turnover of 450,000 francs a year (Zola ix). Likewise, the owner of the fictional department store in The Ladies Paradise, Octave Mouret, builds his visions of a prosperous business. He inherits a small drapers shop and, using his pecuniary power, buys more space to expand the shop. The end result is the Ladies Paradise, a gargantuan store enveloping all of the original small specialty shops, creating a retail monopoly in Paris.In order to generate astonishing revenue, Mourets Ladies Paradise employs techniques to create spontaneous desire by playing on customers sense of sight, which would help women, who make up the majority of department store customers, realize their independent desires for femininity. The first thing one sees when one walks into a brightly lit department store is the displays. In an appeal to his customers sight, Mouret throws brightly colored scarves in heaping piles on a display in the front of the store. According to Elaine Abelson, Subtlety was not an attribute of merchants in the late nineteenth century. If there was color used, it appeared in massive displays (44). Such flamboyancy attracts women wishing to release their own creativity, suppressed by the male-dominated society. The lack of harmony in the displays portrays Mourets belief that customers should have sore eyes by the time they [leave] the shop (Zola 44). Unbeknownst to the customer, Mouret has her under his control because the colors and disharmony exerts power on her consciousness and, ultimately, her purse. Not only does Mouret use his displays as a psychological attraction to women, the disorganization of related departments also indirectly appeals to sight. For example, Mouret purposely situates the store during a large sale so that the cloth department and the ladies wear department are on two opposite ends of the store. If a woman decides to buy a coat instead of the material for a coat, she is forced to go through departments where [she]d...
