Taking place near the end of The Ladies’ Paradise, Geneviève’s funeral symbolizes the final end of traditional business methods. Geneviève’s death is essentially caused by the Ladies’ Paradise—the big department store that is competing with the small local businesses and driving away their customers. Geneviève’s engagement to Colomban—Baudu’s shop assistant—was a traditional feature of the small business: the businessowner trains the assistant in the ways of his business, and then marries the assistant to his daughter in order to officially pass the business on. However, Colomban runs off with a salesgirl from the Ladies’ Paradise, betraying both Geneviève and Baudu’s drapery shop. Geneviève soon dies of a broken heart, an event which symbolizes the tragic consequences the Ladies’ Paradise inflicts on the world of small business.
Up until Geneviève’s funeral, the Ladies’ Paradise has been causing the slow death of small local businesses. As a massive shopping experience in which customers can find everything they need and want at a cheap price, the Ladies’ Paradise drives the public away from small shops. As well as ruining the small businesses financially, the Ladies’ Paradise has been offending their values and traditions. Therefore, when all the small tradespeople gather for Geneviève’s funeral—whose death was caused by the betrayal of a tradition—they seem to be acknowledging the death of the tradition of small business altogether. What is more, the funeral is extremely sordid. The local businessowners tromp through the mud to the grave, where one attendee suggests that they might as well all jump in the grave with the casket. This suggests that the solidarity of the small businesses has only led to their unified death.
Geneviève’s Funeral Quotes in The Ladies’ Paradise
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.
Geneviève’s Funeral Symbol Timeline in The Ladies’ Paradise
