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



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,



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)



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



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)



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.



“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-



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



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



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.



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





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



The Evolution of the Café and Alcohol inBohemian Paris

Elizabeth ZirkHistory 235Chalmers

November 12, 2001

French Society and Culture in Emile Zola

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