ZOLA CHAPTER 3 NOTES

The bourgeoisie is the social class that came to own the means of production during modern industrialization. Owning property
and controlling vast amounts of money ensured their economic and social preservation. Continued economic and social
prominence was made possible by entrepreneurs who took risks to bring innovation to industries. By dismantling long-standing
practices in order to make way for innovation, they drove the capitalist engine.

The narratorial voice and character point-of-view: Towards the end of Chapter 2, Zola turns from
narrator-based observation to Denise’s timid point-of-view and petite dimensions as a counterpoint to
the opulence and vast dimensions of the Paradise department store. We see the store through her eyes
as she searches for Madame Aurelie.

In Chapter 3, Zola employs the same technique of moving (more frequently as there are many more
characters to include) between narratorial voice and character points-of-view. Each complements the
other to build a rich character profile. The narrator provides the history, often personal details from a
character’s past, while the character lives in and responds to the present moment. Both are used
complementarity in the portrait of Madame Bordelaise when she examines Henriette’s very expensive
Chantilly fan:

First the narratorial voice sketches in the background to the character, She came from an old
middle-class family, ran her house and her three children with efficiency, good grace and an
exquisite flair for the practical side of life.

Zola then moves to indirect speech to look through the character’s eyes and capture the
emotion. Madame Bordelaise’s internalised shock at Henriette’s extravagance (good manners
would not allow her to say this aloud) is entirely in character with the narratorial description of
her exquisite flair for the practical side of life. Thus we see in action Zola’s complementary use of
character and narrator):

So that was what she called a bargain! Two hundred francs for a plain ivory mount with
a monogram on it! And for a simple little piece of Chantilly lace on which she has saved
five francs!

Task: Find and analyse another example of the narrator working in conjunction with the character
viewpoint. What aspects of the character emerge as a result?

Chapter setting: The chapter is set wholly in the salon of Mouret’s mistress and doyen (prominent
person) of the bourgeoisie, Madame Desforges. It is an elegant and expensive address in the heart of
Paris overlooking the Tuileries Gardens. Every Saturday, between four and six, Madame Desforges
observes the ritual of afternoon tea and cakes with select friends.
The setting sun: Zola makes several references to the fading late afternoon light. It functions rather like a
film fade as the narrator moves from one vignette to the next.

…a sudden ray gilded the tops of the chestnut trees in the garden and shone through the
window in reddish gold dust, illuminating the brocade and the brasswork of the furniture with its
fire

…with the approach of dusk, a sense of intimacy filled the large room with a mellow warmth

… It was the tender hour of twilight, that minute of discreet voluptuousness in Parisian
apartments

The Characters

Madame Desforges( Henriette): mistress to Mouret and Hartmann, and doyen (prominent person) of
the bourgeoisie. She would not see 35 again. She was dark and rather buxom, with large, jealous eyes
…she was the widow of a stockbroker who had left her a fortune

Octave Mouret: entrepreneur and CEO of the Paradise

Baron Hartmannn: director of the Credit Immobilier, elderly, a captain of industry and lover of Madame
Desforges like Mouret. Hartmann is believed to be based on French official, Baron Haussmann who,
under Emperor Napoleon III redeveloped the heart of Paris pulling down the slums and designing the
parks and wide, light-filled and airy boulevards of the modern city

Madame Bourdelais: 30, fair … with sparkling eyes, one of Henriette’s old school friends, who had
married an assistant undersecretary in the ministry of Finance … an exquisite flair for the practical side
of life

Madame Guibal: tall, thin, red-haired, possessing an air of detachment and exhibiting the terrible pangs
of egotism, she is never seen with her unfaithful and workaholic husband, a well-known barrister at the
Palais de Justice

Madame de Boves (Countess): 40, her husband, Inspector-General of the Stud, had married her for her
beauty

Mademoiselle Blanche de Boves: her daughter a tall girl of twenty and a half; already puffed out, her
large, coarse features swollen with unhealthy fat

Madame Marty: 35, a thin, ugly woman ravaged by smallpox she was ruining her husband, a teacher at
the Lycee Bonaparte, with ever-increasing expenses

Paul Vallagnosc: old school friend of Mouret, prospective fiancé of Blanche de Boges, he had taken up a
minor post in the Ministry of the Interior

Monsieur de Boves: husband to Madame de Boves, Inspector-General of the Stud…a handsome man
with moustaches and an imperial (beard), and the stiff military bearing favoured at the Tuileries
Women’s fashion in the 1880s: “Fashion rests upon folly. A fashion is merely a form of ugliness so absolutely unbearable
that we have to alter it every six months!” Oscar Wilde

The various Mesdames gathered in Henriette’s drawing room would have been fashion victims of the
bustle.

By the 1880s, the ‘crinolette’, a cage-like undergarment, supported the ‘bustle’, the heavy and uncomfortable padded, shelf-like
cushion that extended from the base of a woman’s back. It restricted ease of movement. Women swayed precariously, dragging
weighty masses of fabric behind them.
“As a member of the bourgeoisie, it was her duty to always look appropriate and proclaim her social status through each and
every outfit. She should have an outfit for just about every occasion that could possibly arise in order to always appear perfectly
dressed for her daily events. Normally, women of the Parisian bourgeoisie would change their outfit about seven or eight times
each day. As a general rule:
“a society woman who wants to be well dressed for all occasions at all times needs at least seven or eight [outfits] per day: a
morning dressing gown, a riding outfit, an elegant simple gown for lunch, a day dress if walking, an afternoon dress for visiting
by carriage, a smart outfit to drive through the Bois de Boulogne, a gown for dinner, and a gala dress for evening or the theater.
There is nothing exaggerated about this…””
https://rmschwartz.wordpress.com/paris/the-life-of-the-parisian-bourgeoisie/shopping-dress-and-consumerism/womens-dress-standards-in-the-world-of-the-parisian-bourgeois/

Mouret is greeted by his mistress, Madame Deforges

Henriette, dark and rather buxom, with large, jealous eyes, is Mouret’s and Baron Hartmann’s mistress.
On arriving for afternoon tea, He greeted her very formally then when the servant had closed the door,
he seized the young woman’s hand, and kissed it tenderly. ‘Be careful, I’ve got company,’ she said in a
whisper.

The wealthy French bourgeoisie was not overly moral. Instead its members were discreet. For a woman,
reputation was everything. An affair could ruin a woman’s social standing and she would suffer social
death. Doors would be closed to her (literally, she would not be invited into the homes of her
acquaintances), friends would evaporate, and invitations to social engagements would not arrive. There
was no coming back from an indiscretion.

The narrator intimates that Henriette had begun her affair with the Baron while her husband, a wealthy
stockbroker, was still alive. After [Deforge’s] death the liaison had probably continued, though always
discreetly, without imprudence or scandal. In observing that the affair had probably continued, the
narrator plays up the rumour and innuendo surrounding the woman. Her affair would be an open secret
in the small community. Madame Deforges’s success in hiding the affair depends less on her delicate
restraint and more on the conspiracy of silence of her friends, no one would have questioned her virtue.
Their hypocritical willingness to defer to her wealth and social position preserves her from disgrace. The
narrator satirises her discretion … tact … Put simply, the defiant and unconventional Henriette knows
how to cover her tracks.
 …if she did permit herself certain lovers to whom he turned a blind eye, she displayed … such
delicate restraint and tact that appearances were saved and no one would have questioned her
virtue openly.

The detail about the size of the fortune left by her husband (some believe it to be quite small) suggests
some friends consider Madame Desforges a ‘kept’ woman, financed by the Baron. (Without money how
could she keep up her elegant address?) As with everything about Henriette, the topic of her finances is
also handled with discretion. The rumour mill rumbles but does not erupt.

In taking a lover, Henriette risks all. In taking two, she is either very discreet or very foolish. She is
certainly very bold.

The question arises, does Mouret know of Henriette’s liaison with Hartmann? Henriette’s reputed
discretion fools even herself. She believes Mouret does not know. She looked at him, thinking to herself
that he could not know anything or he would not use her influence with the Baron like this, while
pretending to consider him as an old friend of hers. Yet later, when the narrator looks at the ‘ménage a
trios’ through the eyes of Mouret, it is revealed that Mouret does know and exploits it to forge a bond
with Hartmann: he knew how much the possession of a mistress in common brings men together and
softens them. A further irony is that despite her discretion (read: the silence of her friends), she is fooling
no one, Henriette is widely known, by even the shop assistants at the Paradise, as the governor’s
girlfriend.

The narrator hints through Henriette at a tolerated group double-standard of behaviour. In Henriette’s
circle, hypocrisy is rife. It might be respectable to match-make the marriageable daughters of her set, but
less so to let the fathers choose their mistresses from her circle.

Zola’s writing strength lies in being able to convey opposing views, essentially the lie and the truth,
simultaneously through light social satire. Dear Henriette might be admired by those friends who buy
into the duplicitous behaviour but at the same time, in mimicking the gushing approval of her circle, she
is satirised for the same values by the narrator.

Dear Henriette took a widow’s pleasure in marrying people off; so much so that when she had
taken care of the daughters, she would sometimes let the fathers choose their mistresses from
her circle; but this was done in such a natural and becoming way that no one ever found any
food for scandal.

Conversation: the women discuss the Chantilly lace fan

The object of the women’s interest is Henriette’s fan of silk Chantilly lace, made at absurd expense. The
cost structure of the item tells everything about the wealth and status of the owner. Tempted by the
bargain, a 5 franc saving on the lace, the cost of the mount was out of all proportion and well in excess of
its market price at 200 hundred francs. With exquisite restraint, it is adorned only with her monogram
making it utterly personal. It is a case of ‘owning the brand’; Henriette has taken a normally
mass-produced commodity and made it into her own unique and exclusive bespoke item.
While the women scold her for her extravagance and foolishness, they are overwhelmed with envy that
she has the disposable income to lavish on such frippery and the confidence to exceed the usual market
value of such an item. They would not be so bold. Henriette’s fan is a supreme example of a commodity
fetish: non-essential, fragile, exquisite, and as, a fashion statement, it confirms the owner’s high social
status

Exquisitely fine, the best French Chantilly lace was made of silk and was generally black. They were probably as much for flirting
as for the displacement of air, which would have been minimal given the open weave of the lace

Conversation between Octave Mouret and Paul Vallagnosc

Vallagnosc is the object of Zola’s pointed ridicule. For a minor character (only re-appearing in Chapter 3
when Mouret shows him around the Paradise), Zola spends some time here explaining him as
representative of a decaying class of gentlemen whose resistance to innovation and renewal is ultimately
self-destructive. Vallagnosc belongs to an entitled class, an old parliamentary family, noble, poor and
proud, doomed to obscurity by its own lack of initiative and imagination. Zola is critical of the man who
refuses to capitalise on his abundant intellect always top of the class… the teacher … had predicted a
brilliant future for him, and fails to seize the extraordinary opportunities offered by industrialization.

Through the one, Zola sees the whole: Vallagnosc’s story was the usual story of boys without money …
obliged by birth to remain in the liberal professions and bury themselves under their arrogant mediocrity.
He had studied law, taken up a minor post in the Ministry of the Interior and earns a pittance, 3,000
francs a month, equal to the base pay-grade of Mouret’s ordinary salesman. Given his many diplomas, he
is overeducated for the position but class pride prevents him from competing for better paid work. Zola
is impatient with Vallangnosc’s passivity which is the product of his sense of entitlement and is
responsible for the dissipation of his enormous talent. His story is the tale of the cyclic rise and fall of
classes repeated throughout centuries.

With nothing to apply himself to and nothing to believe in, Vallagnosc leads a directionless, dilettante
life. Zola satirises his skewed values when, briefly animated by nostalgia for a past world, he admires the
serial seducer M. de Boves whom he observes in the act of charming Madame Guibal, There’s old France
for you! Otherwise he is slumped in a self-indulgent slough of world-weary despair. He can fix on
nothing. He had dabbled in writing but his association with certain poets had left him with a feeling of
universal despair. In Vallagnosc, the acquired passivity of his entitled class becomes nihilism, One may as
well sit and do nothing, he glooms. He and his class are doomed to become a footnote in history.

The conversation is fired by a clash of values between the old (Vallagnosc) and the new (Mouret).

Vallagnosc ‘s effeteness is a foil to the animated entrepreneur, Mouret. As a man who refuses the limits
imposed by class or tradition, Mouret is a man on fire with new ideas. Lit with a passion for trade (calico
is his breezy metaphor) he revels in the idea that any counter-jumper who’s just beginning has a chance
of becoming a millionaire these days. He explains his philosophy: You have an idea, you fight for it, you
hammer it into people’s heads, you watch it grow and carry all before it…Ah! Yes, old chap, I enjoy
myself! Clearly Zola approves of men like Mouret who carry all before him!

Mouret is Zola’s mouthpiece. In him, Zola defines the spirit of the age: Really, people … must have
something wrong with their brains and limbs to refuse to work in an age which offered so many
possibilities, when the whole century was pressing forward into the future. Mouret laughs at pessimists
poets and sceptics, those who resist science as the way to the future

Conversation between Baron Hartmann and Octave Mouret, the inventor of this machine for
devouring women

We see a different facet of Mouret in conversation with Baron Hartmann. With Vallagnosc he is spirited,
enlivened, a force for good. With Hartmann the same passion makes him ‘brutal’

Mouret meets Baron Hartmann, director of the Credit Immobilier, an old man of about sixty … a short,
vigorous-looking man, for the first time in Henriette’s drawing room. It is an arranged meeting. Like
Mouret, the wealthy Baron is also Henriette’s lover, Mouret’s strategy is to lower Hartmann’s resistance
to the partnership he is about to propose and he does so by using Henriette, their mistress in common. It
is the male ‘gaze’ that the narrator adopts with irony: to take a mistress might be ‘de rigeur’ for married
and unmarried French men alike but to share one seems bold to the point of vulgarity. Objectifying
Henriette, using her love for his gain, is another example of the driven Mouret’s determined exploitation
of women:

… he knew how much the possession of a mistress in common brings men together and softens
them … to have her near to win them over with a smile , seemed to him a guarantee of success

It is Mouret’s plan, with the slum clearance and redevelopment of the streets of Paris, to extend the
Paradise to occupy the entire city block, an enormous space … He already imagined it with a palatial
façade…dominating and ruling the conquered city. (Note the language of imperial conquest.) But he has
competition. Hartmann’s Credit Immobilier is buying up property in the same city block. Without access
to the entire block, Mouret’s dream is threatened. It was not money he wanted, for he had fanatical faith
in his customers. Instead, he proposes a partnership with Hartmann.

Only half-interested in the economic theory underpinning Mouret’s new-style drapery business, high net
profit from a rapid turnover of stock, the Baron is unimpressed. He cannot see where the demand will
come from until he watches the women and hears their chatter. Then he understands Mouret’s new
clientele is “Woman”. Zola’s narrator capitalises the singular noun and uses it as an aggregate (all
women) to confirm the profound originality of Mouret’s business instincts. Of supreme importance was
the exploitation of Woman. Automatically, Mouret knows what all women want and knowing this, he will
manipulate to get what he wants, Beneath the very charm of his gallantry was brutality …

Mouret was revolutionising the market … based on the flesh and blood of Woman. The images
describing Mouret’s unconscionable and callous exploitation of women are deeply unsettling. Mouret
will base his parasitic trade on the near-biblical weakness of women, he will aw[a]ken new desires in her
weak flesh. Zola offers a dazzling array of images that express Mouret’s chilling, unprincipled, sociopathic
contempt for his female clientele, Woman.

She is a mistress who has been stupid enough to yield.

She is a goddess for whom he was building a temple for her…creating the rites of a new cult.

It was Woman the shops were competing for … it was Woman they were continually snaring
[and] dazing. The sequence of participials, competing … snaring … dazing (as in ‘stupefy’), are
verbs from the lexical field of the hunt.

Here, she is hive-queen consumed by cannibalistic drones, she reigned as an amorous queen
whose subjects trade on her, and who pays for every whim with a drop of her own blood .

And finally, she is rubbish, when he had extracted his pleasure from them, he would throw them
on the rubbish heap.

Of course the hyperbole is excessive. Of course it is satiric overstatement. But behind the satire towers
the menacing, emotionally detached figure of the trader, Mouret, who, after he had emptied her purse
and wrecked her nerves, has only scorn for his female clientele. Zola sees that, in the unwritten contract
that exists between supply and demand, the power lies with the supplier.

Of course rationalisations can be dressed in euphemism and appeal to liberal values: the idea of making
luxury democratic is an arch and wilful misrepresentation of the facts. The truth lies somewhere nearer
to the shop being a terrible agency for … ravaging households.

‘Get the women … and you’ll sell the world!’ Now the Baron understood … he was overtaken by
admiration for the inventor of this machine for devouring women… “If your sale on Monday is as
successful as you say it will be, then the deal is on.’

Conversation: the contents of Madame Marty’s red leather bag

Zola is not quite as severe in satirising the demand end of the chain, the covetousness of women for
gew-gaws and baubles.

‘Come on, give us some details… You’re making us die of curiosity’, the women keep Mouret tightly
imprisoned in their conversation circle to quiz him on the next day’s big sale at the Paradise. The narrator
notes the desire and doubt in their faces and, in their different temperaments as customers, he notes the
gamut of their appetite for small luxuries. (These women will appear in the crush at the sale in chapter
four)

Madame Marty, carried away by her mania for spending, taking everything
indiscriminately…buying at random from the displays.

Madam Guibal, walking round the shop for hours without buying anything

Madame de Boves, constantly tortured by some immoderate desire

 Madame Bordelais, the sharp eye of a careful, practical middle-class woman, making straight for
the bargains

Henriette, only bought certain articles there…gloves, hosiery, and … household linen

Mouret’s sales pitch is adroit. He knows his stock, he knows his clientele, and he knows how to sell. He
teases and tempts the women with his melodious … flute-like voice. Zola describes him using the
language of invasion: He is brutally triumphant … he maintained the composure of a conqueror… like
some despotic king of fashion. The women are the invaded, penetrated and overcome:

He seemed like a woman himself; they felt penetrated and overcome by his delicate
understanding of their secret selves, and they forgot their modesty, won over by his seductive
charm

“Honestly, we’re selling at a loss!’ This dealt the ladies a final blow…He knew they were incapable of
resisting a bargain. The fan is inspected again and repriced according to the Paradise’s costing.

The focus falls on Madame Marty who had … been feverishly twisting her red leather bag on her
lap…she was dying, with a kind of sensual urge, to display her purchases. She has been shopping at the
Paradise, not been able to resist and has overspent the household budget on Valenciennes lace, Brussels
lace, Spanish lace, Chantilly lace and guipure (a coarser lace).

Zola’s writing strength lies in the capacity to capture in a few short phrases the essence of this female
character. The light-hearted thumbnail sketch of Madame Marty works through Zola locating within the
most virtuous Madame Marty the point where she must yield to temptation and topple over into vice.
Shopping is Madame Marty’s Achilles’ heel

She was known for her passion for spending, her inability to resist temptation, strictly virtuous
though she was, and incapable of yielding to a lover; but no sooner did she set her eyes on the
slightest piece of finery than she would let herself go and the flesh was conquered.

It portrait is gently satiric. Zola suggests Madame Marty’s uncontrolled fetish for finery festers within the
dark chambers of her libido. Shopping, Zola humorously suggests, sates this primal sexual urge in a way
no lover can. No man could seduce Madame Marty but the sight of a gewgaw, a length of Valenciennes
lace at bargain price to trim a gown, a Brussels lace handkerchief, and her virtue lost.