The New Biography: Performing Femininity in Nineteenth-Century France (Studies on the History of Society and Culture) (Volume 38)

The New Biography looks at the life stories of eight famous women in nineteenth-century France who became public figures even though they lived in a society that did not encourage women to speak out publicly. All of these women—activists, writers, and philosophers—became controversial figures who challenged conventional notions of femininity in their time. By showing how these women deliberately created their public lives, Jo Burr Margadant and her colleagues demonstrate the rich rewards of the new methods in biography. In her introduction Margadant gives a brilliant explanation of the new biography and how it fits into recent and current debates about the writing of history. Each essay that follows connects the lives of the women it discusses with major themes in French history. The famous activist Flora Tristan, the feminist journalist Marguerite Durand, and a leading advocate of birth control, Nelly Roussell, are just a few of the fascinating women brought to life in this book. Because these stories often expose the cracks in what has been seen as a monolithic separation of gendered spheres in nineteenth-century bourgeois France, they challenge historians to rethink assumptions about the history of this period. The New Biography thus joins a body of work that brings women from the margins of the historical record into history's mainstream.

The New Biography looks at the life stories of eight famous women in nineteenth-century France who became public figures even though they lived in a society that did not encourage women to speak out publicly. All of these women—activists, writers, and philosophers—became controversial figures who challenged conventional notions of femininity in their time. By showing how these women deliberately created their public lives, Jo Burr Margadant and her colleagues demonstrate the rich rewards of the new methods in biography.

In her introduction Margadant gives a brilliant explanation of the new biography and how it fits into recent and current debates about the writing of history. Each essay that follows connects the lives of the women it discusses with major themes in French history. The famous activist Flora Tristan, the feminist journalist Marguerite Durand, and a leading advocate of birth control, Nelly Roussell, are just a few of the fascinating women brought to life in this book.
Because these stories often expose the cracks in what has been seen as a monolithic separation of gendered spheres in nineteenth-century bourgeois France, they challenge historians to rethink assumptions about the history of this period. The New Biography thus joins a body of work that brings women from the margins of the historical record into history's mainstream.

Frontmatter List of Illustrations (page vii) Preface (page ix) Introduction: Constructing Selves in Historical Perspective (Jo Burr Margadant, page 1) The Duchesse de Berry and Royalist Political Culture in Postrevolutionary France (Jo Burr Margadant, page 33) "Playing the Princess": Flora Tristan, Performance, and Female Moral Authority during the July Monarchy (Susan Grogan, page 72) Republican Women and Republican Families in the Personal Narratives of George Sand, Marie d'Agoult, and Hortense Allart (Whitney Walton, page 99) Clotilde de Vaux and the Search for Identity (Mary Pickering, page 137) Acting Up: The Feminist Theatrics of Marguerite Durand (Mary Louise Roberts, page 171) Private Life, Public Image Motherhood and Militancy in the Self-Construction of Nelly Roussel, 1900-1922 (Elinor A. Accampo, page 218) Bibliography (page 263) Contributors (page 285) Index (page 287) The New Biography looks at the life stories of eight famous women in nineteenth-century France who became public figures even though they lived in a society that did not encourage women to speak out publicly. All of the these women -- activists, writers, and philosophers -- became controversial figures who challenged conventional notions of femininity in their time. Their stories are therefore particularly well suited to the philosophical premises and narrative strategies associated with the experimentation currently under way in biographical writing. By showing how these women deliberately created their public lives -- how they "fashioned" themselves into celebrities -- Jo Burr Margadant and her colleagues demonstrate the rich rewards of the new methods in biography. 'The New Biography' looks at the life stories of eight famous women in 19th century France who became public figures even thought they lived in a time that did not encourage women to speak out. The subjects include Flora Tristan and Nelly Roussel After an exceedingly shaky start, interrupted by the brief return of Napoleon in 1815, the restored Bourbon dynasty managed to hold onto the throne of France for a mere decade and a half.