series, which was set in England rather than France, and it shows on the cover the actress who plays Denise, the main character, a girl from a town in Normandy who comes to Paris with her two younger brothers after their parents die. She is hoping to work in her uncle's shop, which is across from The Ladies Paradise, but business is so bad that he cannot take her on. She finds a position in The Ladies Paradise, suffers much, perseveres, and earns her reward, although you can't help but wonder how happy she will be with that reward!
Denise's story is very much like that of Christian in A Pilgrim's Progress, constantly struggling and beset with trials and tribulations, temptations and false friends, but she stays true to her internal guiding spirit and prevails.
I also couldn't help thinking about the movie You've Got Mailwhile I read this book. Octave Mouret, the owner of The Ladies Paradise, and Joe Fox, owner
Au Bonheur des Dames
novel by Émile Zola
For the French band, see Au Bonheur des Dames (band).
Au Bonheur des Dames (French pronunciation:[obɔnœʁdeˈdam]; The Ladies' Delight or The Ladies' Paradise) is the eleventh novel in the Rougon-Macquart series by Émile Zola. It was first serialized in the periodical Gil Blas from December 17, to March 1, ; and published in novel form by Charpentier in
The novel is set in the world of the department store, an innovative development in mid-nineteenth century retail sales. Zola models his store after Le Bon Marché, which consolidated under one roof many of the goods hitherto sold in separate shops. The narrative details many of Le Bon Marché's innovations, including its mail-order business, its system of commissions, its in-house staff commissary, and its methods of receiving and retailing goods.
Au Bonheur des Dames is a sequel to Pot-Bouille. Like its predecessor, Au Bonheur des Dames focuses on Octave Mouret, who at the end of the previous novel married Caroline Hédouin, the owner of a small silk shop. Now a widower, Octave has expanded the business into an international retail powerhouse occupying, at the beginning of the book, the greater part of an entire city block.
Plot summary
The events of Au Bonheur des Dames cover approximately
The novel tells the story of Denise Baudu, a year-old woman from Valognes who comes to Paris with her younger brothers and begins working as a saleswoman at the department store "Au Bonheur des Dames". Zola describes the inner workings of the store from the employees' perspective, including the hour workdays, the substandard food and the bare lodgings for the female staff. Many of the conflicts in the novel spring from each employee's struggle for advancement and the malicious infighting and gossip among the staff.
Denise's story is played against the career of Octave Mouret, the owner of Au Bonheur des Dames, whose retail innovations and store Zola was the spokesperson for the naturalist novel in France and the leader of a school that championed the infusion of literature with new scientific theories of human development drawn from Charles Darwin (see Vol. 5) and various social philosophers. The theoretical claims for such an approach, which are considered simplistic today, were outlined by Zola in his Le Roman Experimental (The Experimental Novel, ). He was the author of the series of 20 novels called The Rougon-Macquart, in which he attempted to trace scientifically the effects of heredity through five generations of the Rougon and Macquart families. Three of the outstanding volumes are L'Assommoir (), a study of alcoholism and the working class; Nana (), a story of a prostitute who is a femme fatale; and Germinal (), a study of a strike at a coal mine. All gave scope to Zola's gift for portraying crowds in turmoil. Today Zola's novels have been appreciated by critics for their epic scope and their visionary and mythical qualities. He continues to be immensely popular with French readers. His newspaper article "J'Accuse," written in defense of Alfred Dreyfus, launched Zola into the public limelight and made him the political conscience of his country. The Ladies' Paradise