The Ladies′ Paradise
Write a commentary on the following extract: The shop retained its musty smell, its half-light, in which the old-fashioned way of business, good-natured and simple, seemed to be weeping at its neglect. But what fascinated Denise was the Ladies’ Paradise on the other side of the street, for she could see the shop-windows through the open door. The sky was still overcast, but the mildness brought by rain was warming the air in spite of the season; and in the clear light, dusted with sunshine, the great shop was coming to life, and business was in full swing. Denise felt that she was watching a machine working at high pressure; its dynamism seemed to reach to the display windows themselves. They were no longer the cold windows she had seen in the morning; now they seemed to be warm and vibrating with the activity within. A crowd was looking at them, groups of women were crushing each other in front of them, a real mob, made brutal by covetousness. [unique_solution]And these passions in the street were giving life to the materials: the laces shivered, then drooped again, concealing the depths of the shop with an exciting air of mystery; even the lengths of cloth, thick and square, were breathing, exuding a tempting odour, while the overcoats were throwing back their shoulders still more on the dummies, which were acquiring souls, and the huge velvet coat was billowing out, supple and warm, as if on shoulders of flesh and blood, with a heaving breast and quivering hips. But the furnace-like heat with which the shop was ablaze came above all from the selling, from the bustleat the counters, which could be felt behind the walls. There was the continuous roar of the machine at work, of customers crowding into the departments, dazzled by the merchandise, then propelled towards the cash-desk. And it was all regulated and organized with the remorselessness of a machine; the vast horde of women were as if caught in the wheels of an inevitable force. Since the morning Denise had felt herself being tempted. She was bewildered and attracted by this shop, which looked so vast to her, and in which she saw more people in an hour than she had seen at Cornaille’s in six months; and in her desire to enter it there was a vague fear, which completed her seduction. At the same time her uncle’s shop made her ill at ease. She felt an irrational disdain, an instinctive repugnance for this icy little place where the old-fashioned methods of business still prevailed. All her sensations, her anxious entry, her relations’ sour welcome, the depressing lunch in the dungeon-like darkness, her long wait in the sleepy solitude of the old house doomed to decay – all this was combining to form a veiled protest, a passionate desire for life and light. And, in spite of her kindheart, her eyes kept turning back to the Ladies’ Paradise, as if the salesgirl in her felt the need to go and warm herself before the blaze of this huge sale.