Au Bonheur Des Dames

Through charm drive and diligent effort Octave Mouret has become the director of one of the finest new department stores in Paris Au Bonheur des Dames. Supremely aware of the power of his position Mouret seeks to exploit the desire that his luxuriantly displayed merchandise arouses in the ladies who shop and the aspirations of the young female assistants he employs. Charting the beginnings of the capitalist economy and bourgeois society Zola captures in lavish detail the greedy customers and gossiping staff and the obsession with image fashion and gratification that was a phenomenon of nineteenth-century French consumer society. Of all Zola's novels this may be the one with the most relevance for our own time.