Ladies' paradise

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Au Bonheur des Dames

The Ladies' Paradise (in the original: Au Bonheur des Dames ) by the French author Émile Zola was published in 1884 as the eleventh novel in the twenty-volume cycle of novels The Rougon-Macquart - Natural and Social History of a Family under the Second Empire .

description

Les Grands Magasins du Louvre, one of the models for the ladies' paradise (1877)

Zola began to write it on May 28, 1882 and finished it on January 25, 1883. The preprint of the Gil Blas features was from December 17, 1882 to March 1, 1883.

Based on the story of the protagonist Denise, a saleswoman who comes to Paris from the provinces and finds a job in the women's paradise , the growth and structure of this department store and at the same time the decline of the small-scale retail trade in an entire Parisian district are described. The characters appearing in the novel are actively or passively connected to the expanding department store - as employees, buyers or neighboring retailers. In addition to the saleswoman Denise, particular attention is paid to the owner of the department store, Octave Mouret, and his life in fine Parisian society as well as his business practices. The role model for this fictional character was the entrepreneur Auguste Hériot , who founded the Parisian department store Grands Magasins du Louvre , and Aristide Boucicaut , the founder of Le Bon Marché .

In order to portray the struggle of the small retailer against the emerging large department store , Zola carried out extensive business and sociological studies as usual; he interviewed managing directors, department heads and saleswomen of the aforementioned department stores. His fictional giant department store was supposed to be an ideal example, which is why he used the management of the Le Bon Marché company as a model for describing it , while the Grands Magasins du Louvre department store, although poorly organized, seemed superior in terms of its product presentation.

The manuscript of Zola's 380-page documentation is kept in the Paris National Library and is available as a download or transcribed in the “Carnets d'enquêtes” by Henri Mitterand. It already describes modern marketing strategies such as the use of decoys that are sold at cost, and the distribution of company balloons to children, which are thus turned into advertising vehicles.

The author manages to arouse the reader's curiosity about the interior just by describing the facade of the department store. Zola provides insights into the living conditions of department store employees of his time and explains how customers, or mainly customers, are seduced to buy.

In his novel, the writer paints a naturalistic picture of the customs and working conditions of the middle class in France at the end of the 19th century.

expenditure

French

  • Pre-print: Au bonheur des dames. In: Gil Blas , December 17, 1882 to March 1, 1883, 75 sequels, (online)
  • First edition: Au bonheur des dames. Paris: G. Charpentier, 1893, (online)
  • Illustrated work edition: Oeuvres complètes illustrées de Émile Zola; 1-20. Les Rougon-Macquart: histoire naturelle et sociale d'une famille sous le Second Empire. Au bonheur des dames. Paris: Eugène Fasqueller, 1906, (online) .

German

  • Émile Zola: Ladies' Paradise. Translated by Hilda Westphal. Afterword by Gertrud Lehnert. Fischer TB, Frankfurt 2004, ISBN 3-596-16155-X .

Preliminary work

Zola's notes on his research for Ladies' Paradise are available in manuscript and in print.

  • Manuscript: Émile Zola: oeuvres. Manuscrits et dossiers prepared. Les Rougon-Macquart. Au Bonheur des dames. Preparatory dossier. Deuxième volume. Paris 1881, (online)
  • French print edition: Calicots (Au Bonheur des Dames). In: Émile Zola; Henri Mitterand (ed.): Carnets d'enquêtes: une ethnographie inédite de la France. Text établis et présentés by Henri Mitterand. Plon, Paris 1987, pp. 145-233.
  • German print edition: Calico. Zola in the big department stores. In: Émile Zola; Henri Mitterand (Ed.): France: Mosaic of a Society; unpublished sketches and studies. Translated from the French by Brigitte Pätzold. Vienna 1990, pp. 137-212.

literature

  • Jean Firges: The City of Paris. History of their development and urbanization , therein p. 103ff: The new reality of the aesthetics of goods and of goods fetishism. an interpretation of this work and its classification in Zola's complete works. Bibliography, ISBN 3-933264-00-6 .
  • Dirk Hohnsträter: Consumption and Creativity in Women's Paradise. In: Godela Weiss-Sussex, Ulrike Zitzlsperger (Ed.): Consumption and Imagination. Tales of Commerce and Imagination. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2015, ISBN 978-3-631-64233-7 , pp. 55-63.
  • Uwe Lindemann: The department store as a metaphor for society. Émile Zola and the collective imaginary of early consumer society. In: Godela Weiss-Sussex, Ulrike Zitzlsperger (Ed.): Consumption and Imagination. Tales of Commerce and Imagination. Peter Lang, Frankfurt am Main 2015, ISBN 978-3-631-64233-7 , pp. 35–53 (A considerably expanded and revised version of this article can be found as Chapter 3 in U. Lindemann, Das Warenhaus. Schauplatz der Moderne. Cologne et al. 2015. pp. 46–65)

Film adaptations

Web links

Wikisource: Au bonheur des dames  - sources and full texts (French)

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ term paper by Tina Rönz on GRIN
  2. ↑ #Zola 1881 , #Zola 1987 .