The Ladies’ Paradise

“You know, they’ll have their revenge.”

“Who will?”

“The women, of course.”

[…] With a shrug of his shoulders [Mouret] seemed to declare that he would throw them all away like empty sacks on the day when they had finished helping him make his fortune.

He would give [his salesmen] a percentage on […] the smallest article they sold: a system which had caused a revolution in the drapery trade by creating among the assistants a struggle for survival from which the employers reaped the benefit. […] [Mouret] unleashed passions, brought different forces into conflict, let the strong devour the weak, and grew fat on this battle of interests.

Of supreme importance […] was the exploitation of Woman. Everything else led up to it, the ceaseless renewal of capital, the system of piling up goods, the low prices which attracted people, the marked prices which reassured them. It was Woman the shops were competing for so fiercely, it was Woman they were continually snaring with their bargains, after dazing her with their displays. They had awoken new desires in her weak flesh.

They were all nothing but cogs, caught up in the workings of the machine, surrendering their personalities, merely adding their strength to the mighty common whole of the phalanstery.

Mouret’s sole passion was the conquest of Woman. He wanted her to be queen in his shop; he had built this temple for her in order to hold her at his mercy. His tactics were to intoxicate her with amorous attentions, to trade on her desires, and to exploit her excitement.

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.

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?”