Customer Reviews

Au Bonheur des Dames - Chronologie, Presentation, Notes, Dossier, Bibliographie, Lexique Par Marie-Ange Voison-Fougere

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

"The foundations of a person are not in matter but in spirit." Ralph Waldo Emerson

Au Bonheur des Dames is the eleventh novel in the Rougon-Macquart series by Émile Zola. Zola's classic centers around the bright lights of the massive department store (of which the novel is named) run by the charming, yet licentious Octave Mouret. In many ways Octave is almost the male equivalent of Zola's "Nana". The latter used the beauty of her sex to beguile men; while the former uses all the `material girl' treasures on sale at his colossal department store. It is this department store, 'Au Bonheur des Dames', which quickly becomes the center of Parisian society, especially for the upper class female population.

The story begins with the petite, soft-hearted, eighteen-year old Denise Baudu and her two younger brothers, Jean and Pepe entering into the big city for the first time. The trio have suddenly found themselves orphaned and in dire need of money. In order to support her two younger brothers, who in many ways are more like her children than siblings, Denise takes a lowly position as an assistant at the store. Despite the fact that she's an unworldly, poor country girl and to the rest of the staff comes across as weak and simple-minded, the real fact of the matter is - she's as tough as nails, very strong and very intelligent. She also is one of the most genuine, compassionate, and heroic belles I have ever been introduced to in literature. She is the total antithesis of Nana, and is without a doubt my favorite female character in all of French literature. Definitely my favorite character EVER of Zola's!

Zola's classic paces itself in many ways similar to that of a soap opera. He uses the department store as a new phenomenon to show how it helped reshape the business and social life of his country under the Second Empire (1851-1870). "Au Bonheur des Dames" is obviously a microcosm of French society, and when you read this novel you will easily see why. The beauty of his Rougon-Macquart series is that each story centers upon an important aspect of French society during that dynamic, distinctive period. While this may not be my favorite of his (it was # six for me thus far), it does possess quite a bit of charm and again, also introduces his most endearing character in Denise Baudu. Her Cinderella story is the main reason why I enjoyed this one so much, and why I recommend it.

On the minus side for me, as a few other reviewers aptly pointed out, was the fact that Zola really over does it at times with his lavish, overly decorative descriptions of the department store, its many luxurious displays, the day to day operations, etc... etc... At times, I was saying to myself "okay Emile, enough already! Get to the point my friend!" Also, the majority of the characters in this classic are extremely repugnant people with very few agreeable qualities. But that is not atypical when it comes to a Zola classic. For some reason, many of his characters are much seedier than those of his contemporaries (i.e. Flaubert, Balzac, Maupassant, et al...). Which is saying a lot, because none of them sugar-coated anything!

If you are a fan of French literature, love stories, and/or Horatio Alger works (i.e. rags to riches stories) than you probably will enjoy this one. I certainly did!

Au Bonheur des Dames is the story of an orphaned young girl Denise. She moves to Paris with her younger siblings to live with her uncle and aunt and immediately is enthralled with the lights and the beauty of the city. She begins work in the store Au Bonheur des Dames and falls in love with its propriator. The novel is a love story but also examines the perpetual battle between the old and the new ways of living. The store Au Bonheur des Dames sells a variety of products while the store of Denise's family is simply a clothing store. Zola's novel is before its time. It accurately describes a social issue of today, the bigger commercial store taking over the small, personalized store.

Domination is the name of the game. Octave Mouret, anti-hero of `Pot Bouille', has made it to the top of the heap. He has exceeded his own wildest dreams. He has invented the department store. His Au Bonheur des Dames rules the retail commerce in the Paris of the 1860s. He has married the woman that he had targeted for himself and is now a happy widower who can seduce and drop as many women as he pleases.
This novel is volume 11 of the Rougon Macquart series, and it can really be called a sequel to volume 10, Pot Bouille, in the same way as Nana is a sequel to L'Assommoir. Times and manners of the 2nd Empire under Napoleon III were deeply obnoxious to Zola. His disgust did not blur his vision.

Au Bonheur des Dames could serve well as an illustration to contemporary theories of capital concentration, such as the one that Karl Marx, in his London library, developed in his magnum opus Das Kapital. Whatever one thinks of Marx as a philosopher and politician, it can hardly be denied that his economic theory was on to something, despite essential doubts about his value theory. He developed the classical theories inherited from Smith and Ricardo into a different direction than other followers of that school, say the so-called Neoliberals following Hayek a.o. The recent crashes have apparently revived interest in Marx as an economist. Well worth a visit!

I am digressing. Zola himself is also interesting as a historian of management. His Mouret is crafted after some real life business moguls who came up with the department store, mail order sales, supply chain management, sales incentives, staff bonus systems, innovative sales price strategies, employee shareholding in expanding companies, outrageous salaries for top managers, real estate corruption, and all the other familiar modern day practices.

The second main theme of the novel is Mouret's obsession with being victorious with women. Early on, his main business peer predicts that one day a woman will come who will take revenge for all her humiliated sisters.

My conclusion: this works for me mainly as a work of history. It is harder to take an interest in the persons of this novel as people. They are pawns in a plan, Zola's plan. That diminishes admiration for the novel as `art' somewhat, but its historical values still merit 5 stars.

Although a well-made book, beware that this is an abridged version of the story. Good references in the book and notes. Helpful insights with questions at the end of each chapter.

What a great book! In Au Bonheur des Dames, Zola does his usual fabulous job of handing you a slice of 19th century French life between the covers of a book. The book's male protagonist is lackluster--it's hard to see what makes him so alluring to women. However, the fascinating heroine more than compensates for this flaw. Denise Baudu is a departure from any other 19th century female character imaginable, a combination of Mary Pickford and a 20th century career woman. As a student of consumer culture, I also really enjoyed reading the fruits of Zola's research into Parisian department stores, advertising, etc.

Unlike Dickens' tuburcular heroines, Denise, who indeed suffers what Zola called "poverty in a black silk dress," is plucky, and she ultimately breaks the glass ceiling in her own gentle way. She encounters sexual harassment and somehow triumphs. She is a modern woman, perhaps European literature's first truly modern heroine ever.

This book is one of the best ever written, bar none, and it is light years ahead of its time.

"Au Bonheur des Dames" is about life in and around of the great department stores (grands magasins) that emerged in Paris in the mid-19th century. As the city modernized (built the famous sewers, cleared out the slums and constructed massive boulevards, etc.), new and imposing department stores revolutionized commerce. Au Bonheur des Dames, owned by the rapacious capitalist Octave Mouret, is one such store. The story of the store's growth and social impact is told through the experience of Denise Baudu, a girl from the country who comes to Paris with dreams of succeeding and supporting her younger brothers. She gets a job at Au Bonheur des Dames, and the store becomes the central factor in her life.

The book is not always a great read. The story is wildly over-written. It is melodramatic, cheesy, and even silly. The ending is predictable, and 3/4 of the way through, you know what's coming. But have to to slog through 100 more pages to get there. The passages describing the store's physical appearance and operations can be extremely tedious. Do we really need to know so much about construction practices, commercial accounting mechanisms, how sales are put on, and exactly what items are in stock and why?

Still, "Au Bonheur des Dames" does a fantastic job explicating the birth of the modern department which revolutionized shopping, and it really gives the reader a sense of the transformation wrought to Paris by Napoleon III and Georges Hausmann.

I love Zola and this was no exception. I don't know how he does it-he is never boring. His stories always enthrall me. This is a wonderful book about the beginnings of consumer culture, modern advertising, mass retailing, materialism, the forerunners of today's malls and the forcing out of small specialty shops and the family owned-store in the late ninteenth-century. It has so much relevance today. In addition, you will really like the heroine, Denise. She is lovable and sympathetic throughout the entire book.

And I couldn't help liking Mouret, though he is of course the crass modern villain of the tale. (He was earlier seen in Zola's "Pot Luck".) Although he is a symbol of everything cutthroat and reprehensible about capitalism, I kind of wanted to believe in his optimistic ingenuity and in the developing friendship between him and Denise. Denise seemed to be tempering him with her pragmatic socialism.

At any rate, the intro to the book-here is a SPOILER so don't read on if you don't want to know what happens-anyway in the INTRO,


...which you should NEVER read first, they always give away the ending- said that only the most naive person would believe in the happy ending, that when Mouret marries Denise all's well that ends well. His obsession with her does have obvious parallels to the way he tries to make women feel about certain commodities. Still, I can't resist a good Cinderella story, and it is fun to think of Mouret marrying Denise and bringing her back to Au Bonheur des Dames, on his arm, "all powerful" (no doubt "tout puissant" in the original French).

That will show those snooty shopgirls that even a poor provincial girl can strike it rich! Despite being somewhat sucked in by the "love" story-in my defense Mouret DID seem to respect Denise's noble qualities-I do agree with Zola's critique and criticisms and I really think they're relevant.

This story works on so many levels, as so many of Zola's books do-it's highly entertaining, I mean as entertaining as fun as any contemporary fiction-and it's also historically engaging, morally sound, educational and even has current relevance. Everyone should read him!

this book describes the workings of a new 19th century parisien department store.it shows the development of hausmans new paris.it is a must read for all mercandising students and winow dressers.

The eleventh novel in the Rougon-Macquart series, this book picks up where the last installment left off. Octave Mouret, featured in Pot-Bouille, also has a lead role in this novel. Through a fortunate marriage to a bride who dies not long afterward, young business man Mouret is left with a thriving department store named Au Bonheur des Dames. Through a natural business sense and a flair for promotion, he builds this store into the grandest mecca for shopping in all of Paris, in fact in the entire world. Soon the store swallows up the neighboring real estate, putting his old-school competitors out of business with his new brand of commerce. A few of the established firms, however, hang on for a grueling battle with this Goliath of retail.
At this point in history, department stores were a new invention, and a few stores in Paris totally revolutionized the way the world did business. Zola captures the excitement of that time. He obviously admires the revolutionary entrepreneurs for their efficiency, ingenuity, and showmanship, but he also laments the fall of the traditional Parisian shopkeeper. As Zola often does, he sets up a conflict between the two opposing philosophies, then brilliantly defends both sides of the argument. He also studies the consumers, and explores the growing obsession with shopping that blossomed among an enlarging middle class with disposable income. The depiction of the workings of the giant enterprise are interesting, and the store is staffed by a host of vividly-drawn characters. The main protagonist of the book is not Mouret, but Denise Baudu, a poor girl from the provinces who comes to Paris to work as a saleswoman. Zola is usually so good at creating realistic characters, warts-and-all, but Denise is so squeaky clean and noble that she comes across as too perfect to be true. She belongs in a melodrama, and the more the book concentrates on her, the more the story devolves into just that. Zola's literary style, Naturalism, calls for an exhaustive accumulation of sensory details. Unfortunately, these details form long, often tedious descriptions of store displays. On the whole, this is a good book, worth reading, though not one of Zola's masterworks. I would recommend reading Pot-Bouille (aka Pot Luck or Restless House). It is a much better novel.