Nana

“Does a woman need to be able to sing and act? Don’t be so silly, my dear fellow…Nana has something else, for heaven’s sake, and something that makes all the other stuff superfluous.”

Bordenave’s statement about Nana’s abilities in the novel’s opening pages is both accurate about Nana and misleading. On the one hand, it is true that Nana requires no particular acting talent to be beguiling—her inherent sexuality dazzles everyone she encounters. On the other hand, he is mistaken if he thinks she has no other talents. Her ability to persuade, cajole, and set trends is second to none.

“Nobody knew this Nana. Where had she sprung from? Rumours spread, jokes were whispered from one to another. It was a caress, a familiar pet name everyone liked to say. Just to utter the word enlivened the crowd and put them in a jolly mood. Everyone was burning with curiosity, a violent, passionate fever so typical of Parisians. They were desperate to see Nana. One lady had the flounce of her dress torn off, a gentleman lost his hat.”

In this glimpse of the crowd that assembles in the theater lobby for Nana’s debut performance, the reader can see glimpses of the ills in France’s Second Empire society that Zola wants to highlight, even before Nana’s influence has taken a firm hold. They are easily given over to their passions, driven to excessive behavior by something as simple as the sound of a name. They have all the patience and civility of schoolchildren at recess.

“The entire audience was trembling, slipping into a sort of vertigo, weary and excited, overcome by sleepy midnight desires like the inarticulate murmurs from the beds of trysting lovers. And Nana, in the face of this swooning public, […] remained victorious with her marble flesh, her sex strong enough to destroy them all and emerge unscathed.”

Nana’s debut performance as the goddess Venus is an apt foreshadowing of the role she will assume for the rest of the novel: a larger-than-life figure inextricably connected to sex and physical passion, a connection that she sometimes likes and sometimes wants to transcend.