Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- I WAITING FOR THE CONSUMER SOCIETY
- 1 Earning, Yearning and Making Do: Huysmans, Les Sœurs Vatard
- 2 Flâneurs and Shoppers: Huysmans, En ménage
- 3 From Shopping to Schopenhauer: Huysmans, A vau-l'eau
- II ECONOMIES OF CONSUMPTION (1)
- III SMALL SHOPS
- IV BIG STORES
- V ECONOMIES OF CONSUMPTION (2)
- VI REFLECTIONS ON THE CONSUMER SOCIETY
- Conclusion: A Good Buy?
- Bibliography
- Index
2 - Flâneurs and Shoppers: Huysmans, En ménage
from I - WAITING FOR THE CONSUMER SOCIETY
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction
- I WAITING FOR THE CONSUMER SOCIETY
- 1 Earning, Yearning and Making Do: Huysmans, Les Sœurs Vatard
- 2 Flâneurs and Shoppers: Huysmans, En ménage
- 3 From Shopping to Schopenhauer: Huysmans, A vau-l'eau
- II ECONOMIES OF CONSUMPTION (1)
- III SMALL SHOPS
- IV BIG STORES
- V ECONOMIES OF CONSUMPTION (2)
- VI REFLECTIONS ON THE CONSUMER SOCIETY
- Conclusion: A Good Buy?
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
En ménage takes up the story of Cyprien after Céline Vatard has ended their relationship. He bemoans the situation he now finds himself in, having expended his capital in fruitless speculations on women he hoped would inspire him to paint works that would make his fortune:
Et, quand on songe que j'avais trois cents francs de rentes à manger par mois et que j'ai boulotté le capital avec des cocottes, sous le prétexte de mieux les peindre! – je devais regagner avec le tableau ce que me coûtait la peau du modèle […] fichue spéculation! […] Mes toiles ont été refusées à tous les salons et ne se sont pas vendues. (322)
His companion in misfortune is André Jayant, a novelist, recently married, who has found his young wife in bed with another man and has left her to resume his bachelor life. The dominant perspective in this novel is therefore that of the single man in search of creature comforts that marriage seems to offer but signally fails to deliver.
Financial details recur as in Les Sœurs Vatard, but without the same degree of urgency; we are dealing here with rentiers leading the vie de bohème in contrast to the workers' existence in which every sou counts. In general, monetary indications are of a different scale in the universe of these men. A former school friend now earns ‘1,800 francs dans un ministère’ (322).
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Consumer ChroniclesCultures of Consumption in Modern French Literature, pp. 44 - 60Publisher: Liverpool University PressPrint publication year: 2011