Au bonheur des dames (French Edition) (original 1883; edition 2011)

This was my first experience reading Zola and I loved every minute of it. I think what I really liked about this book was that, having worked in retail it was funny to see that not much has changed since the dawn of the department store in the late 1800's. Even back then office politics abound with the gossip as ruthless as ever. The employs constantly try to undermine their boss in hopes of taking his position while constantly complaining about the quality of customers they are getting. In addition, Zola also looks at how the new retail world meant the death-knell for the old trade system of small independent shops of Paris and the despair it brings to their owner. While Zola makes it clear that he is in favor of the new retail world he points out that not everyone would gain from it.

Although the cast is filled with well-rounded characters, the real stars of the book are the goods themselves. Zola goes into painstaking detail about the different quality of cloth and silks as well as the numerous garments that were popular at the time. If there is anything lacking in the book I would say it's the love story between Octave Mouret, the owner of Au Bonheur des Dames and Denise Baudu, the leading lady and new arrival to Paris. Its not that its bad, just that I felt it was drawn out too long and really to a back seat to Zola exploring the world of the department store.

Overall it was a great read and one I say you defiantly should read if you ever worked in retail as you can laugh along with the employees of Au Bonheur des Dames going through situations you have probably found yourself in. ( )

Okay, so the descriptions of the early department stores were terrific. And it was interesting seeing them as triumphant over the "ancien commerce", when now grand old department stores are barely holding on, having been largely displaced by chain stores, plus Target. Plus ca change?

The storyline, on the other hand... Denise was just *such* a dud of a character compared to Nana. The whole arc of this perfectly pure, silent, passive, humble, etc. girl who wins the heart of the store owner through her very passivity just really annoyed me. Out of desperation, I developed a reading of her as kind of dominatrix, which made her seem a little livelier, but I had a hard time rooting for her nonetheless. ( )

Two stories, one the coming of the modern world, capitalism and consumerism, and the other, the poor peasant girl marries money. An alternative title could be All About Shopping.

Interesting to see how the shop assistants in the first department store in Paris (the Ladies' Delight was modelled on the Bonmarche, the real first store) were treated as servants. They lived in dormitories, had curfews, were expected to be chaste and could be fired for anything - or nothing - at all. Interesting also to see how these, almost the lowest of the low, assumed airs and graces and found people they could bully as to being even lower than themselves. Hasn't changed. It hasn't changed either that the people with money who consider themselves at the top of the heap object tremendously to those who would rise and marry into them (no sharing the love here), especially if they aren't even pretty!

The story of how the working class of Paris suffered with the coming of the Ladies' Delight department store is the same as when Tesco move in, or WalMart. All the little businesses die, the suppliers of those businesses often craftsmen, are out of work, and the uneducated young girls and strong young men find themselves low-paying work in those leviathans of the retail industry. Everyone says they won't shop at Tesco or WalMart, they will continue to support their local shops but no one - or perhaps too few - ever do. Its just so convenient...

Its a good book, a lot more gentle in its depiction of the working classes and their plight than is usual for Zola, although his overarching theme of a great industrial machine grinding people down remains. Lots of well-drawn characters, good people, bad people and very, very naughty ones. It would make a marvellous film, lots of potential of showing both the changing times and coming of consumerism and an age old love story with a twist (which if Hollywood rather than Europe made it they would ignore) a heroine who is definitely not fair of face.



( )

The strength of this novel is its almost overwhelming depiction of the merchandise in the Ladies' Paradise, one of the first Parisian department stores, and of Parisian women's insatiable demand for the goods it offers. The weakness is the plot and the characterization; the usually brilliant story-teller Zola falls down on that aspect of the job in this novel. However, a less good Zola is still a lot better than a lot of other books!

At the beginning of this novel, an orphaned provincial young woman, Denise, brings her two younger brothers (one a young man, one a child) to Paris, hoping to stay at the home of their uncle, who owns a small store. His business is failing, however, because Octave Mouret, the protagonist of Pot Luck, has turned the small store he acquired by marrying Mme. Hedouin (who subsequently died) into a department store which is stealing business from all the shop-owners in the neighborhood. Despite the fact that everyone she meets hates the Ladies' Paradise, Denise is attracted by it and has no other option except to get a job there as a salesgirl; this entitles her to a small room in which to live as well as her meals. As the novel progresses, she encounters various problems, is fired and then rehired, and comes to the attention of Mouret, who is the creative genius and dictatorial ruler of the store. A ladies man, he somewhat unbelievably becomes romantically interested in Denise; although she resists, her prestige rises in the store. I found the character of Denise much too meek and good to be true, and I couldn't believe the romantic attachment between Mouret and her.

So much for the plot. Zola dazzles the reader, as Mouret dazzles the shoppers, with his descriptions of the displays and the merchandise and the ways in which the female shoppers almost swoon over it. He also brilliantly dissects the inner workings of a department store: how the goods enter, how they're sold, how they're paid for, how they're shipped out, how the finances work, how the different types of employees are encouraged to compete with each other and how, mostly cattily, they treat each other, how shoplifting works and is caught, and much more. Another aspect of the novel is real estate: the creation of the large boulevards of Paris (as described in other works in the Rougon-Macquart cycle) and the attempts to cash in on them, as well as Mouret's machinations to acquire the right parcels to create a store that fills the entire block. Although Zola also tries to show how this drives the other merchants out of business, this part of the story is less fully told. As a portrait of the growth of department stores, materialism, and commercialism, this novel is fascinating, if not horrifying, and a meaningful contribution to Zola's goal of giving readers a full picture of life of during the Second Empire. It just isn't a very good story.

This book can be approached on three levels: as a somewhat conventional 19th century love story, as a study of the inner workings of the retailing business in the late 19th century, and as an indictment of the rampant consumerism. First, the love story:

Denise and her two younger brothers have come to Paris, where their uncle, a small shopkeeper, had promised her a position in his shop after their parents died. When they arrive at their uncle's store, Denise finds that the store is suffering and her uncle is unable to offer her a position, primarily because a large and growing establishment, The Ladies' Paradise, is siphoning off his customers. Other small shops in the area are also in decline, and Denise feels fortunate to obtain a position at The Ladies' Paradise.

The owner of The Ladies' Paradise is Octave Mouret, who was featured in the previous Rougon-Macquart novel Pot Luck; however, none of the characters or events in that novel spill over to the current novel. In the interval between the two books, Octave has married the widow of the owner of The Ladies' Paradise, she has died in an accident, and he has succeeded to sole ownership. Octave is now a wealthy womanizer, seducing and discarding shopgirls on a regular basis. Initially he is not attracted to Denise, who is described as slight, and somewhat plain, except for a magnificent mane of hair. Denise overcomes a series of hardships, including the disdain of her fellow shopgirls, and Octave gradually takes notice of her and attempts to seduce her. She resists, focuses on her work and family, and is able to work her way into positions of greater responsibility and compensation. Denise gradually comes to love Octave, but doesn't want to be another of his throwaways. SPOILER SPOILDER SPOILER. She holds out for marriage, and in the end he marries her, and I guess they live happily ever after.

This story-line aspect of the novel is the weakest part of the book and the part I liked least. In fact, it was due to my recollection of this story-line that I almost skipped this one in my Rougon-Macquart challenge, since I had initially read it within the last 10 years. While I liked Denise's character, especially in the beginning when she felt something like Jane Eyre to me, after a while she began to grate on me as being too perfect. I found myself wondering what a Dickens heroine was doing in a Zola novel. And, as noted above, unlike any other Zola novel I've read, there's a sappy, happy ending.

Nevertheless, The Ladies' Paradise is a worthy component of the Rougon-Macquart series. It gives us an insider's view of the inner-workings of a major department store at the end of the 19th century, when surprisingly many of the retailing techniques we think of as modern were beginning to be utilized. We see the nitty-gritty mechanics of the business, including the living arrangements of the shopgirls (in dorms over the shop), how receipts are collected and counted, how inventory is controlled, how deliveries are made, even how shoplifters are treated. In addition, we watch as Octave institutes the innovations that allow him to drive the small shopowners out of business and maximize profits.

For example, he begins partially basing compensation of the sales force on their sales receipts: "To make people do their best--and to keep them honest--it was necessary to excite their selfish desires first." He begins a practice of heavy advertising, and begins catelogue sales. He adopts a policy allowing returns, on the theory that the belief that an item can be returned will induce a customer to buy more--will be the tipping factor for whether to purchase an item or not. He scientifically arranges the merchandise and the location of the departments so each customer will have to traverse a larger portion of the store and make impulse purchases. The grand innovation of course is the development of a store in which many categories of goods are sold, rather than just one--the "department" store.

Mouret exploits the greed of his customers. He lures them in with low-advertised prices on a particular item, knowing that the enjoyment of buyers "is doubled when they think they are robbing the tradesman. " He recognizes that if one item is seen as a bargain, other items can be sold at as high a price as anywhere else, and "they'll still think yours are the cheapest." He uses sales in order to expedite turnover of inventory: "He had discovered that she could not resist a bargain, that she bought without necessity when she thought she saw a cheap line, and on this observation he based his system of reductions in price of unsold items, perferring to sell them at a loss, faithful to his principle of continual renewal of the goods."

Throughout, the madness of consumerism is condemned. Many of the new retailing techniques are based on a low opinion of the customer. For the most part the customer is female, and as a woman she is implicitly compared to the victim of sexual seduction:

"Mouret's unique passion was to conquer woman. He wished her to be queen in her house, and he had built this temple to get her completely at his mercy. His sole aim was to intoxicate her with gallant attentions, and traffic on her desires, work on her fever. Night and day he racked his brain to invent fresh attractions."

Then, "...when he had emptied her purse and shattered her nerves, he was full of the secret scorn of a man to whom a woman had just been stupid enough to yield herself."

However, the woman is not excused:

"It was the woman that they were continually catching in the snare of their bargains, after bewildering her with their displays. They had awakened new desires in her flesh; they were an immense temptation, before which she succumbed fatally, yielding at first to reasonable purchases of useful articles for the household, then tempted by their coquetry, then deoured. In increasing their business tenfold, in popularizing luxury, they became a terrible spending agency, ravaging the households, working up the fashionable folly of the hour, always dearer. And if woman reigned in their shops like a queen, cajoled, flattered, overwhelmed with attentions, she was an amorous one, on whom her subjects traffic, and who pays with a drop of her blood each fresh caprice."

I found myself fascinated with these two aspects of the book, perhaps because, unlike Denise, the seductions of The Ladies' Paradise prevailed over the good sense of its customers. ( )