Denise Baudu Character Analysis

The laces shivered, then dropped again, concealing the depths of the shop with an exciting air of mystery; even the lengths of cloth, thick and square, were breathing, exuding a tempting odor, while the overcoats were throwing back their shoulders still more on the dummies, which were acquiring souls, and the huge velvet coat was billowing out, supple and warm, as if on the shoulders of flesh and blood, with a heaving breast and quivering hips.

“Has anyone ever seen such a thing? A draper’s shop which sold everything! Just a big bazaar! And a fine staff too: a lot of dandies who pushed things about like porters at a railway station, who treated the goods and the customers like parcels, dropping their employer or being dropped by him at a moment’s notice. No affection, no manners, no art!”

It was easy; they said everyone did it in the end because in Paris a woman could not live on what she earned. But her whole being revolted against it; she felt no indignation against others for giving in, but simply an aversion to anything dirty or senseless. She considered life a matter of logic, good conduct, and courage.

The manufacturers could no longer exist without the big shops, for as soon as one of them lost their custom, bankruptcy became inevitable; in short, it was a natural development of business, it was impossible to stop things going the way they ought to, when everyone was working for it whether they liked it or not.

She was deeply disturbed: it was strange that a moment ago she had found the strength to repulse a man whom she adored, whereas in the past she had felt such weakness in the presence of that wretched boy, whose love she had only dreamed about!

“I want her, and I’ll get her! And if she escapes me, you’ll see what a place I’ll build to cure myself. It’ll be quite superb! You don’t understand this language, old fellow: otherwise, you’d know that action contains its own reward. To act, to create, to fight against facts, to overcome them or be overcome by them—the whole human health and happiness is made up of that!”

His master’s business faculties must surely founder, he thought, in the midst of such idiotic love: what had been won through women would be lost through this woman.

His obsession pursued him everywhere, and as his power unfolded before him, as the mechanism of the departments and the army of employees passed before his gaze, he felt the indignity of his powerlessness more keenly than ever. Orders from the whole of Europe were flowing in […] and yet she said no, she still said no.

Was it humane or right, this appalling consumption of human flesh every year by the big shops? She would plead the cause of the cogs in this great machine, but with arguments based on the employers’ own interests. When one wants a sound machine, one uses good metal; if the metal breaks or is broken there’s a stoppage of work, repeated expense in getting it started again, a considerable wastage of energy.

She seemed to hear the trampling of a herd of cattle being led to the slaughterhouse, the destruction of the shops of a whole district, the small traders squelching along in their down-at-heel shoes, trailing ruin through the black mud of Paris.

What tortures! Weeping families, old men thrown out into the street, all the poignant dramas associated with ruin! And she could not save anyone; she was even aware that it was a good thing: this manure of distress was necessary to the health of the Paris of the future.

Why should her small hand suddenly become such a powerful part of the monster’s work? And the force which was carrying everything before it was carrying her away too, she whose coming was to be a revenge. Mouret had invented this mechanism for crushing people, and its brutal operation shocked her. He had strewn the neighborhood with ruins, he had despoiled some and killed others; yet she loved him for the grandeur of his achievement.

Faced with Paris devoured and Woman conquered, he experienced a sudden weakness, a failure of his will by which he was being overthrown in his turn as if by a superior force. In his victory he felt an irrational need to be conquered; it was the irrationality of a warrior yielding on the morrow of his conquest to the whim of a child.

“Listen, we were stupid to have that superstition that marriage would ruin us. After all, isn’t it the health necessary to life, its very strength and order?”