The Characters of Muse and Nana Compared

. . . Miss Rooth was light and sharp and direct . . . She attracted crowds to her theatre" ( pile 36-37). She is more than than only when in reciteigent, "capable near of a violent play of mind" ( mob 37). She is "the Tragic reflect" in dissolve because she is so superior in so m each ways that she is virtually unattainable to others, "the actress beyond any one" (James 430).

Above all, as "the great modern personage," Miriam represents the in the buff woman, a woman utterly free and unburdened by well-disposed or self-restrictions which would keep her from expanding her consciousness or her fine art as far as she possibly can, restrictions which other wo custody and men accept for themselves. She is portrayed by others as a spare woman, and she shares this view of herself, as in this passage in which she describes her tidy sum of life and self in comparison to that of Peter:

"He's much(prenominal) a curious mixture," she luxuriously went on; "sometimes I quite lose patience with him. It isn't exactly trying to treat both God and Mammon, but it's muddling up the stage and the domain. The world be hanged! The stage, or anything of that sort---I mean one's artistic conscience, one's true faith---comes jump" (James 44).

Others may see Miriam as something akin to aa angel, but Miriam is more realistic about herself. She has one foot in the supernal world of art, but the other is solidly rooted in the pragmatic considerations of human existence. She

[Nana] didn't requisite to see anybody! Who on earth had saddled her with such a persistent bugger! "Kick them out, the whole lot of them! . . . sodomise that," Nana retorted coarsely. "Men are bastards" (Zola 44-45).

Nana is quite capable of cruelty and til now sadism in her treatment, or mistreatment, of others, particularly the men who long for her and whom she holds in great contempt. On the other hand, she is capable of pure child-like sinlessness in her appreciation of the world:

Zola, Emile. Nana. Oxford: Oxford UP, 1992.

The sterling(prenominal) difference mingled with the two powerful characters, however, is in their ultimate fates, at to the lowest degree in the contexts of the novels.

Whereas Miriam at the end of James' book achieves perhaps her greatest personal and artistic triumph, holding the public in bewilderment at her magnificence (James 430), Nana finally falls victim to the invalidate society out of which she had arisen:

It is not that Nana is a bad person, for she is not. She is merely a product of her sex-mad society, just as Miriam is in part the product of a far more sophisticated social realm. Count Muffat sees Nana in these terms:

Zola introduces us to Nana in her portion as "The Blonde Venus" (Zola 2), in stark personal credit line to the sophisticated and almost mystical introduction by James of Miriam as "The Tragic Muse" and "the great modern personage." James tells us that Miriam is capable of expressing "the truest divinest music that had ever poured from tragic lips" (James 430), in her portrayal of Shakespeare's Juliet. In contrast, Zola shows Nana to be without theatrical talent: "She's got a voice like a corncrake. . . . She's a lump! She doesn't dwell what to do with her hands or her feet" (Zola 4). But Zola has the crass Bordenave tell us that Nana has "something else" (Zola 4). Whereas Miriam presents her sexuality with grace, Nana virtually oozes her sexuality:

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