French Society and Culture in Emile Zola
Transcript of French Society and Culture in Emile Zola
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During the nineteenth century the café lifestyle rose to new heights, through
changes in French society, such as the emergence of the middle class and
industrialization. While the century evolved, the café evolved along with it. Though there
had been cafes in France before the year 1800, the café took on a whole new lifestyle
during the nineteenth century. The type of clientele and offerings changed. As France
became more industrialized, cafes grew to be places visible to everyone. With the world
becoming a smaller place, alcohols from the Caribbean and other exotic places were
available. Although the middle class indirectly provided the cafes with money, they did
not approve of their existence. They saw it as a crude way to spend money because it
brought one‟s private life into the public. From this distaste, stemmed the temperance
movement and prohibitionism. In Zola‟s “The Ladies‟ Paradise”, the division of the
classes is clear. The main character, Denise, is a prime example of what the middle class
wanted in a salesgirl. She earned her money honestly, and then spent it on her family. She
didn‟t waste her money on frivolous things, like alcohol. It is also clear how Zola wanted
the café to be depicted. The café was a dark place where all kinds of depravity endured. It
was energetic, but altogether dismal. He counters this image with the bright and vibrant
energy of the department store. The café lifestyle in nineteenth century Paris was one,
which grew from the emergence of the bourgeoisie, and the energy, which it provided for
the city of Paris, was vital.
Cafes existed before the nineteenth century. Infact, they existed more than a
hundred years before the year 1800. Probably the very first café to be a success was Le
Procope. It was supposedly founded in 1675 and it soon became a well-known café
because of its famous visitors: Voltaire, Rousseau, Marat, Thomas Jefferson and
Benjamin Franklin. By the nineteenth century, Victor Hugo, Paul Cézanne and Emile
Zola had become regulars at the café. Cafes came to be a popular place once chocolate,
coffee and tea were beginning to be introduced to cabarets and the like, in the latter half
of the seventeenth century.
Cafes served as a literary forum, as seen in the company kept at many cafes.
Many famous authors and poets spent time there. They could gather all they needed for
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their latest work right there in the café. People coming and going made for interesting
characters and dialogue.
“Part of the pleasure and excitement of café life lies in the bright colors,
the play of life, and the fusion of odors.”(1)
Zola wrote his essay about the Dreyfus affair, “J‟accuse” in the café Durand. Cafes also
played a part in the news world. Newspapers were distributed among the cafes and in
order to be kept up-to-date, one had to spend time conversing with people at a café. Café
dwellers were always the first to know about everything. Artists, writers, scientists,
athletes and others spent time at cafes and the news from all those areas was spread
amongst the customers. The heat that a café generated was more than an apartment wouldgive, and so cafes became like an extension of an apartment. People used it as their living
rooms because of the friendly atmosphere and warmth. One can imagine that a business
meeting would be much more enjoyable in a café than in a cold, dark apartment room.
In the eighteenth century, the alcohol trade was a large part of the economy. Wine
and beer were the most widely consumed drinks in Paris.
“Parisians drank far less liquor than East European societies appear to
have consumed and they drank far more wine than stronger alcohols.”(2)
After tea, coffee and chocolate became available items, cafes could then add things to
their menus. Spiced teas or coffees, brandy and other liqueurs were of demand in Paris.
Beer, wine and brandy were all made in France at the time and could be readily imported
from all corners of France to Paris. Cafes got their name from coffee and it was by far the
most common drink sold in cafes, but the prices were not low at all. When cafes started
to appear, it started out as a place where the elite would come to drink and be social. The
prices were just right for people of middle-class or upper class stature. The poor were
welcome to spend their money in a café, but most of the time stuck to their taverns and
inns during the day. Cafes were dressed up as elegant social drinking parlors, where
mirrors and chandeliers graced the room. It was such luxury that only an elite rich man,
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or artisan, could be expected to be seen there. As with cabarets and other drinking places,
nighttime was the primary time of day for customers.
“Brandy seems to have begun and ended the day. Some police ordinances
suggested that cafes tended regularly to stay open later than the curfew, a
practice that they abhorred. Whatever the reason for this, cafes certainly
figured more prominently after dark than during the day.” (3)
Although cafes started out with iconography, which reinforced the elegance of the elite,
people soon became wary of the behavior that the cafes were supporting. Although the
term alcoholism wasn‟t coined until the mid-nineteenth century, the concerns about
alcoholics and their violent behavior was a topic of discussion in the eighteenth century.The upper classes used drink and drunkenness as an explanation for the destitute
conditions of the lower classes. Drink explained away the reasons why the lower classes
were failures and completely undisciplined people. The people, who spent time at taverns
and especially cafes, were being defined as a dangerous class of people. The poor were
the ones who spent hours a night at the cafes, while the rich still socialized at the same
cafes during the day. City police were always careful of the cafes at night, mostly
because they never abided by the curfew for public drinking places.
The number of cafes grew during the eighteenth century, but didn‟t really boom
until after the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars. In 1825, there were 3,000
cafes in the city of Paris. By 1869, there were 4,000 cafes. And it didn‟t stop there. The
numbers only grew, and peaked during the years between the two World Wars.
“The prodigious amount of alcohol consumed toward the turn of the
century was just one notorious part of the change. In the belle époque the
French not only drank more than ever in their history but also drank more
as a social pastime - in „by far the most drinking places than any other
country in the world‟. By 1900, Paris had an all-time high number of cafes
– 27,000, which, together with wineshops and cabarets gave it more
drinking places than any other major city in the world.” (4)
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By the mid to late nineteenth century, the café was meant for lower class people; the
factory workers. The once beautiful elegant drinking spots, were now dirty and dark; a
part of the underworld of Paris society. They were now on the long boulevards of the
city, where anyone could buy a beer and everyone could see them. The middle class
money involved in the economy provided cafes with all types of alcohol. There were
different types of cafes as well. Some which didn‟t have spiced rum, or some which
specialized in variations of coffee and tea. This variety was opening up a new outlet for
the working class, blue-collar people.
In the wake of industrialization, some changes occurred. Time became regulated
and the day had a specific schedule to it, according to where you worked. Before this,
leisure in general wasn‟t something everyone had in their lives. The rich had time to
spare, which they used to their liking. But once the day had a schedule, the workers could
also have time for leisure.
“Certainly leisure in itself is a product of industrial civilization. Through
mechanization, concentration, and increasing division and organization of
productive processes, a more distinct time for work, as opposed to time off
the job, is created.” (5)
Since Saturdays were payday for 85% of Parisian workers and Sunday was a day off
from work, Saturday nights were the night out for people. Cafes were filled with people
on Saturday evenings and nights, and also holiday evenings. Sunday was a time for going
to church and spending time with families.
But even families were welcome in the café. The café wasn‟t just a place for older
men to wash away their problems with alcohol and women. Increasingly, as stated before,
the café was becoming a place for the lower class, but children could be seen in a café
during the day or early evenings.
“In the faubourgs were many worker cafes that drew few nonworkers.
Habitués played checkers, dominoes, cards, and backgammon, smoked
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and talked, drank black coffee and beer, red wine and absinthe. Wives and
children often came, too, partaking not just of the sociability but also of
the heat and light that were luxuries in the working-class household.
Clients joined in singing, especially the refrains, but festive abandon was
rarely in evidence. Drinks were nursed along for hours, the small sums
available for entertainment being carefully calculated. Most people left by
ten or eleven at night.” (6)
Cafes were also a meeting place for bachelors. These unmarried men often met their
future wives at a café. And the café owner was not only present at some weddings, but
they were seen as respectable people, who made their own living without the help of
upper class money. The growing trend of the lower classes using these public cafes asplaces for parts of their private lives was disturbing to the middle and upper classes.
French upper class society was becoming more private, while the working-class relied
more heavily on street sociability. This created a strain between the classes. The café
became the focal point of the controversies surrounding class division.
The new boulevard culture of Bohemian Paris was said to have a decrease in
bourgeois domesticity. The reality was that the lower classes didn‟t have the home life
that the other classes did have. The hovels that most workers called home were dark, cold
and dreary. The café was bright and warm, a place where people socialized and a sense of
community was prevalent. When one walked into a café, people greeted you and many
were friends you saw on a daily basis, even if you didn‟t work with them. It was this
publicness of one‟s private life that bothered the middle and upper classes.
“In the cafes, Georges Montorgueil testified, there reigned a „kind of
freedom and openness in the American manner‟: men kept their hats on,
dressed as casually as they liked, and smoked cigars. To join the rabble
from time to time was apparently a refreshing flight from the predictable
rituals of a restricted upper class.” (7)
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But not only did the working class frequent cafes merely because they did not wish to go
home, they also enjoyed the luxuries around them in a café. The new feeling of having
their own aspirations to greatness was started in cafes. Along with this pride in having
something they once did not have, came a sense of comfort. Cafes became the place
where gossip started and stopped. When visiting a café, customers felt comfortable
enough to discuss matters that were once confined to the home, such as family troubles or
problems between couples. This shows the emergence of the right to privacy in public
because of changing mores. People felt so at home in a café, that they expected privacy
there like they did at their home. So, the lovers‟ quarrels and arguments that took place in
a café were considered private, although gossip obviously didn‟t stop dead in its tracks.
“This proletarian sense of privacy was not purely personal and individualin the middle-class sense. Instead it had a communal and class basis.” (8)
“The café was a transitional space between the public life of eighteenth
century laboring people and the privacy of the late twentieth century
working class.” (9)
So, the difference between private and public life was becoming blurry and the
middle and upper class disapproved of this change. They also felt offended by the alcohol
devoured by men in cafes. France was not the worst off in terms of drunkenness; England
and the Eastern nations consumed much more alcohol than France. Still, the police were
wary of cafes and the people drifting from one to the other late at night. Some people
became violent and this behavior was completely unacceptable, even to most of the
working class. There were ordinances in each city about curfews and drunkenness. If
someone was very drunk and showed it, they probably spent the night in the jail. And
especially if they were violent and drunk, the police charged them with it as a crime and
they spent more time in jail. Older men of about the age of forty or fifty were the most
likely to be charged with this crime, or crimes relating to it. Women who were prostitutes
or vagrants were the other group most likely to be found in jail because of drunkenness.
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“The invention of the term alcoholism in the middle of the nineteenth
century allowed the middle classes to condemn the insurgency and
hostility of the lower classes with „scientific‟ objectiveness. But even
before then the elites were using drink and its abuses to explain the
impoverished condition of the lower classes in terms of their own failure
and indiscipline.” (10)
The temperance movement, although not prevalent in France, became a cause on
the part of upper class women. Upper class women were the ones who were most
adamant against alcohol and the deviant behavior that followed its usage. They set up
rallies and speeches so that everyone would understand their plight. Upper class men
were also against the café lifestyle. The middle class was a different story. Most of themhad similar opinions to the upper class, but some men were involved in the café lifestyle.
This was called “slumming”. Men in the middle class who enjoyed being with women of
the lower class and spent their time and money on them, just to feel like they were going
against the grain of their class description.
Throughout Zola‟s novel, The Ladies Paradise, there are characters that present
themselves to be historically accurate. Denise, the main character, had troubles in her
young life and had to move to Paris with her two younger brothers. Since she is the oldest
in the family, she must provide for her brothers until they are old enough. She works at a
department store and earns money, enough to make ends meet. She takes responsibility
for everything and doesn‟t waste her money for anything or anyone. She is the perfect
example of what her middle class employer would want for an employee, and what the
middle class wants in women her age and of her status. She earns respect, even though
the gossipmongers keep wagging their tongues because of the love story between her and
her boss. Her boss, Mouret, is a prime example of the middle class man who goes
slumming often. He does his job, but then visits the cafes after work. He spends time with
women of the lower class, as if he were courting them. An older woman, who is known
for being a mistress, believes he wants to marry her, when infact Mouret plans to ask
Denise to marry him. Denise‟s refusal to marry him comes about for many reasons. We
discover her feelings for Mouret are genuine, but she can‟t just say yes. He is a middle-
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class man of some wealth. She is able to marry him, but would it be proper for her to
marry a man who had been known to “slum” often? Probably not. And so, she decides
that it wouldn‟t be right to marry him. He, in the end of course, lets her win and
eventually they do marry, but only after she gets her way.
This story is one that could have played itself out historically. Zola took what he
knew from his life, his history, and put it to words in his novel. The café is mentioned in
the book as an energetic place where Denise does not fit in at all. It‟s a dark energy that
captivates Denise.
“The noise – laughs, calls, the clatter of plates and dishes – was deafening;
the candles were flaring and guttering in the draught from the windows,
while moths were fluttering about in the air warmed by the smell of foodand cut through by sudden gusts of icy wind.” (11)
“Denise, who detested noise, smiled none the less, tasting the joy of no
longer thinking in the midst of all this noise.” (12)
Other characters show variety in the café and alcohol lifestyle. Hutin, a young man who
also works at the department store where Denise works, is often seen at cafes and
restaurants. He is the stereotype of a younger man who spends more time at cafes than at
his job. Denise is fascinated with Hutin and the chaos that is his life. When Denise is seen
with Hutin, her reputation is discussed among all the other men who work at the
department store. They talk about trivial things that might or might not be true. Even
though this is idle gossip, it is enough to get her fired from her job. Gossip continues to
surround her when Mouret hires her back, giving her a higher position in the store.
Lhomme is also another man “slumming” it often.
“It was indeed young Lhomme, surrounded by three dubious-looking
women: an old lady in a yellow hat who had the vulgar appearance of a
procuress, and two girls under age, little girls of about thirteen and
fourteen, swaying their hips, and embarrassingly insolent. He was already
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very drunk, and was banging his glass on the table and talking of thrashing
the waiter if he didn‟t bring some liqueurs immediately.” (13)
Lienard and Deloche, also, were men who were more normal than any others. They spent
time with each other, at work and at the cafes, but because they were not wealthy middle
class men it was expected of them.
“After work they spent most of their time at the Café Saint-Roch. Empty
during the day, at about half-past eight this café would fill up with a great
crowd of shop assistants, the crowd let out into the street through the big
doorway in the Place Gaillon. From then on, there was a deafening noise
of dominoes, laughter, and shrill voices, bursting out in the midst of thethick pipe smoke. Beer and coffee flowed. Seated in the left-hand corner
Lienard would ask for the most expensive drinks, while Deloche made do
with a glass of beer which he took four hours to consume.” (14)
All these descriptions are historically accurate. Zola did a very good job to
include details that help you understand what it was like to visit a café. Zola includes the
class division surrounding the café, as well as every other topic relevant to nineteenth
century Paris. The facts shown previously support his novel and the details. One can take
Zola and use it as historical fact almost, because it is so accurate. Zola uses these details
to show how different life was for the lower classes compared to the upper classes. The
café, as earlier stated, had a dark energy. But the vibrancy of the department store was
also important to Paris life. Both were vital to the energy of the city. This duality gave the
city something special, something that no other city had. For this reason, when we hear
the word café, we automatically think of Paris. Paris had the most cafes, more than any
other city, but yet it was the atmosphere that exuded from this lifestyle that pervaded the
city with its energy. The café has become a cultural icon for France, even if at first it
started out as something thought of as disgusting and bawdy. France could not be thought
of the same way if there weren‟t any cafes. The evolution of the café and its lifestyle it
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provided for the society is incomparable. It wasn‟t a war, or a coup d‟etat, but it was a
revolution of sorts. A gradual revolution of the culture and society.
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Endnotes
1 - page 9 from Literary Cafes of Paris
2 - page 205 from Public Drinking and Popular Culture in 18 th Century Paris
3 - pages 170-71 from Public Drinking and Popular Culture in 18 th Century Paris
4 - page 28 from Pleasures of the Belle Époque: Entertainment and Festivity in turn of the
Century France
5 - page 123 from The Emergence of Leisure
6 - page 97 from Pleasures of the Belle Époque: Entertainment and Festivity in Turn of
the Century France
7 - page 93 from Pleasures of the Belle Époque: Entertainment and Festivity in Turn of
the Century France8 - page 55 from The World of the Paris Café: Sociability among the French Working
Class
9 - page 58 from The World of the Paris Café: Sociability among the French Working
Class
10 - page 10 from Public Drinking and Popular Culture in 18 th Century Paris
11 - pages 143-44 from The Ladies Paradise
12 - page 144 from The Ladies Paradise
13 - page 144 from The Ladies Paradise
14 - page 282 from The Ladies Paradise
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Bibliography
1. Brennan, Thomas - Public Drinking and Popular Culture in Eighteenth Century
Paris, Princeton University Press, copyright 19882. Fitch, Noel Riley - Literary Cafes of Paris, Starrhill Press, copyright 1989
3. Haine, W. Scott – The World of the Paris Café: Sociability among the FrenchWorking Class, 1789 – 1914, Johns Hopkins University Press, copyright 1996
4. Harrison, Brian – Drink and the Victorians, Faber and Faber, copyright 1971
5. Marrus, Michael – The Emergence of Leisure, Harper and Row, copyright 1974
6.
Oberthur, Mariel – Cafes and Cabarets of Montmartre, Peregrine Smith Books,copyright 1984
7. Rearick, Charles – Pleasures of the Belle Époque: Entertainment and Festivity inTurn of the Century France, Yale University Press, copyright 1985
8. Zola, Emile – The Ladies Paradise, Oxford University Press, copyright 1995
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The Evolution of the Café and Alcohol inBohemian Paris
Elizabeth ZirkHistory 235Chalmers
November 12, 2001