Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-745bb68f8f-v2bm5 Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2025-01-13T18:06:48.047Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
This chapter is part of a book that is no longer available to purchase from Cambridge Core

2 - Flâneurs and Shoppers: Huysmans, En ménage

from I - WAITING FOR THE CONSUMER SOCIETY

David H. Walker
Affiliation:
University of Sheffield
Get access

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 Chronicles
Cultures of Consumption in Modern French Literature
, pp. 44 - 60
Publisher: Liverpool University Press
Print publication year: 2011

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×