In The Ladies’ Paradise, small shops battle for survival against Mouret’s big department store, the Ladies’ Paradise. The small shops represent “old Paris,” following traditional business methods in which they sell a small, specialized range of products at a high price. In contrast, the Ladies’ Paradise—which represents “new Paris”—ignores traditional business models, instead sourcing hundreds of different goods to sell at low prices and creating an overwhelming and intoxicating atmosphere to draw the public. The small tradespeople try to defend their traditional methods, as when Bourras claims that his trade—selling hand-carved umbrellas—is about true art. However, The Ladies Paradise never fails to succeed, instead taking over small business after small business until the department store takes up an entire city block.
The department store’s success is something that Mouret and even Denise suggest is inevitable: customers love the bright colors in the displays and the variety of objects for sale. Some even experience “fits” of joy as they spend money. Large stores like the Ladies’ Paradise, the novel suggests, are the way of the future. Denise, who’s sympathetic toward the small tradesmen’s struggle but a proponent of big business, tries to protect the tradesmen from failure by urging them to conform to the changing times. However, she’s ultimately unsuccessful, and she even sees that the Ladies’ Paradise does far more than just bankrupt the small businesses. Her cousin Geneviève dies of heartbreak because Colomban—Baudu’s shop assistant to whom she was engaged—runs off with a salesgirl from the Ladies’ Paradise, suggesting that even a person raised in a traditional shop environment can fall prey to the allure of modernity. Later, Bourras’s umbrella shop is taken in his bankruptcy, making way for the Ladies’ Paradise to dominate the entire street. The demolition of Bourras’s shop and Geneviève’s burial are framed as funerals for Old Paris, leading to Denise’s painful realization that the progress occurs “over the bodies of the dead.” Put simply, The Ladies’ Paradise depicts the transition from the old into the new as inevitable and, moreover, suggests that those who refuse to adapt will pay a steep cost.
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Tradition vs. Modernity ThemeTracker
Tradition vs. Modernity Quotes in The Ladies’ Paradise
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!”
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.
It was true, it was stealing everything from them: from the father, his money; from the mother, her dying child; from the daughter, a husband for whom she had waited ten years.
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.
