Power Dressing: The Sartorial Politics of Dirt in Zola’s Son Excellence Eugène Rougon

Abstract

ABSTRACT Zola’s 1876 novel Son Excellence Eugène Rougon explores power in its myriad forms in Second Empire Paris. Scholarly discussions, however, have sidestepped the novel’s exploration of soft power. Clorinde Balbi, Rougon’s spurned lover, demonstrates an ability to persuade through non-coercive means by deploying a peculiar arsenal of sartorial strategies including wearing wrinkled or muddy clothing. In Le Mal propre (2008), Michel Serres argues that through dirt we appropriate space and that it ‘signe la volonté de puissance.’ Clorinde’s clothing from her urban sojourns visibly manifests her appropriation of Parisian space. Dirt, in other words, is an instrument of soft power.