ABSTRACT
This chapter focuses on depictions of costume obsession that are surprisingly frequent throughout the Rougon-Macquart. It moves away from a discussion of the erotic and commercial significance of the clothes sold in the Zolian department store towards an investigation of how Zola's protagonists interact with the clothes they wear. The chapter examines the transvestite figures who inhabit the margins of the Rougon-Macquart. It uses 'transvestite' in its most general sense, meaning 'fancy-dressed' or 'disguised' as well as 'cross-dressed'. Emile Zola refuses to accept the existence of homosexual desire. The transvestite seduction scene between Georges and Nana at La Mignotte has often been evoked by critical readers of Nana as evidence of Zola's surprisingly enlightened view of nineteenth-century gender identities. The transvestite uses the clothes of the opposite sex as a visual substitute for the body parts of that sex. Judith Butler's theorization of gender 'performativity' allows for a possible re-reading of Zola's transvestite figures.
