ternity leave for pregnant women, more assistants to help with back-breaking work, etc. Her purity is the root of her power, but the benevolence that results from her initial power draws even more respect for her from her co-workers. She is the revenge of Woman against the department stores attempts to manipulate women and reduce them down to mere francs and pieces of lace (Zola xvi). In a larger history, Denise is a representation of the small group of women in the late nineteenth century who rebelled against old-fashioned male domination. Her influence, like the power of unconventional women in the 1800s, is limited but serves as a foundation for independent women of the future.But still, there were masses of meek, submissive, and ignorant women who blindly followed along with tradition. They derived their aforementioned power from people like Mouret. For his circle of customers, he creates the sense of power through his store. According to Beth Schelle, [The store] offers women what they most want, control over their own bodies (7). This unfortunately backfires in Mourets face because the freedom of the women in the book poses challenges to the male power base. Mouret gives women what they want so that he can use them to his advantage, but they find other ways of using their newfound liberties. Lisa Tiersten agrees that the visibility of bourgeois housewives posed challenges to male authority (Crossick 124). With the ability to decide for themselves and live independently, women attained the power, whether consciously or subconsciously, to take men into their wrathful clutches of revenge for their previous exploitation.Power in society is officially divided among class rankings, but the male- dominated Parisian society of the late nineteenth century began to crumble underneath the pressure applied by the changing attitudes of French women. Men opened the pathways to their own loss of power through the attempt to fully exploit feminin...
