"They were mere cogs, carried along by the march of the machine, abdicating their personalities and simply adding their individual strength to the raw sum of phalanstery."

Émile Zola's Au Bonheur des Dames (translated as The Ladies' Delight, or sometimes as Ladies' Paradise) is a love story set in 19th century Paris, the department stores were on the rise. Well before Amazon and before Walmart, early department stores were implementing similar sleazy sales techniques and exploiting workers. Zola's exploration of the impact of consumerism and capitalism on small businesses and the working class was fascinating without ever feeling preachy.

Despite the slow beginning and the obvious double standard that Zola had for his male and female characters (he definitely was a man of his time), I thoroughly enjoyed the page-turning drama and the detailed, realistic descriptions of the setting. Reading Au Bonheur des Dames was like learning a history lesson while listening to all the hot gossip spreading among the department store employees. ( )

"What I want to do in The Ladies Paradise is write the poem of modern activity." -- Emile Zola

Rather surprisingly, Zola's 11th novel in the Rougon-Macquart series is ... dare I say friendly towards humankind? Acknowledging that he had explored much of the darkness - the wealthy in [b:The Kill|3888856|The Kill|Émile Zola|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1475574769l/3888856._SY75_.jpg|839934] and [b:His Excellency Eugène Rougon|39090348|His Excellency Eugène Rougon|Émile Zola|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1520596638l/39090348._SY75_.jpg|1356899] and the impoverished in [b:L'Assommoir|92967|L'Assommoir|Émile Zola|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1309282204l/92967._SY75_.jpg|741363] and [b:The Belly of Paris|6662310|The Belly of Paris|Émile Zola|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1348413678l/6662310._SY75_.jpg|10242], among others - Zola knew that, to capture all of society, he must eventually make his way toward the light.

It is 1864, the height of the French Second Empire, and Octave Mouret - previously seen as a youth in [b:The Conquest of Plassans|22913305|The Conquest of Plassans|Émile Zola|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1407958483l/22913305._SY75_.jpg|803050] and as a young Casanova in [b:Pot Luck|6251723|Pot Luck (Les Rougon-Macquart, #10)|Émile Zola|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1475311341l/6251723._SY75_.jpg|110658] (neither of which are required reading) - has now found himself head of France's most successful department store, The Ladies' Paradise, which is rapidly expanding. The Paradise is another of Zola's corporate monsters, like the food markets in The Belly of Paris, but here it represents a different form of human progress. The monster is, seemingly, controlled by Mouret and his board, deliberately designed to "conquer" women of means. In its grand scope, the department store both recalls a feudal past (staff eat and in many cases live on site, while fighting for commission from a deceptively equitable-looking roster system) and looks forward to a grand future. It is the Age of Iron, and the Paradise does not just conquer women; it devours the small traders in the streets of Paris, who continue to sell using the old methods, rejecting what they see as upstart techniques. To their own tragic end.

As always, Zola invested himself in extensive research to capture these unusual, maddening businesses. In his usual set-piece chapters, Zola catalogues an ordinary day, an opening day, a stocktaking day, from the perspective of shoppers, management, and staff alike. As he does so, the author captures a world. In his role as historical-novelist, Zola also provides the modern reader with a scientific dissection of an era. Some of Mouret's more avant-garde ideas - a "returns policy", a decision to sell a particularly attractive item at cost, the deliberate muddling of departments to prevent a straightforward journey to the customer - are still key business techniques in the 2020s. If all great literature is an attempt to explain to a people where they are and what they have left behind (which I suspect is the case), Zola is devastatingly precise in doing so.

At the heart of the novel is Denise Baudu, an impoverished young woman from the provinces, arriving in Paris with her two kid brothers, desperately seeking work. Installed at The Paradise, Denise's essential goodness quickly puts her at odds with the alpha men and women. Yet for all her humanist tendencies, Denise is coolly rational, and struggles when asked by her small trader uncle and his fellow business-owners to take a side against the Leviathan. Ideologically, it may surprise the casual reader of the Rougon-Macquart cycle. But for all Zola's rage against unfettered capitalism, he reserves a certain disdain for the stubborn and the mule-headed. Uncle Baudu and his ilk fighting against the rise of the mega-store (if "fighting" is even a valid verb for their slow, irate demise) believe they are fighting negative progress, that they are standing up for humanity. Instead, the novel suggests, they are positioning themselves in the least helpful place. By being against such an inevitable shift in culture, they cannot play a role in guiding it, in humanising it. Denise's choice is not between human and corporation, it is between useless ideology and active decision-making. (In pop culture terms, it's the difference between Rent's "I won't go to work because the system hates me" mentality and the more pragmatic "I will try and change the workplace for the better" position of Norma Rae.)

While Zola's skill at creating densely populated worlds is almost unparalleled, I confess to enjoying most his intimate novels, such as [b:A Love Story|34927484|A Love Story (Les Rougon-Macquart, #8)|Émile Zola|https://i.gr-assets.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/books/1497282194l/34927484._SY75_.jpg|1776975]. (I was exhausted after Pot Luck!) This time around however, the subjects are such a part of their world, that every character contributes to our central understanding of Denise and Mouret. It's a thickly unified tapestry. And of course Zola has lost none of his pinpoint characterisation, from the increasing indignities Mouret's lover, Madame Desforges, lays down upon a rival, to Denise's sickly cousin Genevieve, who "had the debilitated, colourless appearance of a plant left to grow in the dark."

Perhaps the central conceit of the novel - a developing relationship about which both characters seem to be ignorant for some time - can feel a little contrived to the reader. Zola lays the groundwork, but the feelings read as one-sided to our eyes or perhaps simply unearned. I might suggest that the symbolic resonance of the relationship was more important to the author than the literal one, and that this diminishes the attempt. But the novel is about so much more than the individuals, that it's heavily enjoyable nevertheless.

(A word should also be said about Brian Nelson's clear, spirited, wry translation. Nelson may be my favourite of Zola's translators, and it is a joy that Oxford have utilised his skills for several of their complete modern Rougon-Macquart series.)

We leave Octave Mouret and Denise Baudu and their cohorts in 1869, the year that Zola began writing this series and in which the Second Empire started to topple. A new Paris is rising. Indeed, a new way of trading, of living amongst others, of viewing our very selves. (A new world was emerging for Zola, too, as he published this book in 1883 - entering the central act of his public life as someone both esteemed and oft objected to.) The Ladies' Paradise may have been intended to explore the changes between mid-19th century Paris and late-19th century, but it feels just as much about changes whose ripples we still grapple with. ( )

Staru četvrt Pariza čine brojne samostalne zanatsko-trgovinske radnjice, gde je svaka usko specijalizovana za nešto. To su male i trošne sumorne radnje u kojima veoma malo svetla dopire sa ulice i među čijim zidovima caruje memla. Među tim radnjicama rađa se nešto novo, nešto od čega im preti propast. To je ogromni blistavi džin - robna kuća "Ženski Raj".

Ostareli, bolešljivi, tuberkulozni vlasnici radnji, danju se kriju u svojim udžericama, a noću krišom izlaze okupljajući se pred blistavim izlozima "Ženskog Raja", simbolom njihove skorašnje propasti, simbolom trijumfa starih ideja nad novim, progresa nad stagnacijom, bogatstva nad nemaštinom.

U takvo nesrećno okruženje dolazi mlada Deniza, devojka iz provincije, koja uskoro postaje jedna od radnica u robnoj kući. Ubrzo se suočava sa surovim pravilima novog modernog kolektiva gde caruje zakon jačeg nad slabijim. Gazi da ne bi bio zgažen je jedino pravilo kojim se kolektiv rukovodi. Tu otpočinje Denizin trnoviti put ka uspehu, put na kojem će joj se naći ozloglašeni kapitalistički genije Mure. Onaj koji je "Ženski Raj" osmislio kao hram ženama kako bi ih potčinio svojoj volji i opljačkao ih do gole kože.

Mure je čovek ledenog srca, zakleti neženja, ali kada upozna Denizu njegov do tada stabilan svet će se uzdrmati. Godinama unazad se podsmevao naivnim pokušajima žena da osvoje njegovo srce, ali uskoro će mu se osmeh ugasiti. U "Ženski Raj" je došla ona prava.

Majstorski napisan roman Emila Zole, pravi klasik. Iako na površini ljubavni roman, ovo delo u svojim dubljim slojevima govori o kapitalizmu, neumitnom izumiranju starog, žrtvama koje to podrazumeva. Ovo je priča o progresu, novcu, moći novih ideja i nadasve o ljudskim prirodama. Sjajno opisani i izgrađeni likovi.

Preporučujem. ( )

The birth of the department store: A huge store opens in Paris, putting small tradespeople out of business, employing thousands and giving women a place to congregate in public without being escorted by a man.

I loved the protagonist of the book, Denise. When the owner of the store falls in love with her, she refuses to be one of his one-night-stands, and he becomes a good employer with her guidance.

In this age of the downfall of the department store, Zola's study of the change made in culture and lives by the advent of an open, clean, well-lighted place where goods are intentionally displayed to seduce the shopper is well-researched and a fascinating read. ( )

It is strange to think of a novel in which a department store is almost a protagonist. The story is set in 1880' Paris as one store begins to encompass drapers, linen, ladies' wear and other fabric merchandise. The store eventually includes an entire city block, with children's wear, shoes, and even furniture under the same roof. Modern merchandising enables price cuts that drive neighboring shops into bankruptcy but provide a largely female clientele with a seemingly endless supply of household necessities and personal luxuries. Into this engine of social change comes Denise Baudu, a young woman from a provincial town who has two brothers to support. Finding that her uncle, a draper (owner of a yardage or fabric shop) is unable to employ her she seeks a position at The Ladies Paradise, owned by merchandising innovator, Octave Mouret, a man known for numerous long- and short-term mistresses, many of them salesgirls in his employ. Denise appears as an awkward country bumpkin but after periods of unemployment and great hardship eventually becomes an assistant buyer in ladies' wear. Mouret becomes attracted to her, and she realizes that she loves him, but she refuses to become his mistress, maintaining her caution and her principles. ( )