The Ladies’ Paradise explores the various ways in which men can exploit women. However, it also suggests that women can gain power by refusing to play men’s games, while also keeping their sights set on goals that help women. Mouret founds his big department store, the Ladies’ Paradise, on the very idea that women are subservient to him. His store is “a temple to Woman” that, by offering every product a woman could ever want, causes female customers to spend wildly. In this way, Mouret seems to cater to women while actually exploiting them financially, to ensure his store’s success. Additionally, he exploits Madame Desforges for her important friends who help him expand the Ladies’ Paradise.
However, Mouret’s associate Bourdoncle warns ominously that women “will have their revenge.” Mouret disregards this until Denise, a chaste and dignified salesgirl, rejects his romantic advances. He pursues Denise as he would any other mistress and is utterly bewildered when she refuses him, for no woman has yet refused the powerful businessman. He offers her money and even an exclusive relationship, but although she privately loves him, Denise refuses to be treated like a commodity. Distraught that he cannot buy the woman he loves, Mouret starts to feel that his power—which takes the form of exploiting women financially—is empty and useless. As Mouret feels increasingly impotent due to Denise’s rejection, Denise becomes the most powerful person at the Ladies’ Paradise, unwittingly exploiting Mouret’s deference toward her to make improvements to his system. These changes, importantly, largely benefit female employees Mouret previously wrote off, such as those who fall pregnant (Denise sets up a paid leave system for them). As a result, Mouret fears that Denise is “the revenge” that will undermine his power. However, after a wildly successful sale at the Ladies’ Paradise, Mouret realizes that his victory over women feels incomplete if he can’t have Denise. This leads him to propose to Denise, essentially surrendering to her—while also giving Denise exactly what she wants (marriage) and putting Denise in a powerful position where she can continue to advocate for Mouret’s female employees.
Related Themes from Other Texts
Women, Exploitation, and Power ThemeTracker
Women, Exploitation, and Power Quotes in 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.
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.
It was a secret war, in which the girls themselves participated with as much ferocity as [the men] did; and, in their common fatigue, always on their feet as they were, dead tired, differences of sex disappeared and nothing remained but opposing interests inflamed by the fever of business.
Furs littered the floor, ready-made clothes were heaped up like the greatcoats of disabled soldiers, the lace and underclothes, unfolded, crumpled, thrown about everywhere, gave the impression that an army of women had undressed there haphazardly in a wave of desire.
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.
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.
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?”
