Exposing novelties in Au Bonheur des Dames

As Émile Zola famously records in his preliminary notes (“Ebauche”) for Au Bonheur des Dames (1883), the Naturalist author's mission for the eleventh novel of the Rougon-Macquart series (1871–1893) was to “write the poem of modern activity” (faire le poème de l’activité moderne ). With the English title of The Ladies’ Paradise , one would expect this ‘poetic’ novel to portray the pleasant activity of browsing the aisles of a palatial Parisian department store. To be sure, Au Bonheur des Dames takes place in Paris during the Second Empire and dramatizes activity within the emerging commercial hub of the eponymous Bonheur des dames store. However, any reader familiar with the other nineteen novels from the Rougon-Macquart is aware that Zola uses enclosed spaces – such as the mine in Germinal (1885), the greenhouse in La Curée (1872), or the train tunnel in La Bête humaine (1890) – to depict and critique the decadence and moral decay of the Second Empire. We shall see that the department store in Au Bonheur des Dames is no exception.

The present chapter will emphasize three main points. The first section will explore how Zola conflates the notions of exposure and enclosure within the department store, disrupting the typical spatial categories of openness and closure, and eventually, of inside and outside.