She tries to be domestic and kind, but Fontan beats her, then abandons her and she turns to streetwalking. Steiner soon sets her loose and she takes up with Fontan, an actor. Here she also has a brief affair with the penniless student George. Steiner buys her a country house where she entertains other lovers to win more gifts. She exploits the hysteria caused by her nearly nude performance to win Steiner, a wealthy banker. “The Blonde Venus” has bad music and bad actresses, but a new star, Nana, who appears on stage clad only in a diaphanous wrap brings down the house anyway. Nana first appears in the end of L’Assommoir (1877), another of Zola’s Rougon-Macquart series, in which she is portrayed as the daughter of an abusive drunk in the end, she is living in the streets and just beginning a life of prostitution.Īs the book opens, Fauchery, a drama critic, is waiting for the hottest play in Paris to open. Nana, written in 1880, tells the story of Nana Coupeau’s rise from streetwalker to high-class cocotte during the last three years of the French Second Empire.
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