Au bonheur des dames (1883) is essential reading for anyone who wishes to understand a key turning-point in patterns of retail commerce and consumption in the nineteenth century. In accordance with his customary working methods, Zola documented himself extensively on his subject, taking copious notes, notably during visits to the Bon Marché and the Magasins du Louvre. Indeed, the ‘dossier préparatoire’, the manuscript records of his research, preserved at the Bibliothèque National de France, have proved a valuable resource for historians and are frequently cited. Zola based his fictional store mainly on Au Bon Marché, with which, from 1852, Aristide Boucicault pioneered new methods of retailing. For the purposes of his narrative Zola telescopes and speeds up the evolution of the store. In reality it took over ten years, from 1852 to 1863, for the turnover at Au Bon Marché to increase from 450,000 francs to 7 million (by 1877 it was 73 million); and it was seventeen years before, in late 1869, the store could expand to occupy with its new building the whole block between the rue de Sèvres, rue Velpeau, rue du Bac and rue de Babylone. In the novel this process takes barely five years: we read that turnover is 80,742 francs 10 centimes on 10 October 1864 (175) and passes the million mark in February 1869 (500). Zola gives further impetus to his story by injecting economic drama into it: as we have seen, he recounts the battle between the grand magasin and the ancien commerce, his aim being, as expressed in the preliminary sketch, to depict ‘un grand magasin absorbant, écrasant tout le petit commerce du quartier […] je veux montrer le triomphe de l'activité moderne’ (522).

The male commis are in evidence here as in Rachilde's earlier novel Monsieur de la nouveauté, and share the aim (or fantasy) of seducing the clientele (156–58); ‘la cliente raccrochée et dévalisée’ is the aim of ‘des vendeurs spéciaux, des Parisiens fainéants et blagueurs’ (307). However, in Au bonheur des dames the system of commissions and incentives created by Mouret serves to make them even more ruthless in their urge to sell: ‘il leur accordait un tant pour cent sur le moindre bout d’étoffe […] mécanisme qui avait bouleversé les nouveautés, qui créaient entre les commis une lutte pour l'existence, dont les patrons bénéficiaient’ (87).