...of consumers

But little by little they had gained experience and assurance. With the almost imperceptible, delicate movements of a bird, the infallible instinct that causes it to sort out exactly what is needed to build its nest, they had succeeded, little by little, in picking up, here and there, from everything that came to hand, bits and scraps which they had put together to build themselves a soft little nest, within which they stayed, well protected, watched over on every side, well sheltered.
It was extraordinary to see with what rapidity, skill and voracious tenacity they caught on the wing, managed to extract from everything, books, plays, films, a quite unimportant conversation, a random phrase, a proverb, a song, pictures, chromos - Childhood, Maternity, Pastoral Scenes, The Joys of Home, or even subway posters and advertisements, the principles laid down by manufacturers of soap powders and face creams ("How to hold a husband..."), the advice of Aunt Annie or Father Soury - it was extraordinary to see how unfailingly, among all the things that came to hand, they seized upon exactly what was needed to spin their cocoon, their impenetrable covering, to fashion this armour in which later on, under the kindly eye of the concierges, they went forth - amid general encouragement, unconquerable, calm and assured: grandmothers, daughters, maltreated women, mothers - standing at doors, pressing with all their weight against doors, like heavy battering rams.
Now and then, when I have been seated next to them at the theatre, without looking at them, while they listened motionless and as though turned to stone beside me, I have sensed the trail left across the entire audience in the wake of the images emanating from the stage or from the screen, images that settle on them like steel filings on a magnetic surface; I longed to rise, to intervene and check these images in their flight, to turn them aside; but they flowed with an irresistible force, straight from the screen onto the women; they clung to them; and I felt the women close beside me, in the darkness of the hall, motionless, silent and voracious, spinning these images into an object destined for their own use.

[Portrait of a Man Unknown, Sarraute, N.]