Nana

Though Chapter 5’s subplot with Simonne, Clarisse, and La Faloise is secondary, it exemplifies the gravitational pull of Nana’s world—a world where desire takes precedence over all. While La Faloise entered the narrative as a naïve outsider who knew little about Parisian society, in a few short months he has embroiled himself in a situation where one sex worker dumps him because of his affair with another sex worker.

Zola makes effective use of setting in Chapter 5 as Muffat explores the backstage area of the theater. The narrator describes this experience in overwhelming terms; the narrow hallways and dressing rooms feel tight and claustrophobic thanks to the constant bustle of actors going to and coming off stage. The sights, sounds, and smells around Muffat, especially the feminine ones, overstimulate him. Being so unrelentingly immersed in the sensory world around him drives his usual spiritual concerns from his mind.

The novel’s motif of juxtaposing low- and high-class gatherings to demonstrate their similarities—and thus expose the hypocrisies of social hierarchies continues in these chapters. There are multiple instances where two worlds collide—the upper class with the working class, aristocracy with sex workers. One such moment happens when the actors who portray royals share a glass of champagne with an actual royal. The theater setting emphasizes that both are constantly engaged in performance. Many members of the aristocracy are constantly playing a part: For example, the Marquis de Chouard presents himself as a man of strict morals while spending all his free time chasing sex workers young enough to be his granddaughters. Similarly, when Nana’s party passes Madame Hugon’s party in the countryside, almost everyone in Madame Hugon’s party puts on a show of not knowing Nana and her friends, even though almost all of them came there expressly to see Nana.

The novel is no more kind to those who do not understand social hypocrisy. Rather than portraying Madame Hugon, an honest woman with strict morals, as an aspiration ideal, the narrator dismisses her as simple and naïve. Her home, Les Fondettes, is not a space that allows the pursuit and expression of desire, which makes it a dry and boring location that the novel’s male characters try to flee.

Though male desire in the novel is primarily sexual, female desire is more nuanced and complex, revolving much more around status and social standing than physical pleasure. Nana’s affair with Georges shows that there is a childlike, innocent side to her; she enjoys being with Georges in the country because it reminds her of her simple girlhood dreams of being a wife and mother in a quaint cottage. Her encounter with Irma d’Anglars shows another kind of person she wants to be: someone not just popular but respectable. In contrast, though she has been desperately trying to attract Muffat, her actual sexual experience with him is unwanted and lacking pleasure.