Agnes Callard and I Discuss Zola’s Au Bonheur des Dames

Agnes Pursues a General Theory of “Why Women Shop”, Justin Aids and Abets

Not so long ago, Agnes and I got together to talk about Émile Zola’s 1876 novel, L’Assommoir. You can listen to that conversation here. At that time, we broached the idea of doing it again soon for another installment in Zola’s massive 20-volume epic, Les Rougon-Macquart : Une histoire sociale et naturelle d’une famille sous le Second Empire. I recently finished the wonderful novel, Au Bonheur des Dames (1883), which of course Agnes had already read, so this seemed like a good occasion for a Part 2.

Au Bonheur des Dames is remarkable for many reasons. It is a hyperlucid investigation of the rise of the department store as an engine of commerce in the mid-19th century. This is a surprisingly familiar story that has been recapitulated in our own era by the new “disruptive” industries, notably Amazon, and that other big company whose actual motto for a time was “Move fast and break things”. In Zola’s novel a whole world of artisanal handicraft and pride in tradition is razed practically overnight by a single visionary entrepreneur, Octave Mouret, who is based on the real-life character of Aristide Boucicaut (1810-1877), the founder of the department store and Paris institution known as Le Bon Marché (whose jarred oignons confits I am eating at this moment). Mouret does this, effectively, by fracking the attention and desires of Parisian women, thus tapping into a new massive reserve of capital that had hitherto mostly been left unexploited. Mouret’s genius for maximizing profits is almost algorithmic in its perfection. He keeps streamlining the science of sales, and the women just keep shopping… and some among them, notably some grand aristocratic dames, just keep shoplifting.