Welcome to the Real World

From a more contemporary perspective, one might argue that the implementation of the arcade as an architectural strategy was effective initially because of its internalization of elements of the street as prototypical marketplace into enclosed spaces. While this may be true, the arcade as a passage initially served as a model of an idealized street life. This kind of idyllic re-hashing of the not-so-ideal circumstances of Paris’ 19th century middle class, which many times took the two-dimensional form of the panorama, (or complete picture of human existence), can be said to have contributed heavily to the rise of the bourgeoisie.
If the emergence of a social consciousness was indeed the result of the creation of a pedestal from which to look down upon the streets of Paris, then how can we expect Destiny USA to function? It seems as though with the erection of the “complete picture of human existence” (the Tuscan hill-town, for example, complete with authentic vintners!) in BUILT form, Benjamin’s argument will have come full circle. The panorama will have gone from the pictorial representation of an idealized landscape to the construction of that landscape as a living, breathing element; albeit frozen in time, this manufactured “worldwide panorama” may well again serve as a perpetually outdated model for the future, based on the past.
Now that the designers for Destiny USA have the opportunity to remake portions of Italy, France, and the “world marketplace,” what will they do differently? Will they build new, idealized models of Tuscany without all the region's quirky eccentricities, or with them? What will be the “monumental and lavish” public spaces promised to echo “Old World” architecture? The real question, however, concerns the effect these spaces and environments will have on those whose only encounter with them is through their distilled and manufactured identity. Who knows - maybe by 2017 all Tuscan vendors will speak English.

You’re Never Wrong if You Prove the Competition Is

“And you listen to the savage way our competitors will moan…They’ll be sunk, all those rag-and-bone men dying of rheumatism in their cellars.” (Zola 40).

In reading Emile Zola’s Au Bonheur des Dames, I’m immediately struck by how similar commercialism and consumerism in 19^th century Paris is compared to present day America. More specifically, I’m struck by the sheer ruthlessness of someone like Mouret in destroying small family businesses. I think we all tend to subconsciously imagine that families like the Waltons (owners of Wal*Mart) actually love small family businesses and in some twisted way are trying to support them, because they too started as a family business. Chances are that their business strategies lie closer to Mouret’s, driving prices as low as possible with as cheap labor as possible and as cheap a product as possible knowing that all their competition will be driven to destruction as all people see is that smiley face telling you how low the prices are.

As Agent Smith states in The Matrix, humans are the only living things on earth besides viruses that would make their environments adapt to them. Keller Easterling’s article “Enduring Innocence” echoes this by commenting on how today’s society expects everything to be “compatible with our format” (Easterling 5). This reminds me of how in our industrial society, quantity has triumphed over quality. No longer can a cow be weighed in value against bushels of grain, but a precise number has to be placed on absolutely everything to measure their worth, from pocket watches to human life.

There is a company whose products I am fond of but their slogan I am not. Next Limit passive aggressively brags that “We will continue to innovate, and others will continue to copy.” (www.maxwellrender.com) Whatever degree their innovation happens to be, such a slogan would never be needed in a world where everyone gave due credit to everyone for their ideas and products. Because this is not the case, companies come up with all sorts of ways to insult the competition instead of just promoting themselves. Thus, these kinds of smear campaigns of competition—also commonly seen on the political trail—seem to be reflective of the disorganized capitalism that Easterling comments on where the focus seems to be in “the degree of deviance, duplicity, and cheating in the mix” (Easterling 10) This is what interests us. Not ‘what makes your product good’, but ‘what makes your product better than their’s? Again, to quote Easterling, “righteousness is a form of violence that most people cultivate” (Easterling 5) As Easterling would say about Mouret, there is an illusion of superiority in the lower price, but the actual quality of the product is most likely inferior to its hand-crafted competitor. Sadly, all people see are the numbers.

P.S. A quick comment on Easterling's writing style: I can’t help but wish that the author could choose to use slightly less ‘dense’ methods of making a point, as it seems that a lot of time can be spent trying to do nothing more than understand what exactly is being said. What exactly is a “self-reflexive political quarantine” anyway? (Easterling 3)

The Mall is Not the Enemy

Emile Zola’s Au Bonheur des Dames, though written in the late 1800’s, shows modern consumerism at its best. There is the obvious realization that specialization is no longer what is wanted in the consumer market. People seem to be, at the time of the novel, switching over to the new idea of being able to get everything in one place. Many others have stated that this is the start of the downfall of localized and specialized businesses. I agree. However, the part that isn’t being touched on is that even though stores such as Target and Wal-Mart are selling a great deal of varying products, it is actually the idea of a mall, whether indoor or outdoor, that keeps smaller, more specialized businesses alive.
The mall does two things that both allow the consumer and the business owner to work in harmony. It provides the customer with a variety of needs in one large location rather than a multitude of places scattered about, while also allowing individualized or specialized stores to surround each other with there varying products in a market-esque fashion. Au Bonheur des Dames doesn’t seem to be so much a commentary on the idea of mall as a problem, especially because it doesn’t really exist yet in that sense, but rather the resentment small businesses feel toward one singular store attempting to combine everything.
Keller Easterling has described this idea as being “spatial products that attempt to avoid political entanglements.” Does this mean they try to satisfy the largest possible group of consumers only? No. It means that in order to avoid confrontation and to continue to grow you need to satisfy not simply the consumers, but also the makers of the products you wish to market. This is my only issue with Zola’s text thus far; that the specialized owners seem to be giving up. The reason a lot of these stores work is also because the businesses must like the idea of being marketed in a multi-product store. Why? Because then as someone is getting one product they need and happens to spot a different product which they may merely want, they are more likely to purchase this. I really disagree with the small businesses feeling a loss of individuality and that their store is being destroyed. Yes, the physical store may be obsolete but the business can still operate through that store and if more small business owners with specialized products knew how to play this consumerist game, maybe their products would be in Target today, or they would have their own retail space in the new Meadowlands Xanadu.

Bill Gate's Microsoft Effect

In Emile Zola’s Au Bonheur des Dames, it becomes apparent that competition between businesses and the idea of spreading businesses existed back then in 19th century France.
It talked about her uncle’s small business and its fear of going bankrupt due to the other megamall type store nearby which sold items they were carrying as well. This type of idea still exists today where small businesses are afraid of larger businesses such as Target or Walmart. Idea’s like this are even parodied in today’s society such as in mainstream shows as “South Park.” This episode, just like Emile Zola’s book explains that she cannot get a job at their relatives store and therefore are forced to work at the bigger megamall place and is looked down upon by their peers.
Keller Easterling’s description of this is compared to a mixture of cocktails and cultural attributes. The thing people long for are spatial products and these products (golf courses, retail chains, etc) are products that index the world by marketing and/or schedule which thus, reduces any sort of political inconvenience of location. Ultimately, what these people (big businesses) look for are someplace like a camp, or a conflict zone, expanding their territory with nonnational sovereignty. They just want to expand and expand and take over other companies or run them out of business. This type of effect is something I would like to call the “Bill Gate’s Microsoft” effect.

the 'design' behind consumerism

While reading, Au Bonheur des Dames, one can clearly see the relationship that is made between consumerism and the ‘design’ that sells it. Zola sets up an immediate parallel between the window display and its effect on the consumer. Mouret, “the finest display artist in Paris”, can be seen as the architect behind the department store and ultimately the reason the store attracts its customers. Mouret’s use of bold colors and flashy advertising attracts consumers to his project (the department store). Zola then reveals the opposing position of Hutin, another display artist whose approach is less overt. Hutin, whom belonged to the classical school, employs symmetry and harmony in his displays. This binary reveals Mouret’s intentions and sets him up as the Frank Gehry of window designs. The window display can thus be seen as a piece of the façade, which attracts consumers and ultimately fails or succeeds in bringing its customers in. The display even begins to set the stage for the interior. Through the eyes of one customer the department store parallels “a whole city, with its monuments, squares and streets.” The window now becomes a tool to provoke the consumer and it is through the artist’s vision that this is done so effectively. This technique is still employed in our 21st century malls and shows how the window display is a very effective tool in advertising its goods from the façade.

gin martini, extra dry, and no garnish please.

The luscious surface depictions and sensual vibrancy of Zola’s, Au Bonheur des Dames are the first “fictional” accounts of shopping experience and culture that I have read. Respectively, Zola’s textual scenes are stunningly vivid renders of mid 19th century French street life and architecture. Zola’s physiological depictions are quite accurate and comparable to contemporary acts of shopping. Shopping’s lucid and lusty tendencies are resilient and lurk within our own capitalistic economies. The act of shopping; the desire and purchase of goods is not new. Apart from romantic desires for “authentic” material goods, Bonheur’s shopping experience is for amateurs. To shop is a fragment of the activity lexicons legible at current consumption destinations. Multiple programs and functions, all the desirable amenities, inhabit one “revenue envelope”. Keller Easterling describes these conditions as real estate cocktails. Multiple, networked, politically diverse ingredients are mixed, generating a delightful “spatial product” that we enjoy and demand more. Furthermore the experience is all accurately tabulated in spreadsheets and data logics so we consistently receive the SAME. The latest shopping megalopolis’s achieve experiential VARIETY by supplying hokey gimmicks and perks; roller coasters, tropical islands and nutcracker skyscrapers, similar to those fresh lime wedges or extra green olives. Easterling goes beyond the “window dressings” and costumes, to agitate the multiple layers of encrypted camouflaged coding to understand all the ingredients. Easterling is not interested in the physical foreground, but the networked background that seems to lurk in a territory of political neutrality. As Denise ventures into chapter four she begins to experience that inexplicit network. As for me, I would like a gin martini, extra dry, and no garnish please.

the bottom line

Its become obvious that behind the colors, signs and displays there is a dark side to the gilts and glamour. This dark side revolves around one thing – the bottom line. Octave Mouret cares about how much it’s going to cost to feed his four hundred person fleet and how to squash the competition. When talking with Denise, Mouret proceeds by saying “and tell him [her uncle] that he will finally go under if he insists on his heaps of ridiculous, old fashioned goods” (Zola 55). From the consumer vantage point it’s about quality and price. “She wanted a dress, inexpensive but well made” (Zola 101). It is evident that these big box stores exchange quality for convenience. This quality is on multiply levels; in both product and service. I mention all this because I feel like the mega-malls and other institutions like Au Bonheur des Dames, have this same effect on the architecture. While Emile Zola indirectly talks about this aspect through her details, Keller Easterling directly tells about this relationship. He examples how “spatial products that attempt to avoid political entanglements also attempts to avoid error. Yet that belief often results in a much more massive failure or error” (10). So if the bottom line has undermined quality of architecture, and we as architects cannot fight it, what is there left to do? Are projects like DestinyUSA automatically destine to be big boxes? Not necessarily. The colors, signs and displays create an experience, only if architecture could usurp this experience than things might be able to change.

Sealed Storefronts and Innocent Cocktails

Storefront window displays are potent tools that retail businesses use to seduce consumers passing by. Zola’s description of Jean’s reaction to the storefront window displays is similar to my reaction to window display’s in Florence, Italy. These windows are so easily consumed that the aggressive techniques deployed by the stores go un-noticed such as the extremely intense light fixtures required to reflect enough light, or how the accessories and clothing are carefully arranged to appear spontaneous or precisely calculated. “Don’t be afraid, blind them! Come on! He wanted landslides of cloth tumbling as though it had been accidentally emptied out the the boxes, blazing with the most intense colors”[1]

Another thing that contributes to the seductive appearance of the window display is the ability for it to appear so perfect, sealed by glass from the elements it remains in mint condition unlike anything else adjacent to it. For example if you walk to work and pass storefront displays it might be raining, street signs might crooked, trash collects on the street curb, but the window display remains pristine, well lit, untouched whether it is 8:00 am or midnight. Historic city centers are progressively becoming more like outdoor malls, specifically Florence. In this aspect sometimes Florence feels like a frozen city with blocks and blocks of storefronts super pristine plugging into Gothic and Renaissance architecture.

Easterling’s introduction to Enduring Innocence is densely packed with material pertaining to architecture’s role in larger territories. I am interested in the “mixology between cocktails and cultural attributes that may create a territory that is at once strange and intimate, exposed and disguised, real and fictional.” Cocktails are the abstract, unfamiliar, non-spatial, i(n the traditional sense), parameters such as ‘ocean temperatures, time needed for a shopping spree, etc.’ Whereas cultural attributes are social practices specific to particular regions and cultures such as tailgating in parking lots on football game days. Too quickly malls, big box retail, and parking lots are passed off by critics as homogenous territory that is the same which makes it appear fictional or strange. At the same time people appropriate space to suit there needs and tendencies. Therefore aspects of a mall or a parking lot become very intimate.

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[1] Zola, Emile The Lady’s Delight. Peguin Books 2001. p. 48

The Customer is Always Right

The business strategy of La Bonheur des Dames may have been novel in the 19th century, but it is by the far the money-making method of choice for modern moguls: sell cheap and sell a lot. Today, the problems with that strategy are clear; they are un-sustainable, a waste of resources, a pipe-dream of consumeristic fantasy from which we must eventually awake or risk the demise of our species and the ruin of the planet. But in the 19th century, resources were plentiful, and we were like well-looked-after children who haven't yet learnt the value of money, asking for every whimsical desire that we could conceive.
Mouret is both the puppet and the puppet master of this emerging comsumeristic naivetée, using other people's material greed to fuel his own. In setting up an atmosphere that encourages, requires even, complete submission to the sensuality of the fabric and the pseudo-erotic desires that the guilty pleasure of indulgence provokes, he sets up a whore house of commerce. The metaphor comes around full circle when Mouret himself is constantly giving in to his actually-erotic desires that he indulges in with a bounty of different female companions. He falls victim to the same desire in himself that he is manipulating in women.
Today, the story among modern capitalists is much the same; the guiltification of their product is a selling device that turns a normal product into a seductive object of desire. A case-in-point is ColdStone ice cream stores. Their in-store advertisements depict pictures of happy peoples' faces just out-of-focus in front of which is a beautifully constructed and computer-edited still-life of an (enourmous) ice-cream cone, with all the guilty pleasures mixed right into the ice cream, and the words "Ultimate Indulgence" written in sumptous cursive scrpit below the image. The owner of the store (any store, not just ColdStone or La Bonheur des Dames) is both the controller and the victim of his customers. A satisfied customer is money in the pocket, an orgy of dollar signs. But an unhappy customer is money in somebody else's pocket, someone else's deepest desires fulfilled, and to keep the dollar signs flowing into the right treasure chest, the owner must bend to every will of the customer, allowing them always to have the final say, always to be right. Of course, this is a circular existence. One can never be happy living like this because one's exploitation of others can never be complete. Mouret can expand his store from the Rue Neuve-Saint-Augustin all the way to the Champs Elysee, but will never be content because there will still be more money to be made, more urges to indulge, more people to use.

Industry Dominance

So far, Emile Zola’s Au Bonheur des Dames is a perfect example business competition, not only seen through the eyes of a department store, but through the eyes of “big business.” Au Bonheur des Dames is the first huge department store in Paris and, through the extreme detail by the author; we are able to get a real sense of how it felt when large stores began in the 19th century. Much like Wal-mart today, Au Bonheur is tailoring its company to the customer. Everything is geared toward the customer in such and overwhelming way that one may not know what to do with themselves upon entering the building. There are a few instances in the novel where characters were feeling anxious and overwhelmed to do the shear size of the store as well as the infinite selection of goods. The author wants to portray the domination of this store to is fullest, making the small neighboring stores feel even smaller. This first “big business” shows the earliest signs of competition between big and small business. This store can be seen as the first monopoly in the sales industry. They are buying in higher quantity to be able to lower prices and eventually take over the local businesses. Three prominent characters so far are representing each of these business situations; Mouret is big business, Uncle Baudu is small business and Denise is the consumer stuck in a constant battle between both sides. I think as we see this novel develop, these instances of business competition will become even more of a focus resulting in an enriched understanding of how big business dominance all began in the 19th century.

the importance of process

Easterling’s discussion of “spatial products” reinforces the potential of logic-driven processes and networks of data in the construction of space. According to Easterling, “spatial products substitute spin, logistics, and management styles, for considerations of location geometry, or enclosure” (Easterling 2). These “spatial products,” rather than responding to typical architectural contextual issues, attempt to efficiently and inventively accommodate economic strategies. Architecture, as an active process engrained with logics, gains the ability to participate in global politics when these processes are applied to and create material things, buildings. This different type of architecture, based on data, becomes specific to the ‘world’ that it is created from and because of its difference becomes involved with politics (4). Perhaps the interior workings of the building are more important than the building itself, where the building becomes a platform for the networks and processes. Zola describes the world of retail in Paris during the Haussmann rebuilding. Au Bonheurs des Dames is created and operated by the logic of numbers and is at odds with the old way of doing business. The machine of the operations of the store is supported by the spatial organization of the store. Each sales item has its own department within which the customers can get lost and the back office workings, placed in the basement and above the main floor, provide efficient spaces for the circulation of information and objects. In his success as a cheater and an optimist, Mouret is drawn into the politics of the world of retail and the tricks of making money.

Unconventional Commodity

While reading Emile Zola’s Au Bonheur des Dames, what continuously stood out was the concept of the consumer’s experience. The flowing displays of material, the company vans, the ability to purchase everything you needed under one roof all added up to give a mentally stimulating attraction to the consumer, like how a mega mall grabs our attention today over a strip mall or regular sized mall. It is all about experience. These fantastic ideas of little shopping villages and entertainment experiences enclosed under one roof are to a shop-a-holic what a theme park is to a camera-happy tourist. Destiny USA is a great example of this. Once built, why go to Shoppingtown Mall when you could drive an extra few minutes and have an experience at Destiny that you have never had before? And even if a shopper has previously visited Desitny, as is the same with any other mega mall, the size and multitude of attractions within can lead to a different experience every time, taking away from the regular and mundane. Why else is a city such as Las Vegas popular? Location? No. Novelty? Yes. Au Bonheur des Dames offered an experience unheard of and for the women of that time to experience an excitement that broke up the normalcy was a highlight in their everyday lives.

Architecture: the “by-product of data and logistics”

One element I find immensely interesting between Emile Zola’s The Ladies’ Delight and Easterling’s “Introduction” is the way in which Easterling portrays architecture compared to Zola’s highly specific descriptions of Au Bonheur des Dames, which we immediately understand to be a product of architecture born from highly specific spatial organizations and advertising. Easterling describes architecture as “… a technology – the medium of an open platform storing both structure and content. The information it stores, as both data and persuasion, is literally a product, property, or currency.” Although Zola is not fundamentally concerned with architecture in her story, they way in which she purposely expresses the intricate workings and processes which govern the nature of Au Bonheur des Dames puts Easterling’s ideology about data and architecture into perspective. Zola illustrates the store as a fine tuned machine as “it was all organized and regulated with mechanical precision…”( Zola 16), and it is through this that architecture is understood as something beyond form and appearance, but a discipline which is capable of adaptation because it is a “by-product of data and logistics” (Easterling, Keller). Even though Emile Zola does not purposefully write about architecture in her story, by using highly descriptive language she inherently brings to fruition some of the arguments made by Easterling.

Another interesting condition which becomes evident in Zola’s story is the way in which Au Bonheur des Dames uses advertisement and innovative marketing ploys to drive other companies alike out of business. While reading this portion of the story a parallel between the way in which Au Bonheur des Dames is run very clearly relates to the function of ‘big box’ retailers in today’s society. Today these big retailers are capable of offering much lower prices than smaller companies simply because they can afford to buy in large quantities. Companies such as Target, Best Buy, and Staples have in a sense destroyed the possibility for smaller companies to compete because of lower prices combined with innovative marketing and advertisement strategies. In Zola’s story, Au Bonheur des Dames is essentially depicted as one of these ‘big box’ retailers which always has its “…finest articles out, with materials arranged around them, in a veritable fairground display to catch the girls’ eyes” (Zola 26). The strategies and ideologies of this company seem to be the root in which many present day corporations revolve around, and quite possibly even stem from in the future.

Bye Bye Mom & Pop

In reading Emile Zola’s text it becomes apparent that the ideal of the mega mall starts as early as the nineteenth century. The Au Bonheur des Dames shows what happens when the commercial climate for goods and services is pushed to its max. It also shows what happens to the smaller specialty shops that are competing with one another and the Au Bonheur des Dames. They find themselves cutting there prices, and reducing there staff just to compete with the large volume of goods that the Au Bonheur des Dames houses are doing. So what happens to the smaller mom and pop shops when they can no longer compete, do they just close their doors and surrender to the mega mall? From the reading we see that this is not an option for Baudu, who believes this new commercial way of business, is wrong. It is not right to mislead the customer for a profit or is it? How many times have we all went to a store looking for something just to find out that it is no longer available (the get you in the door item). Whatever happened to customer service? It appears that we start to see a glimpse of it’s downfall with Mouret’s sales commission ideal. Does this mean that the sales person will try to sell you as much as possible and not just what you need or what you are specifically looking for? Who knows, but in today’s society it seems that we all want more than what we need. But does where we shop, whether it is the mall or a mom & pop shop change our buying habits? Or is it just the ability to one stop shop for all of our needs, drive us to the mall rather then the local mom & pop shop.

Bad Foundations

One image from the first few chapters of Emile Zola’s novel that stood out the most was the description of Caroline Hedouin’s death. Madame Hedouin death during a construction phase of Bonheur des Dames, greatly alludes to the effect that the store has on its neighboring businesses throughout its profitable existence. Her death occurred in the foundations of the great store, as if Madame Hedouin had been the store’s first victim in its growth from simple store into a competition killer. Madame Baudu’s disdain for the store is all too apparent when she describes that “her blood is under the stones of that shop.” The neighboring store owners who all fear the influence of such an all-encompassing store, build-up the owner, Mouret, and the very building itself, into a beast with an insatiable hunger for more goods to sell and more area to encompass. Even as the casual passerby and neighboring store owners are enthralled in the vast size of the shop, the owner continually feels the size to be insufficient and desires for growth on all fronts. In order for a desired expansion, the store must lay waste to other shops in its path, and its neighboring competition gets becomes crushed under new foundations of an enlarged department of Bonheur des Dames. One can easily draw parallels of this magnitude to the super stores of today, such as Walmart, which offer such an array of eclectic goods that many small specialized stores are put out of business.

Exceptional Sales

The alluded fictional developer logic responsible for the Bonheur de Dames serves as a precedent for the use of commercially driven building strategies where economic, political and spatial effects occur in concert. A facsimile of le Bon Marché (“the good deal”), the Ladies Delight is as much a political force as commercial paradigm. Mouret, like the executives in control of the Golden Resources Mall in Beijing, is attempting to captivate and literally capture an emerging middle class, demanding fees which require a degree of seduction to extract, and creating jobs which subjugate the working class.

These commercial fields, should be recognized as a zones d’ attentes, spaces of legal exception created and supported by the centrifugal economic pull of the super mall. Zola suggests suspicious dealings with regards to the origins of the “oriental” foreign goods, “mosques ransacked” and “palaces emptied” of their craft antiquities (87). More important than the source of the store’s goods are the conditions which draw humans into the ever densifying machine. Those arriving in search of economic opportunity, real or imagined, are quickly pulled to the phantasmagoric lure which seems to satisfy a host of emotional and economic necessities. A prospective inhabitant of the city, Denise procures a citizenship by way of consigning her being to the commercial organism. For Denise there is an illusion of choice, she even has the advantage of reference, which quickly evaporates thanks to the same force which will begrudgingly offer her employment and room.

The Bonheur could be understood as what Hyndman and Mountz describe as exclusive geographies, where a higher governing power is absent or entangled within the governmental/commercial hybrid which mutates and annexes more space, power and individuals. The Bonheur, though less overtly, operates like the contemporary French international airports where foreign refugees are detained by a mixture of commercial and political authority. The store does not ensure a standard of welfare or process of law within its enclosure, employees are paid enough to keep them stationary and dependent. Internal competition, disguised as self determination, is created to enhance sales at the cost relationships and bodily strain. Denise and those like her are quite stuck in vicious machine, collectively supporting the unilateral hegemonic power which ensnares them. “Here there was the continuous purring of a machine at work, the customers shoveled in, heaped in front of the displays and dazzled by goods, before being hurled against the cash desks. And it was all organized and regulated with mechanical precision, a whole nation of women caught up in the power and logic of the turning cogs” (Zola 16).

The New Baths

Nothing groundbreaking, but here it is:

By the sheer scale and spectacle of the enterprise, the role of Bonheur des Dames extends far beyond the mere dissemination of merchandise. As clothing and rugs for the rich and poor alike are consolidated under one roof, the department store ceases to be a specialty shop in that it no longer draws a special clientele. It becomes a destination – no longer just one in a series of stops, but a place where sensory overload (Mouret’s rearrangement of the silk display, for example) induces a kind of manufactured euphoria and drives the customer into a buying frenzy. While a single shop may lure a particular clientele in search of particular merchandise, there is no such concrete demographic for this department store. Classes mix freely within the much larger store, and although Mouret expresses concern over not seeing enough customers “wearing hats,” the department store as a destination places all of its customers, rich or poor, on equal footing. Even if Madame de Boves was unable to afford the same scarves as Madame Marty, she was certainly able to “stroke the same designs” and act as though they were in her price range. It appears as though, at least in this context, the role of Bonheur des Dames as a social beacon for the lower and middle classes outweighs the quotidian need for ladies’ wear that it so inefficiently fulfills (the number of systems and incentives put into effect by the managers seems to actually hinder the purchase of merchandise, which might be more efficiently purchased at a local specialty shop).

Big vs. Small Business

One thing that I find interesting in the first four chapters of Emile Zola’s book is the constant theme of competition and capitalism. Nearly all the struggles that develop between characters are derived from a competitive point of view. Denise’s uncle is in a struggle to compete against the new department store, along with his original competition among other “old style” drapers. His situation is similar to other clothing and goods shops that we are introduced to. The old man that sells umbrellas and canes is in a constant struggle to keep customers although he is mesmerized by the vast space and “trendy” style that the Au Bonheur des Dames brings to the area. This theme of competition is not only confined to external struggles between the Au Bonheur des Dames and other stores. Capitalism and a competitive edge are present inside the store itself. Due to Mouret’s implementation of employee commissions, the employees are constantly in competition with each other to increase their sales percentages and thus increase their daily pay. This struggle between employees also translates to the department scale. The author makes it very apparent that the lace, wool, and silk departments of Au Bonheur des Dames are in a constant race to coarse the customer to their areas. I think this theme is very important when considering Destiny USA’s potential impact on the surrounding Syracuse area. We need to consider some of the threats a mega-mall can impose on the small businesses and communities of the adjacent areas. Although the mega-mall can bring numerous job opportunities to the community, it can also impose be a very threatening force in the area of customer attraction. Why go to the small sushi bar in Armory Square when you can go eat sushi next to an ice climbing wall or a pool of sea creatures? I believe that the balance between improving the economy of Syracuse and total destruction of its financial basis is a very thin line.