The Ladies Paradise (Oxford Worlds Classics) by Emile Zola

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THE LADIES' PARADISE is a sequel to POT LUCK (POT-B more

THE LADIES' PARADISE is a sequel to POT LUCK (POT-BUILLE), which I read last year. Both have Octave Mouret as a central character. In the earlier novel, he was a young salesman on the make, both in his profession and with the young women in his apartment building. At the end of POT LUCK, he marries the owner of a successful drapery establishment. At the start of PARADISE, his wife has died; and Octave has entered on an expansion program from drapery into a department store named the Ladies' Paradise that threatens all the other shopkeepers selling clothing and accessories in the area. Enter Denise Baudu, a country girl from Normandy, who moves to Paris with her two brothers after one of them has gotten in trouble back home. Her uncle runs a store called Au Vieil Elbeuf, selling drapery and flannels, but is unable to give her room or a job because business is threatened by the presence of the Ladies' Paradise across the street. Denise finds a job at the Paradise at the risk of angering her relatives. Salesgirls at the Paradise live in a dormitory on the top floor of the department store. Room and board is part of the job, plus a token wage and commissions on sales over quota. Little does Denise know she had entered into a whirlwind of gossip and backbiting. She is made fun of by her fellow workers, but Mouret resists getting rid of her because he is drawn to her. At one point, however, two of Mouret's "spies" in management come upon Denise and a young salesman from her region who has sheepishly fallen in love with her and kisses her hand as head axe-wielder Bourdoncle watches. Denise is promptly dismissed. As Denise finds another position in a less profitable store than the Paradise, the focus turns more to Mouret, who did not know of her dismissal. Mouret plans a large-scale expansion of the store and calls upon Baron Hartman (in real life, Baron Haussmann) to allow him frontage on the new boulevard being cut through the neighborhood. One day, Mouret runs into Denise on the street and asks her to consider returning to the Paradise, which is just as well as the store where Denise had started to work was going under. To sweeten the offer, Mouret makes her an assistant buyer in the new children's wear department. With her enhanced status, Denise is now winning admiration from her co-workers, though some backbiters remain. In the meantime, Mouret's passion for her is growing -- despite Denise not encouraging it in any way. There are several set pieces in the novel which are a feature of Zola's fiction. They come under the heading of giant mechanisms that grind people down. In GERMINAL, it was a coal mine; in POT LUCK, an apartment building; in HUMAN BEAST, railroads; and in THE BELLY OF PARIS, the food market at Les Halles. In every Zola novel, there are scenes showing off some giant mechanism at work crushing people under it like the wheels of a Juggernaut. In PARADISE, these scenes are highly successful sales which show a crush of frenetically spending customers and overwhelmed sales clerks as Mouret keeps "pushing the envelope" of what is possible in the apparel business. Even wealthy shoppers who came "just to look" are caught up in the frenzy and leave the store having committed themselves to buy more than what they could afford. The owners of neighboring shops feel that the Paradise is like a hungry beast that strives to devour their businesses and put them out in the street. Which is exactly what happens. Denise's cousin Genevieve dies of consumption after her lover Colomban -- the main hope of Au Vieil Elbeuf -- runs away to chase a slutty Paradise shopgirl who is one of Mouret's cast-offs, and who doesn't even want him. Aunt Baudu follows her daughter soon after. When as the result of a series of sharp moves, Mouret buys their properties, the shopkeepers are evicted; and Uncle Baudu goes to a nursing home, completely dazed and broken. Eventually, Denise and Mouret do hook up, but on Denise's terms. The novel ends as they announce their upcoming marriage. I have found that the ten or so Zola novels I have read have been of a uniform high quality, such that I have difficulty recommending one over the other (though I have a particular fondness for NANA). THE LADIES' PARADISE is an excellent read and paints a fascinating picture of life in the emerging Paris department stores of the late 19th century.
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