"The Ladies' Paradise"

Book Review # 103740

English > Analysis
Literature > French

A review of Emile Zola's "The Ladies' Paradise".

1,837 words () | 0 sources | 2008 United States

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses how "The Ladies' Paradise" is a classic novel about the third industrial revolution involving retail. It looks at how in this French novel, Emile Zola redefines many things about shopping and retail for the reader. The writer contends that Zola scrutinizes three crucial forces in seduction, religion, and social mobility and that they are the central forces that shaped modern Western urban life and art at the time that Zola wrote the novel. The paper further looks at how Zola examines each one of these forces, putting them in close relation to the idea of retail and shopping.

From the Paper:

"Religion is yet another critical force in The Ladies' Paradise. Zola transforms shopping into the newest religious conviction. In his highly striking metaphors, Zola uses language to compare shopping, or more directly the store, to a temple or a steeple. "Whilst the carpets and embroidered silks which decked the balustrades hung at her feet like processional banners attached to the rood-screen of a church. In the distance she could pick out the corners of the side-galleries, just as, from the eaves of a steeple, one can pick out the corners of neighboring streets from the black spots of passers-by as they move about" (Zola, The Ladies' Paradise, p. 253-254). In this quote, Zola is making a comparison between the aesthetics and decoration of the department store to that of a sanctuary in a church. He is also comparing what Madame Desforges is able to see in the store to what someone could see if standing atop the steeple of a church. "