The Ladies Paradise Analysis

Inside the Belly of Paradise
By the 1860’s the Industrial Revolution had settled into the lives of Europe and was taking a firm hold on the social norm, cultural expectations, and the business practice in its entirety. In their wake, machines of the Industrial Revolution replaced human artistry. It was precisely because of these that made human craftsmanship outdated and obsolete; it was precisely because of these that the big department store, an emblem of capitalism, was able to emerge, dominate, and swallow up smaller competition. As a contemporary issue for its time, it is no surprise that The Ladies’ Paradise, by Émile Zola, concentrates on the struggle of the smaller shops and the immense success and dominance of the big, new department
store. Yet, it is not the stark difference between the dying shops of an age past and the new big stores of the future that is the quintessential essence of the mechanization of the nineteenth century, but the symbolic description of the Ladies’ Paradise as a soulless machine.1 In the novel, people begrudge Ladies’ Paradise and its seemingly unexplainable success, but it is not until the ‘machine’ gains a soul that Ladies’ Paradise becomes complete in its supremacy.
Denise first witnesses Ladies’ Paradise come alive and “felt that she was watching a machine working at high pressure”; its gears – the materials – coming to life: “the laces shivered… even the lengths of cloth… were breathing… while the overcoats were throwing back their shoulders” and the dummies seemed to have “flesh and blood… heaving breast and quivering hips.” It was as if the “continuous roar of the machine” exhibited “the customers crowding into the departments” being
“propelled towards the cash-desk” as if on a conveyer belt, “caught in the wheels of an inevitable force” that is the “remorselessness of a machine.”2 The Paradises’ was not there in order to establish a relationship with customers, but rather to efficiently capture women by seducing them with anything and everything they can sell, like a well oiled machine. Others, particularly the small shop owners surrounding the Paradise, felt that the big department store was full of “dandies” who “treated the goods and the customers like parcels, dropping their employers or being dropped by him at a moment’s notice.” The Paradise possesses “no affection, no manners, no art!”3 Furthermore, Octave Mouret, the commander and chief of the machine, only wished to devour, capitalize, and conquer Woman. He wanted to put her on a pedestal “in order to hold her at his mercy”4 The women were the oil and power of the machine; they were what made the department store “smooth running” as if “like a well-made machine”5. Everything about the Ladies’ Paradise screamed inhuman, as if a soulless “monster”6 that did not care about anyone but itself. Even Denise, who would ultimately give the machine its soul, felt the ominous power of the store.
Denise, although fascinated and enraptured by the Paradise, was “terrified” of the “monster”, in which she “was so lost and small”, afraid that “she would be caught up in its motion”; its relentless teeth “extracting money from” the customers’ “very flesh”. Once out of reach of the monster’s grasp, “she felt her chest” emerging from “the heavy stones of the Ladies’ paradise” that have been “weighing her down”. She was not like the other employees, who’s only ambition was to attain and spend money, nor was she like the customers who were successfully seduced into yielding their money, nor was she like Mouret who simply did what he did in order to dominate and hold supremacy. Denise never became a part of the mechanics, no matter how desperately Mouret tried to incorporate her into the workings of his machine.
Mouret, a womanizer of sorts who carefully calculates who he involves himself with so, is confused by Denise’s constant and firm refusal to join the others he conquered in the past. He, the puppeteer who controlled, manipulated, or seduced everyone, did not have perfect control over one woman, Denise. Mouret, who usually did not get himself involved in the business of employee turnover wen out his way to offer Denise her job back7, almost as if he felt something was missing with her absence. He tried to make her a part of his world, his mechanical world, by enticing her with benefits, promotions, and finally an invitation to become his. With her return Mouret strove to capture this girl who seemed to evade complete submission to his machine. Denise ultimately reputes his invitation, which also initiates her refusal to become a tool of the machine.
The distraught Mouret felt over his feelings for Denise and his desire to obtain her only made him realize that his precious Paradise, which brought him his desired fortune, fame, and authority, was as incomplete and cold as his success in dominating in business. With Denise out of his reach with her relentless refusal to comply with and give into Mouret’s lust – and eventually love and obsession – over her. As he looks upon Denise with “despair”, his empire, which illuminates the street of old, crumbling, dingy, and dark shops with its blazing lights of operation, life, innovation, ambition, and seduction, has “nothing left… the shop was plunged into darkness.”8 Mouret feels empty, despite his immense wealth and prosperity he gained from operating such a well-oiled industrial monster. This is confirmed later confirmed.
When Mouret ultimately choose Denise, a miscalculated passion, over his past deliberate relationship with Madame Desforges. Due to her her immediate and humiliating failure to embarrass Denise and recapture Mouret, she exacted “revenge by helping” Bouthemont “set up a rival shop…. Quatre Saisons, for which the newspapers were already full of advertisements.”9 He, the conductor, was breaking. His old ways of only seeing people as money, as a way to attain power, as tools and oil for his machine, was not applicable to Denise, and he knew that without her he and his monster would not be able to go one without first becoming insane. Thus began “the reign of Denise.”10
Denise was the soul the Ladies’ Paradise desperately needed. She made it more human. She persuaded Mouret, who at this point would do anything for her in order to maintain any sort of relationship with her, to implement her humanitarian initiatives.11 These initiatives improved the lives of the employees significantly, finally breathing in and applying desperately need compassion to the Paradise, making it less of a monster and more of a haven for both workers and customers alike. No longer was the machine a monster. Denise was able to take the industrial, seemingly ruthless, and inevitable capitalistic nature of the Paradise and make it more human, more acceptable, even desirable in comparison to what it used to be and in comparison to the old-fashioned procedures. Denise completed the Ladies’ Paradise by making it wholesome, almost poetic, and absolutely alive.
Since the beginning of the novel when Denise first arrives and is captivated by the big department store, the Ladies’ Paradise, a result of the Industrial Revolution and the pinnacle representation of rising capitalism, was a dominate force that operated like a mighty machine.
However, as aforementioned by many characters in the book and by the narrator himself, the Paradise was a monster as well as a machine, using people in anyway it saw fit in order to grow in affluence and supremacy. Thus, in this way, this high functioning machine was missing a soul, for everyone inside the belly of paradise was there for shallow, shelf-interested reasons. Only when someone, only when Denise enters does the tight reign on the operation of business soften and make way for the interest of others. Denise not only embeds a soul into the gears of Mouret’s machine, but also becomes the very soul necessary to complete its industrial revolution. The Ladies’ Paradise has finally become part machine and part
human.

Work Cited
Zola, Émile, and Brian Nelson. The Ladies ' Paradise. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2008. Print.