Naturalism Redressed

Identity and Clothing in the Novels of Emile Zola

Hannah Thompson

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• eBook ISBN: 9781351197335
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Languages & Linguistics
• Subtopic: Linguistics
• Index: Languages & Linguistics

"References to clothing in the nineteenth-century naturalist novel have traditionally been read merely as examples of descriptive detail. Thompson, in her groundbreaking study on Zola, rescues clothing from the margins of representation, and draws on a wide range of twentieth-century feminist and queer theory to demonstrate that clothing troubles such binary pairs as 'masculine' and 'feminine', 'normal' and 'perverse', 'natural' and 'artificial' that lie at the foundations of Zolian naturalism. The author's investment in the signifying power of clothing in the Rougon-Macquart is such that the novels can no longer be read as unproblematic illustrations of literary naturalism; in fact its intensity demands that Zola's relationship to literature and his descriptions of Second Empire society be reassessed."

Chapter 1
The Patchwork Text

Mais ce qu'on apercevait de toute part, des quais, des ponts, des fenêtres, c'était, à l'horizon, sur la muraille nue d'une maison à six étages, dans l'île Saint-Louis, une redingote grise géante, peinte à fresque, de profil, avec sa manche gauche pliée au coude, comme si le vêtement eût gardé l'attitude et le gonflement d'un corps, à cette heure disparu. Cette réclame monumentale prenait, dans le soleil, au-dessus de la fourmilière des promeneurs, une extraordinaire importance. (RM, ii.86)

In the sixth Rougon-Macquart novel, Son Excellence Eugène Rougon (1876), Zola examines the climate of political corruption characteristic of the Second Empire, whereby transfers of power and influence depend on shady deals and hastily made alliances. The set-piece description of the ceremonial baptism of Napoléon III son Eugène, part of which is quoted above, enables Zola sarcastically to discredit Napoléon III and his flimsy regime through this description of a massive advertising hoarding which can be glimpsed above the jostling crowds. The image of the redingote grise is an unmistakable reference back to Napoléon I, whose trademark was a coat similar to the one depicted. Readers and onlookers alike are prompted, as the image falls within their field of vision, to draw comparisons between past and present, between uncle and nephew, between the original Empire and its weaker imitation. As Richard B. Grant has shown, 'the symbolism is not the least effective for being obvious: the Second Empire always claimed to place itself under the auspices of Napoléon le grand, but alas, Napoléon I was dead, and his Empire as empty as the overcoat painted on the wall'.¹ Like Miette's pelisse, the redingote acts as a commentary on the historical events to which it bears witness. Indeed Henri Mitterand suggests that the redingote was placed in the text by its author as 'a warning, in the form of a common rank or protocol, and announcing other upsets'.²

The significance of the redingote is not limited to an implicit authorial criticism of the political structures of the Second Empire. In this image the reader also finds a celebration of the power of advertising which foreshadows the detailed discussions of advertising which appear in Au Bonheur des Dames. Most significantly in the context of the present study, the recurring references to the redingote grise simultaneously represent a reflexive commentary on the uses which the Zolian text makes of excessive or unexpected references to clothing. By providing the reader with a giant sartorial image which seems to repay readerly interpretation, the text testifies to the signifying power of those excessive references to clothing found elsewhere in the series, thus encouraging active investment in the reading process.

However, if Zola's privileged references to vestimentary details encourage readerly participation in the construction of meaning, they simultaneously provide a warning against overinterpretation. In La Conquête de Plassans (1874) Zola mobilizes the reactions of his characters to an incidental detail, in this case an untied shoelace, in order to show what can happen when the interpretation of a sign spins out of control. As the ostracized figure of François Mouret walks the streets of Plassans, his untied shoelace becomes the irrefutable proof of his madness:

Un ancien chapelier du faubourg, qui avait examiné Mouret depuis son nœud de cravate jusqu'au dernier bouton de sa redingote, s'était finalement absorbé dans le spectacle de ses souliers. Le lacet du soulier gauche se trouvait dénoué, ce qui paraissait exorbitant au chapelier; il poussait du coude ses voisins, leur montrant, d'un clignement d'yeux, ce lacet dont les bouts pendaient. Bientôt tout le banc n'eut plus de regards que pour le lacet. Ce fut le comble. Ces messieurs haussèrent les épaules, de façon à montrer qu'ils ne gardaient plus le moindre espoir. (RM, i. 1120)

On one level, for Naomi Schor, 'in our text, madness is displaced along the vertical axis, the untied lace acting as the sign of the disordered mind'.³ In other words, the untied lace becomes a metaphor for the madness of the subject. The observers fall into the trap. They take an external detail as indicative of an internal state and fail to notice the lack of correlation between the two. They push the Naturalist's obsessive desire to record and interpret the external world too far, forgetting that appearances can be deceptive. Clothing should not necessarily be read at face value. It can be misread, or taken to extremes. As Schor goes on to explain, 'the disproportion between the observed detail and the interpretation that it authorizes is such that the scene becomes a parody of any hermeneutic enterprise based on the enlarging of a detail' (p. 116). Within the Rougon-Macquart, then, clothes must be read with care. Whilst heeding the warnings which can be found in La Conquête de Plassans, in this chapter I investigate those items of clothing which work to aid, hinder or comment on the art of the Naturalist. A network, or patchwork, of such items of clothing can be identified throughout the Rougon-Macquart series and when read as a whole, this 'texte-patchwork' testifies to the supreme signifying power of clothing within the Naturalist text.

There is an illuminating parallel to be drawn between the laundry work of Gervaise Macquart in L'Assommoir (1877) and Zola's Naturalism, of which L'Assommoir is frequently considered a prime example. Susan Harrow has shown that the success of Gervaise's boutique depends on her ability to identify, classify and catalogue the items of clothing which pass through the shop. As such, Harrow argues, she can be read as a fictionalized proponent of Zola's Naturalism.⁴ Although Gervaise's enterprise depends to a large extent on a system of observation and classification which can indeed be likened to Zola's approach, what is more instructive in the context of the current study is her narrativization of the items of laundry she handles.⁵ In order to return the right number of pieces to each customer, Gervaise must develop an infallible way of differentiating between items of laundry. Harrow seems to suggest that she accomplishes this by describing every item of clothing in detail as she encounters it. Although Harrow is right to emphasize Gervaise's attention to detail, it is the narratives she constructs around each item which help her to distinguish them from each other. Like Zola, Gervaise recognizes the narrative possibilities of clothing. As she sorts the washing ready for Mme Bijard to take to the lavoir, Gervaise identifies each item as it passes through her hands:

Elle suivait les pièces d'un regard attentif, pour les reconnaître au passage; et elle ne se trompait jamais, elle mettait un nom sur chacune, au flair, à la couleur. Ces serviettes-là appartenaient aux Goujet; ça sautait aux yeux, elles n'avaient pas servi à essuyer le cul des poêlons. Voilà une taie d'oreiller qui venait certainement des Boche, à cause de la pommade dont Mme Boche emplâtrait tout son linge. [...] Et elle savait d'autres particularités, les secrets de la propreté de chacun, les dessous des voisines qui traversaient la rue en jupes de soie. (RM, ii. 507-8)

Unlike the inhabitants of Plassans, Gervaise does not stop at the superficial appearance of the clothes. As she sorts them, she moves below their surface, unearthing the shameful secrets hidden on them. For the laundress, the story of its wearer is written on each item of clothing. If the clothes she handles provide her with the tales she needs in order to make sense of the chaos of the laundry, they simultaneously provide her less scrupulous employees with a means of literally washing the dirty linen of their clients in public. Clémence's attentive eye and dirty mind crudely reveal the intimate details of the inhabitants of the rue de la Goutte d'Or as she offers a running commentary on the clothes she is counting:

Alors, à chaque pièce, cette grande vaurienne lâcha un mot cru, une saleté; elle étalait les misères des clients, les aventures des alcôves, elle avait des plaisanteries d'atelier sur tous les trous et toutes les taches qui lui passaient par les mains. (RM, ii. 507)

The clothes thus scrutinized by Clémence offer an insight into the squalor of working-class life in the Paris slums. But these same garments also fulfil a more significant function within the narrative: they can be read as a prophetic account of the protagonists' future. The misères mentioned will soon befall both Gervaise and Coupeau, whilst the aventures des alcôves are a reference not only to their daughter Nana and her promiscuity later in the novel, but also to the content of the novel which bears her name. In addition, the trous which provide Clémence with clues as to the activities of the wearers, can be read as a reference to the 'trou, sous l'escalier' (RM, ii. 796) where Gervaise ends her days. Several key events of L'Assommoir are written on the soiled clothes which pass through the hands of Gervaise and Clémence as Zola reminds the reader that encoded messages are to be found embroidered within descriptions of clothing throughout the novel.

On one level, it is not surprising that a novel set in the working-class slums of Paris should exhibit a marked fascination with items of clothing. As Gervaise herself points out, clothing is, along with housing and food, one of the basic necessities of the worker (RM, ii. 382), and thus becomes a major preoccupation as soon as money starts running out. In addition, the fact that Gervaise is a blanchisseuse (rather than, for example, a concierge or a fleuriste) necessarily situates the novel in a clothing-related context. Zola first decided that his central female protagonist would be a blanchisseuse in 1869, after observing some blanchisseuses at work near his home (RM, ii. 1542—3). Already in 1867, the figure of the blanchisseuse had featured in the Goncourt brothers' Manette Salomon and later, in 1873, Degas began working on the Blanchisseuse which he would show at the first Impressionist exhibition of 1874. The prominence of the figure of the blanchisseuse in L'Assommoir can thus be read, as Mitterand has suggested, as evidence of Zola's support for the artistic and literary innovations of the time, as well as signalling an investment in those working-class realities excluded from canonical representations.⁶ Zola's preparatory notes clearly reveal that the figure of the blanchisseuse caught the imagination of the writer; for him she is a symbol of modernity, epitomizing the working-class Paris which was the subject of the novel. If Gervaise's profession was in part chosen in support of those artists Zola admired, Zola's interest in medical theories of degeneration also influenced his choice. As Mary Donaldson-Evans has pointed out, Zola's emphasis on the figure of the blanchisseuse immediately enables him to depict Gervaise's struggle in terms of a constant battle with filth, a battle which medical discourses of the time posited as one ot the principal reasons for working-class degeneration.⁷

If Zola's preparatory notes reveal that Gervaise's occupation was chosen for the important reasons discussed above, the novel's fascination with references to clothes extends beyond the quantity of references justified by Gervaise's work. Gervaise's destiny is inextricably associated with the clothes which surround her even when she is not laundering them. Naomi Schor has suggested that the reader of L'Assommoir can engage with the language of the novel through the bodies of Gervaise and Coupeau.⁸ Although I agree that L'Assommoir is indeed full of legible bodies, as are those Rougon-Macquart novels discussed in the course of this study, these bodies are constantly framed and foregrounded by their clothes, and cannot be considered in isolation from them. My reading of L'Assommoir will suggest that the novel's pivotal scenes revolve around moments in which clothes occupy a remarkably prominent place. In contrast to Schor, I will argue that, throughout the novel, Zola invites the reader to read the narrative on and through the signs written on the clothes of the protagonists.

From the opening pages of the novel, the text focuses on the clothes of the protagonists. As Gervaise waits for her errant lover, Lantier, to return, she watches the workers as they arrive in Paris from Montmartre and La Chapelle. For her, and also for Zola, the workers are nothing more than the sum of the clothes they wear: 'on reconnaissait les serruriers à leurs bourgerons bleus, les maçons à leurs cottes blanches, les peintres à leurs paletots, sous lesquels de longues blouses passaient' (RM, ii. 378). As Hamon has persuasively argued with reference both to this passage ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Dedication
• Note on the Text
• Introduction
• 1 The Patchwork Text
• 2 Zola's Metaphoric Wardrobe
• 3 The Erotics of the Department Store
• 4 Transvestism and the Aesthetics of Artifice
• 5 The Dynamics of the Veil
• Conclusion: Ornamental Designs
• Bibliography
• Index