Confronting Modernity in Fin-de-Siècle France: Bodies, Minds and Gender

The turn of the twentieth century represented a crossroads in the French experience of modernization, especially in regard to ideas about gender and sexuality. Drawing together prominent scholars in French gender history, this volume explores how historians have come to view this period in light of new theoretical developments since the 1980s. Poised between fin-de-siecle ambivalence about change and the brave new world of the 1920s, the early years of Third Republic represented a crossroads in the French experience of modernization. This volume surveys how the French engaged with these challenges in light of new developments in social and historical theory and historians' efforts to use these tools in novel ways. By covering such topics as women's rights, male honour codes, psychiatry, gastronomy, bohemianism, occultism, and the Dreyfus Affair, it reveals the deep impact that new ways of thinking about gender have had on historical perspectives of this exciting period Front Matter....Pages i-xiii Introduction: Confronting Modernity in Fin-de-Siècle France....Pages 1-14 Front Matter....Pages 15-18 Revising the Sexual Contract: Women’s Citizenship and Republicanism in France, 1789–1944....Pages 19-42 Is the ‘Woman Question’ Really the ‘Man Problem’?....Pages 43-62 Front Matter....Pages 63-63 From aliéné to dégénéré: Moral Agency and the Psychiatric Imagination in Nineteenth-Century France....Pages 67-89 Gastronomy and the Diagnosis of Anorexia in Fin-de-Siècle France....Pages 90-111 Papus the Misogynist: Honor, Gender, and the Occult in Fin-de-Siècle France....Pages 112-129 Front Matter....Pages 131-131 Social Control in Late Nineteenth-Century France: Protestant Campaigns for Strict Public Morality....Pages 135-149 Paternity, Progeny, and Property: Family Honor in the Late Nineteenth Century....Pages 150-168 Shaming Men: Feminist Honor and the Sexual Double Standard in Belle Époque France....Pages 169-191 ‘Capped with Hope, Clad in Youth, Shod in Courage’: Masculinity and Marginality in Fin-de-Siècle Paris....Pages 192-212 Front Matter....Pages 213-213 From Devil’s Island to the Pantheon? Alfred Dreyfus, the Anti-Hero....Pages 217-234 Two Salonnières during the Dreyfus Affair: the Marquise Arconati Visconti and Gyp....Pages 235-249 Conclusion....Pages 250-258 Back Matter....Pages 259-265 "A reassessment of the Third Republic as the first long-term successful French experiment with a democratic republic. Born of violent revolution against church, monarchy, and aristocracy, it was fraught with contradictions between the universalism of human rights and the practical need to deny certain categories of people the rights of citizenship"--Provided by publisher Across history, the ideas and practices of male identity have varied much between time and place: masculinity proves to be a slippery concept, not available to all men, sometimes even applied to women. This book analyses the dynamics of 'masculinity' as both an ideology and lived experience - how men have tried, and failed, to be 'Real Men'. Men at Work explores the cultural portrayal of four essential wartime occupations: agriculture, industry, firefighting and the mercantile marine. In analysing a broad spectrum of wartime media (most notably film, radio and visual culture) it establishes a clear hierarchy of masculine roles in British culture during the Second World War. Exploring how understandings of masculinity were constructed by British First World war servicemen through examination of their personal narratives, including letters home from the front and wartime diaries. This book presents a nuanced investigation of masculine identity in Britain during and after the First World War.