The Ladies Paradise catapults the reader into the present-day world of consumer culture and marketing. It seems as if the store owners of todays Bloomingdales, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Neiman Marcus all read The Ladies Paradise and made it their bible for creating desire for consumer goods. Emile Zola documents how the first department stores in nineteenth-century Paris made shopping into a religion, while he simultaneously woos readers with his gripping love story between the enterprising store owner Octave Mouret and the rags-to-riches heroine Denise Baudu.