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

Chapters 3-4Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 3 Summary

Comte Muffat and his wife Sabine hold a salon at their imposing ancestral home every Tuesday evening. Though Muffat’s mother decorated the house coldly and austerely, Sabine has no plans to redecorate, ceding to the traditions of her husband’s family. The assembled guests include many prominent society women, Steiner, a well-known libertine and racehorse owner named Comte Xavier de Vandeuvres, and an older man known for his strict Catholicism named Théophile Venot.

In anticipation of a grand world’s fair that will be held in Paris later that year, the guests discuss which prominent European royalty might attend. A debate breaks out about the merits of the King of Prussia and one of his right-hand men, statesman Otto von Bismarck. (Zola’s readers would have seen this conversation as dramatically ironic, since war between France and Prussia would break out two years later.)

Soon, Fauchery and La Faloise arrive. Fauchery is there on a mission from Nana: to invite Muffat to a dinner party at her house the following evening. He knows it is extremely unlikely that Muffat will accept, but he has promised to ask. Fauchery quickly finds out that Steiner and Vandeuvres have also been invited, and Vandeuvres is trying to find men he can invite who will be sure to bring women. Fauchery and La Faloise turn their attention to Comtesse Sabine, whom they deem attractive, if cold and unsexual. Fauchery tells La Faloise a rumor that Muffat was a virgin when he married, which the men find extremely amusing.

Georges Hugon arrives with his mother. Madame Hugon is a kind, naïve woman who has been friends with Sabine’s family for decades. When Georges hears some of the men talking about the party at Nana’s, he informs them that he has also been invited. Finally, Fauchery embarks on his errand, with Vandeuvres in tow to help. When the two men extend the invitation to Muffat, he first claims he does not know Nana, but when they remind him he paid her a visit, he explains that it would not be appropriate for him to attend a party at her house. Sabine’s father, the Marquis de Chouard, arrives, and Vandeuvres smugly implies that he is probably late because he has been living up to his reputation of sleeping around with young women.

The men who plan to attend the party the next night leave, agreeing to meet at Nana’s at midnight, while the remaining guests continue their discussion of Bismarck and the possibility that he will declare war on France in the near future.

Chapter 4 Summary

The evening after Sabine’s salon, Nana and Zoe anxiously prepare for the dinner party. Daguenet and Georges are the first to arrive, so she invites them into her dressing room to help her prepare.

Other guests include Fauchery, La Faloise, Steiner, Vandeuvres, Mignon, and Labordette. With them are women who will recur regularly throughout the rest of the novel: Rose Mignon, Blanche de Sivry, Caroline Héquet, Léa de Horn, Tatan Néné, Maria Blond, Lucy Stewart, Louise Violaine, Clarisse Besnus, and Gaga. The women enter excitedly, anxious to display good manners. Even Bordenave deigns to appear with one of his actresses, Simonne Cabiroche.

When Fauchery arrives, Nana is annoyed to hear that Muffat is not coming, suspecting that Fauchery deliberately withheld the invitation. As dinner approaches, Nana realizes with irritation that there are more than her planned 25-30 guests. They barely fit around the table, which creates a strained atmosphere with little conversation. Finally, the women start a conversation about their children. Daguenet explains to a confused Georges that all the women present are sex workers, many of them having come from low-class families. The conversation then moves on to the upcoming world’s fair, the King of Prussia, and Otto von Bismarck, just as it did at Sabine’s salon.

As some guests get progressively drunker, petty arguments break out: Rose is upset that Nana is flirting with Steiner, Lucy is upset that Rose is flirting with Fauchery, and Clarisse is upset that Gaga is flirting with La Faloise. The men jab at each other, too: a drunken soldier named Foucarment teases Labordette about being effeminate and La Faloise casts accusations about his missing handkerchief.

Meanwhile, Nana grows increasingly upset, feeling that her guests are not respecting her in her own home with their boorish behavior. She sends them all to another room for coffee while she sulks in her bedroom. Vandeuvres eventually finds her there. In response to her complaints about Muffat’s absence, Vandeuvres tells her there was never any chance that Muffat would come, given his extreme religiosity. She eventually comes out of her room and finds the guests drunk as morning approaches. Some of the young men are pouring champagne and liquor into her piano.

As the guests finally start filing out, Nana offers herself to Steiner, who has become more and more interested in her over the course of the party. Abruptly changing her mind, however, she instead decides she wants to go out for a glass of milk. Annoyed but wanting to stay on her good side, Steiner comes along frustrated.

Chapters 3-4 Analysis

Chapters 3 and 4 juxtapose an upper-crust society salon at the home of a courtly aristocrat with a dinner party at a sex worker’s apartment, showing that the two are more similar than readers might expect. Many of the men at Nana’s party are also present at Sabine’s salon. The same topics of conversation—the upcoming World’s Fair and the King of Prussia and Otto von Bismarck—spring up at both gatherings. The same lascivious gaze with which the men objectify the sex workers at Nana’s party is present at Sabine’s salon, where Fauchery, Vandeuvres, and La Faloise assess Sabine’s attractiveness. The chapters make it easier to believe that Nana will be able to infiltrate the top of Parisian society by mocking the pretentions of the elite by comparing them to a déclassé gathering the elite would scorn to attend.

At Nana’s dinner party in Chapter 4, the reader can see two elements of the narrative that will continue to be relevant for the rest of the story. First, a central component of Nana’s character is her desire to be a respectable woman. Her party is meant as a stepping stone toward this goal—she is reaching for the kind of gathering Sabine’s salon represents. When her guests proceed to get drunk and disorderly, Nana is angry that they are not treating her home the same way they would treat, for instance, Sabine’s. Little does she realize that her friends and acquaintances will never consider her respectable, however she decorates, dresses, or speaks, because they know she comes from poverty and earns money as a sex worker.

Second, Chapters 3 and 4 perfectly exemplify Zola’s handling of the novel’s huge cast of secondary characters. Sabine’s and Nana’s guests are mainly flat characters, each with one identifiable characteristic: Vandeuvres is clever and cunning; Georges is eager; Tatan Néné is gullible; Rose Mignon is jealous of Nana, etc. For the most part, these characters are interchangeable—all the men are under Nana’s spell, and all the women share her lifestyle. Their interchangeability is underscored by how frequently they change partners: The men are constantly moving from one kept mistress to another, while the women in these arrangements are constantly bored of or frustrated by their current partner. The indiscriminate pairings are a microcosm of Zola’s view of Parisian society in the Second Empire, where regardless of degree of wealth, people are driven by the same desires and appetites.