Questioning the Angel-Monster Dichotomy: Sabine and Nana in Emile Zola’s Novel

Abstract

This essay analyzes the two main female characters in the novel Nana by Emile Zola, with the aim to demonstrate that applying to women the nineteenth century categories of the “domestic angel” and the “fallen woman” is not that simple, since these characters may unexpectedly invert or even merge these categories. Three phases may be distinguished in Nana: the first one refers to the more traditional order that clearly differentiates the angel in the house (Sabine) and the corrosive monster (Nana); the second phase is more chaotic, since the qualities of both characters overlap; and finally, a third phase in which order is restored and Sabine becomes immersed again in her role as domestic angel, while Nana is deathly punished. Even though the social order gets restored, thus saving the morals of the bourgeois society, we witness an attempt to defy these conventional limits, a defiance that opens an alternative, more complex representation of women.