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The Ladies' Paradise (Les Rougon-Macquart #11)

Émile Zola

Start date: May 1, 2025

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What Members Thought

Aug 25, 2015 Laura rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: gutenberg, fiction-19th-century, french-literature, e-books, audio-books, read-2015

Free download available at Project Gutenberg.

Thanks Dagny to made its proofing.

Free download audio version at LibriVox. Thanks for the tip Amy!

From BBC Radio 4 - Classical Serial:
By Emile Zola.
Dramatised by Carine Adler.

Business, ambition and fashion all collide in Zola's colourful love story. Set in the hustle and excitement of the expansion of one of Paris' first department stores.

Episode One
When innocent provincial girl Denise arrives in Paris, she quickly catches the eye of the notorious sed ...more

11 likes · Like · see review

May 06, 2025 GONZA rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: posseduto

Je pourrais écrire beaucoup de choses savantes sur ce livre naturaliste qui suit les règles du roman expérimental et se veut une critique du capitalisme, mais bien sûr ce ne serait rien de plus que ce que j'ai lu sur Wikipédia. Je l'ai aimé essentiellement parce que c'est une telenovela, avec beaucoup de trahisons (amoureuses et amicales), de méchants punis et d'amour qui triomphe sur les relations superficielles (on ne sait malheureusement pas ce que Denis fera d'Octave une fois qu'elle l'aura ...more

4 likes · Like · see review

Oct 28, 2011 Laura rated it really liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: audio-books, french-literature, read-2011, fiction-20th-century

Abridged version available at audiCite.net ...more

1 like · Like · see review

Feb 22, 2011 Kate rated it really liked it

Shelves: read-in-2012

"The Ladies' Paradise recounts the spectacular development of the modern department store in late nineteenth-century Paris. The store is a symbol of capitalism, of the modern city, and of the bourgeois family; it is emblematic of consumer culture and the changes in sexual attitudes and class relations taking place at the time.

"Octave Mouret, the store's owner-manager, masterfully exploits the desires of his female customers. In his private life too he is the great seducer. But when he falls in l "The Ladies' Paradise recounts the spectacular development of the modern department store in late nineteenth-century Paris. The store is a symbol of capitalism, of the modern city, and of the bourgeois family; it is emblematic of consumer culture and the changes in sexual attitudes and class relations taking place at the time.

"Octave Mouret, the store's owner-manager, masterfully exploits the desires of his female customers. In his private life too he is the great seducer. But when he falls in love with the innocent Denise Baudu, he discovers she is the only one of the salesgirls who refuses to be commodified.

"This new translation of the eleventh book in the Rougon-Macquart cycle captures the spirit of one of Zola's greatest novels of the modern city."
~~back cover

A fascinating book! Definitely a morality play of the 1% and how the majority of people think only of what they want to buy, and whether they can get it more cheaply. The rousing success of The Ladies' Paradise is vividly contrasted with the owners and workers in the small shops surrounding the new behemoth. They are slowly being run out of business, ground into poverty and failure, the loss of second and third generation family businesses. Mass production and quantity driving quality and pride of craftsmanship into futility.

I was amazed at how much this aspect of the book resonated with the current economic situation, and how difficult it was to be aligned with the small shopkeepers who stubbornly clung to their old ways, and ineffectively cursed the new way of business that was driving them to ruin. Unlike Dickens, who also railed against the rich who ground the poor to oblivion, Zola paints the new regime with bright hues as opposed to the surrounding dirty, dark, damp, squalid shops -- making the new store seem gay, modern, luxurious and infinitely more advantageous. The new employees are not treated badly by management, but spend a good deal of their energy and efforts at sabotaging each other to try to further their own status. The foibles and greed of the middle class customers are presented for ridicule and dismay, further underlining the inherent amorality of the new burgeoning capitalism.

Zola excels in describing the merchandise in glowing, lascivious terms -- underscoring the psychological traits which empower the growth and glamor of this rapidly growing phenomenon and shining a glaring spotlight on the greed and heedlessness of a good portion of the population.

In contrast, the love story seems almost an afterthought, just a vehicle to move the story along, provide continuity. I was disappointed in the ending -- there's no resolution there, although a bit of research indicates that this is not the last book in the saga, so perhaps the next book answers the question left hanging in this one. ...more

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Jul 26, 2020 Chrissie marked it as maybe

Shelves: victorian, france, audible-uk, hf, classics

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Family Tree:
https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Les_Rou...

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*Thérèse Raquin 4 stars

Les Rougon-Macquart Books:
*(#13)Germinal 4 stars
*(#14)The Masterpiece (L’Oeuvre) 4 stars
*(#12)The Bright Side of Life (La Joie de vivre) 3 stars
*(#17)The Beast in Man (La Bête Humaine) 3 stars
*(#7)The Drinking Den (L'Assommoir) 3 stars
*(#9)Nana 1 star
*(#2)The Kill (La Curée) 1 star

*(#18)Money (L’Argent) maybe
*(#11)The Ladies' Paradise (Au Bonheur des Dames) maybe
*(#3)The Belly ...more

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