Octave Mouret, Experimental Novelist? Reverse Metafiction in Au Bonheur des Dames

In Émile Zola’s Au Bonheur des Dames, one protagonist (Octave Mouret) tries to “experiment” on the other (Denise Baudu), to corrupt a provincial girl. Yet he and his department store turn out to be transformed by her instead, an example of a purportedly Naturalist work in which the character modifies their environment rather than the opposite. By reading the novel (and its preparatory dossier) in the light of “Le Roman expérimental,” I suggest it as an example of what can be called reverse metafiction. Where Zola had claimed that his essay offered general truths about literary technique and epistemology, it in fact points to key findings about a single fictional text. Denise’s effects on the Bonheur and its owner infuse vaguely Fourierist social theory into a ruthlessly capitalist space, a breakdown of the Naturalist model that anticipates Zola’s utopian turn after the Rougon-Macquart.