This section contains 220 words (approx. 1 page at 300 words per page) |
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Nana, Emile Zola's 1880 novel about an actresscourtesan, describes the influence of the. demimondaine on the dress of middle- and upper-class women:
Her success, was sudden and decisive, a swift rise to fame in the garish light of lunatic extravagance and the wasteful follies of beauty. She at once became queen among the most expensive of her kind. . . .When she drove along the boulevards in her carriage, people would turn around and tell one another :who she was with all the emotion of a nation saluting its sovereign, while she lolled back in her flimsy dresses, smiling gaily under the rain of little golden curls which fell around the blue of her made-up eyes and the red of her painted lips. And the remarkable thing was that that buxom young woman, who was so awkward on the stage, so comical when she tried...
This section contains 220 words (approx. 1 page at 300 words per page) |
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