The Ladies' Paradise

“Denise had turned very red; she would never dare to enter that huge shop! And yet the idea of being there filled her with pride.”

Throughout the novel, Denise is caught in the duality of The Ladies’ Paradise. The store is captivating to her. She views it as a symbol of the future of which she wants to be a part. At the same time, she sees how the store is destroying local businesses, including those of her friends and family. Denise is drawn to what The Birth of Consumerism represents; she is proud that she might be a part of that future but horrified by her own fascination.

“With a shrug of his shoulders he seemed to declare that he would throw them all away like empty sacks on the day when they had finished helping him to make his fortune.”

Mouret is so financially focused that he commodifies his customers. While he created a store that fills his customers with delight, he is motivated by profit rather than a desire to please. His customers are, like his products, objects to be arranged and rearranged to provide maximum profit for himself.

“She felt a desire to run away and, at the same time, a need to stop and admire.”

The push and pull of The Ladies’ Paradise places Denise in a difficult position. She is drawn to what the store represents yet horrified by what it did to her family. She cannot keep away from it, as she is caught in a duality of admiration and shock. Despite the duality, Denise never questions the power of The Ladies’ Paradise. She understands its power for benefit and harm.

“Besides, despite his passion for activity, which made him open his purse to every intelligent and courageous young man, Mouret's commercial genius surprised him more than it attracted him.”

Like Denise, Baron Hartmann views Mouret with horrified fascination. Mouret is charming and ambitious even though he offends Hartmann with his choice of lovers. Nevertheless, Hartmann is amused enough to finance Mouret’s ambitions. This amusement represents the economic reality of the characters’ lives. Mouret is a wealthy business owner whose whims shape the lives of the people in his employ. In turn, however, Mouret must subject himself to the whims of an even richer capitalist who has the money he needs to expand his business. Even Mouret is beholden to the stratified economic and class system, illustrating Emerging Class Differences and Class Consciousness.

“They dreamed of nothing but money.”

Throughout the novel, women are depicted as if they cannot help but buy things, while men are depicted as if they cannot help but seek money (often to finance their wives’ shopping). Both women and men are portrayed as voracious—archetypes of either shallow consumerism or crass greed and lechery. The novel seems to condemn modern society as a mere collection of vulgar appetites.

“She felt ashamed at being treated like a machine which they were freely examining and joking about.”

The Ladies’ Paradise runs like a machine, and Denise diagnoses herself as a cog in the machine. However, The Ladies’ Paradise is also a cog in the larger machine of the metropolitan and national economy. Denise begins to learn how little freedom there is in the superficially dynamic economy.

“I'd have to be an absolute scoundrel to do that.”

Jean’s comment reflects his lack of self-awareness. He frequently asks Denise for money, and these requests take a toll. Denise goes without basic necessities to fund Jean’s many romantic pursuits. His insistence that he would have to be “an absolute scoundrel” to continue to ask for money is ironic because he does continue to ask for money, revealing that he is a scoundrel. He exploits and lies to his sister, and his comments reflect his lack of self-awareness.

“This lad, who had real happiness within his reach, was ruining his life, worshipping this good-for-nothing girl as if she were a saint!”

Colomban’s attraction to Clara horrifies Denise. He has the opportunity for real love, she tells herself, but he is motivated by his sexual attraction to Clara instead. This inability to understand Colomban shows Denise’s naivete about love. To her, simply being pleasant in one another’s company for 10 years, as Genevieve and Colomban were, is happiness. Denise criticizes Colomban for pursuing immediate gratification over a stable marriage. Love, to Denise, is more about duty than romance.

“When the factories lay idle, the workers were deprived of their daily bread.”

The store frequently falls into slow periods, in which customers are sparse. As a result, many employees are laid off. By framing the store as a factory and the employees as factory workers, the narrative drives home the point that these two economic operations are similarly exploitative expressions of the fundamental inequality of capitalism.

“She had no desire to analyze the feelings which caused her such pain.”

Denise is insightful in every matter except her emotions. She is so concerned with doing what she believes to be the right thing that she often refuses to address her pain or suffering. She ignores the cause of her pain as a way to dedicate herself to helping others and to protect herself from the reality that when she sacrifices in this manner, she hurts herself.

“In any case, Denise was still living within the orbit of The Ladies’ Paradise.”

The Ladies’ Paradise has such a massive influence over the lives of the characters that it is compared to a planet or star. It has a gravitational pull that sucks Denise into its orbit. Denise’s life, like the lives of Baudu and Bourras, revolves around the store, even when she does not go inside. The store occupies every moment of her emotional and intellectual life, dominating it through its mere existence.

“It was impossible to stop things going the way they ought to, when everyone was working for it, whether they liked it or not.”

When Denise thinks about the onrush of modernity, she feels powerless to stop it. She may not even want to stop the influence of stores like The Ladies’ Paradise, as she views it as an embodiment of an inevitable future. She is powerless against the forces of history and capital. She feels inconsequential before the rising tide of history.

“He carved it with trembling hands; he no longer had his sure judgement, the authority with which he had weighed the helpings.”

In the opening chapters, Denise and her siblings attended a dinner in the Baudu household. At that time, Baudu carved the meat with precision, ensuring that everyone received the same amount of meat. This later scene uses juxtaposition to demonstrate the effect Mouret’s economic warfare has had on Baudu. He lost confidence to the point where he can no longer divide the meat the way he once did. Baudu’s talents have been broken by his war with The Ladies’ Paradise.

“This sale killed the only dream of his life, and his heart bled for it as for the loss of a loved one.”

With the sale of his farmhouse, Baudu loses his dream of retiring to the country. He will not be able to escape the chaos of urban life, so he will be trapped opposite the store that destroyed him. The war with Mouret took everything from him. Baudu was robbed of his future and ambition, with no time to build it all back. He mourns the death of his dreams as he would a loved one. Soon, he will lose his loved ones as well.

“Mouret’s sole passion was the conquest of Woman.”

Mouret views women as an abstract monolith that he can conquer. His relationships are predicated on dominating another person for his benefit. He is obsessed with Denise because she rejects him. She refuses to conform to his expectations for female behavior. As much as he loves to conquer and dominate, he falls in love with Denise because of her independence.

“There was even a touch of malice in her battle with the shops; she boasted that she had never let them make a penny’s profit.”

Madame Bourdelais insists that she is winning the battle that her friends seem to be losing. She shops at The Ladies’ Paradise but does so in such a way that she is convinced that she is getting a good deal at the store’s expense. She thinks she is winning, but she is participating in the circus atmosphere that is to the benefit of the owner of the store.

“They developed a taste for expensive soap and dainty underwear, and there was a natural upward movement towards the middle class.”

The salesgirls develop the taste of the women they serve, yet they lack the means to buy some of the things they sell. Their appearance begins to mirror that of the women whose material wealth they covet. They can only adopt the aesthetics of middle-class living without the material comfort. The Ladies’ Paradise, despite Mouret’s descriptions of his store as a class leveler, reveals Emerging Class Differences and Class Consciousness.

“He had only to stoop to get the others; they all waited on his whim like obedient servants; but she was saying no, without even giving him a reasonable excuse.”

Mouret loves Denise because she defies his expectations about women. He is wealthy and powerful, so she should be delighted to take anything he gives her, as every other woman has done. Denise’s rejection of Mouret reveals a previously unknown limit to his power, which surprises and intrigues him. He loves her because he cannot conquer her.

“She was hurt by the indifference of all that pleasant luxury.”

More than her insults, Madame Desforges’s possessions pain Denise. There is more luxury in Madame Desforges’s hallway than Denise has known in her entire life. Yet the wealthy characters are indifferent to it. Madame Desforges’s behavior emphasizes Emerging Class Differences and Class Consciousness by showing her how the wealthy can store riches in their hallways, which they barely notice.

“What was the point of this great fortune if she would not yield.”

Mouret’s success means that his employees feel compelled to do as he asks. The only exception is Denise, who refuses to marry him despite his power and promises of a luxurious lifestyle. Her refusal to return his love causes him to rethink success. What good is wealth if it does not bring happiness?

“Was it humane or right, this appalling consumption of human flesh every year by the big shops?”

Denise’s influence over Mouret is such that she can point out the flaws in his ideology without fear of retribution. Denise questions the practice of treating the staff as disposable cogs for the enrichment of the owners. In the face of Emerging Class Differences and Class Consciousness, she elicits greater humanity from him and makes him forsake immediate profits in favor of a holistic view of business that weighs the interests of all stakeholders.

“The small tradespeople of the neighborhood wanted to show their sympathy to the Baudus; and their eagerness to do so was also a kind of demonstration against The Ladies’ Paradise, which they held responsible for Genevieve's lingering death.”

Genevieve’s funeral procession is a symbolic counterpoint to sale days at The Ladies’ Paradise. On those occasions, women rush into the store in a chaotic crowd to indulge in frivolities. The small tradespeople witness this dizzying expression of The Birth of Consumerism as a death knell for their lives. They are mourning not only the death of Genevieve but also the death of their livelihoods.

“Jean and Pepe had not left her side, but were staying close to her as they had in the past when, worn out from the journey, they had arrived in Paris.”

In the final chapter, the two brothers visit Denise at the pinnacle of her professional success. They witness the respect she commands from the staff. Denise’s manner gives no sense of her provincial origin, and she succeeded without abandoning her morals. This scene is a symbolic juxtaposition to the opening scene in which the brothers stared at The Ladies’ Paradise in awe. Now, they stare at their sister managing the same store, filled with the same sense of wonder.