Nana

Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 1880

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Summary

Background

Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapters 1-2

Chapters 3-4

Chapters 5-6

Chapters 7-8

Chapters 9-11

Chapters 12-13

Chapter 14

Character Analysis

Themes

Symbols & Motifs

Important Quotes

Essay Topics

Character Analysis

Nana

As the novel’s protagonist and anti-hero, Nana is nuanced character who primarily represents unchecked female sexuality and the unquenchable power of desire. The daughter of poor parents, one of whom died of alcoholism and the other of starvation, she has always yearned for more. In childhood, she dreamt of seemingly simple pleasures—a partner to love, a simple house in a pastoral setting—but even this fantasy betrays her longing for material comfort. As an adult, her first tastes of luxury give her an insatiable appetite for conspicuous consumption, which in her mind puts her ever closer to her most elusive wish: to be mistaken for a highborn lady. She fails to realize the utter impossibility of this dream. Assuming that respectability is something she can achieve with the right performance—the right clothes, the right walk, the right home décor, she approaches her whole life as a performance. Though the novel confirms that the upper-class women she admires are also consummate actors, their kind of role playing is not accessible to Nana.

Just as she is lost in her desire for upward mobility, Nana is also a locus of irresistible sexual allure. This function of her character is made clear at the very beginning of the novel when she portrays Venus, the goddess of love, in Bordenave’s play. Even she herself is surprised and captivated by the perfection of her body, examining it in the mirror every night and dreading its eventual decomposition in death. By embodying rampant sexuality, she bears the symbolic weight of her society’s sexual sins, despite the fact that almost all the men we meet in the novel are already embroiled in liaisons before they meet her. Zola connects Nana’s excessive sexuality to the excesses of the Second Empire, including its rampant material consumption and preference for ornate luxuries.

Throughout the novel, Nana proves that setbacks and ridicule only fuel her to prove her doubters wrong. The narrator describes her as stupid on several occasions, but she has an extreme social intelligence that allows her to manipulate and charm almost everyone with whom she interacts. No one can stay mad at her for long, and no one but Fontan can bring themselves to say no to her. After suffering Fontan’s abuse, she commits herself to never getting attached to a man again so that she can never be victimized in the same way. Similarly, when the public mocks her performance as the duchess in her second play at Bordenave’s theater, she successfully dedicates herself to becoming more popular and in-demand than ever.

Comte Muffat de Beuville

Despite the long trail of ruin she causes throughout the book, Nana is not a malevolent person. Though she fantasizes about revenging herself on men after Fanon’s abuse, she does not sit down and plot out the demise of any of the men she destroys; instead, they fall into ruin because they are unable to resist her. Nana’s great skill and great flaw is that she does not care what happens to the men who pay her for sex: Though she has moments of great affection for several of them—Georges, Daguenet, even Muffat at times—she never thinks of them as real people with lives that go on after she finishes with them. Even events like the deaths of Georges and Vandeuvres fail to leave a lasting impression on her because she thinks of her lovers as supporting characters in a play in which she stars.

Count Muffat, Nana’s most prominent victim, is a direct contrast to Nana. She is low-born, but he is a member of the French court, a chamberlain to the Empress. Her apartment is filled with as many gaudy ornaments as she can afford, while his mansion is cold, spare, and austere. Just as she barely gives a thought to spirituality and religion, so he has a reputation as a pious Catholic. She is a licentious, sexually promiscuous sex worker, whereas he represses his own sexuality so much that he barely allows for sex in his marriage. It comes as no surprise that his affair with Nana becomes an outlet for his many decades of restraint.

The novel forces readers to consider where to place their sympathies when it comes to Muffat and Nana’s relationship. It is tempting to feel sorry for Muffat because the novel makes him seem powerless to resist Nana’s will; however, readers would do well to remember that his political, economic, and social power is orders of magnitude higher than hers—and that several times in the novel, he contemplates or enacts violence against her, planning to rape her at her house in the countryside, and throwing her to the floor and almost stomping on her when she reveals Sabine’s affair. His priggishness hides great reserves of anger alongside the latent sexuality Nana unleashes.

Because Muffat begins in such an elevated position, the depths to which he eventually descends seem the lowest in the novel. He allows Nana to sexually degrade him, forcing him to imitate an animal and destroying his chamberlain uniform as foreplay. Though he feels guilt about it, he utterly forsakes his spiritual values to be with her. There seems to be no bottom to his masochism: He spends his vast fortune on Nana and tolerates her open affairs with Satin and Georges. Finally, Nana manages to find his breaking point: Sleeping with his father-in-law, a man who socially bullies Muffat and is so old and lecherous that his presence in Nana’s bed repulses and shocks Muffat.

Ultimately, Muffat is Nana’s only lover who experiences any kind of redemption. He repents and returns to his family, ready to accept the consequences of his actions. Those consequences are great: Separated from his fortune, dismissed from court, and sued by his own daughter, his life is only a shadow of what it once was. He is back to being at peace with himself and God, however. Moreover, in the novel’s final chapter, he is the only one of her assembled former lovers who seems truly grieved by her death. Despite the unmitigated disaster of their relationship, he did genuinely care for her.