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 7-8Chapter Summaries & Analyses

Chapter 7 Summary

Three months later, Muffat paces outside the theater. His affair with Nana has continued, but she seems disinterested in him, and he has caught her in several lies. As he suspects, she is sick of him. Also, because she manages her money so poorly, she is still in debt despite having been paid by her many rich lovers.

On her way into a café, Nana runs into Daguenet, who tells her he is planning to marry Estelle because of her large dowry. He also reveals that Sabine and Fauchery are having an affair. At her house that evening, Nana undresses and studies her body in the full-length mirror, a ritual she performs every day, while Muffat reads the latest article Fauchery has written about her in the Figaro titled “La Mouche d’Or,” meaning “The Golden Fly.” It is a declaration that Nana’s wanton sexuality is “rotting the aristocracy,” and describes her as “a fly which sucks death from the carrion you are wont to see along the roads and which […] poisons men simply by flying in through the windows of palaces and landing on them” (170). Watching her admire herself in the mirror, Muffat is both attracted to her and disturbed, feeling that the article is right.

After hinting about Sabine’s affair unsuccessfully, Nana finally delivers the news outright. In a rage, Muffat physically attacks her. She apologizes for telling him, but he storms out. He walks to Fauchery’s apartment, planning to kill the lovers, but then decides instead to wait and see if Sabine comes out. Eventually, he loses the will to get a definite answer and wanders off. He enters a church, but the interior is cold, dark, and empty; he hears no answer to his fervent prayers. In despair, he walks back to Nana’s house.

When he returns, Nana is furious: She thought she had finally gotten rid of him. She tells him to leave, threatening to publicize their affair if he will not, but in response he merely offers her more money. Just then, Steiner enters with the 1,000 francs she requested to pay an overdue bill. She throws the money on the ground and yells that she is sick of them both. Even then, they will not leave, so she resorts to flinging her door open and revealing that Fontan, her fellow actor, is in her bedroom. Finally sufficiently insulted and disgusted, Steiner and Muffat leave. Muffat arrives at his house just as Sabine does, both of them disheveled.

Chapter 8 Summary

Nana sells many of her possessions and moves into a smaller house with Fontan, with whom she has fallen madly in love. Nana is happy, even if a little annoyed that Steiner is selling the country house he bought her to Labordette.

After three weeks of perfect happiness, she runs into her former hairdresser Francis, who reports that Muffat has moved on to Rose Mignon and is telling people that he literally kicked Nana out. She denies this version of events vehemently. Francis entreats her not to throw her life away.

Later, Nana and Fontan see a play and end up arguing about the new young actress in it; Nana will not admit that she is beautiful, which annoys Fontan. When Nana repeatedly chides him about the cake crumbs he has gotten in their bed, Fontan slaps her. She is stunned and hurt but forgives him by morning.

From this point forward, Fontan beats Nana regularly. Though frightened of him, she still loves him. At the market one day, she runs into her old friend Satin. The two resume their friendship and Nana takes refuge at Satin’s apartment when necessary, where they “recount their tales of blows, their heads full of the same stupid facts repeated ad infinitum, as they gave themselves up to the warm, comforting feeling of talking about their outrageous treatment” (197). One day, Satin convinces Nana to go to dinner with her to Laure’s, which Nana quickly realizes is a popular lesbian spot. At first, she feels somewhat disgusted and hopes she will not see anyone familiar, but Satin talks her into a more open-minded attitude.

When Fontan finds out that they only have 7,000 of their original 17,000 francs left after living together only three months, he hoards all the remaining money and only gives Nana occasional small amounts. Forced to earn more to contribute to the household to his satisfaction, Nana goes back to sex work—not as a courtesan, having long-term affairs with wealthy men as she did with Steiner, Muffat, and the Prince, but as a lower-tier sex worker who advertises herself on street corners for one-night encounters. Meanwhile, Fontan’s beatings continue. Nana’s aunt, Madame Lerat, tells her to leave Fontan and live at Madame Lerat’s. Nana also runs into Labordette, who, like Francis, tries to convince her to give up this life, telling her about a role in Bordenave’s new play—a fact that Fontan has conveniently forgotten to mention.

That night, Fontan locks Nana out. When he finally opens the door, he reveals he is sleeping with the young actress from the play they saw together. Nana runs to Satin, and the pair get a room in a lodging house. Satin comforts her, and the two begin kissing in a way that suggests Nana is about to have her first sexual encounter with a woman, but just then police arrive in the building. To avoid getting arrested and put on a sex worker registry, which would obligate her to regular medical exams enforced by the state, Nana escapes out the window. Satin is not so lucky, and police drag her and many other sex workers outside. Nana accepts Madame Lerat’s offer and takes shelter at her house, deciding to leave Fontan for good.

Chapters 7-8 Analysis

Muffat’s and Steiner’s repulsion at Nana’s affair with Fontan betrays a deep irony in their relationships with her. They are insulted because he is just an actor, not a wealthy or aristocratic member of the upper class. They both want Nana to be faithful to them—they want to pretend that she desires them and isn’t just with them for their money. When they see her with someone significantly poorer, they are offended, betraying that they always know in the back of their minds that their only benefit to Nana is financial.

Muffat’s hypocrisy is of a different caliber than that of the novel’s other upper-class men. A sexually repressed and conservatively religious man, Muffat uses his ostensible piety to hide his misogyny and aggressive impulses. Muffat’s sudden rage upon hearing about Sabine’s affair, rage that he turns into physical violence, is not the first time he has had such an outburst. He nearly raped Nana at her house in the countryside, only stopping because of Steiner’s sudden appearance. This is the first serious indication Zola gives that sex workers like Nana face the near-constant danger from men who think they never have a right to say no because of their social position and gender.

Nana’s vulnerability is fully revealed in her disastrous relationship with Fontan. Understanding of domestic violence has dramatically shifted since Zola’s time, and contemporary readers will find the way Zola describes Nana and Satin’s discussions about their abuse even more deeply disturbing than his readers would have. Zola shows them having fun describing the details of their beatings, as if the pleasure they take in comparing trauma makes up for the pain and fear they live with every day. For Nana and Satin, mordant humor and camaraderie may be the only ways to cope with the abuse they experience; however, for Zola’s narrator, their inability to escape their situations means that their misfortunes are largely their own faults. Still, the description is also surprisingly insightful: Despite the many warnings of others, Nana finds it hard to leave Fontan—a dynamic that rings true in modern conceptions of survivors’ trauma. Similarly, while many contemporary readers may not attach any moral judgment to Nana and Satin’s affair, Zola uses it as a sign of Nana’s degeneracy, that she is slipping ever further into an abyss of amorality and taking everyone in her orbit with her.