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La Belle Époque. The fairy-tale state of mind of the privileged classes occurring between 1890 - 1914. Origins. took place during a period of world peace was the product of a new class that had acquired wealth through the industrial revolution and technological advances - PowerPoint PPT Presentation
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La Belle Époque
The fairy-tale state of mind of the privileged classes occurring between
1890 - 1914
Origins
• took place during a period of world peace
• was the product of a new class that had acquired wealth through the industrial revolution and technological advances
• based on a new kind of order imposed by an insecure privileged class
Characteristics
• Denial of the grim realities of life
• Embrace of manners and etiquette
• Rejection of showing any kind of emotions
• Deification of technology
Dormitory at a Russian factory
Salvation Army “coffins” were used as beds for the destitute.
Poor children were dependent on collectivesoup kitchens.
Children at work under terrible conditions
Welsh mine workers
Ascot
Fashions seen at Ascot, 1905
Sandown
A prim and proper British Edwardian family
The “Gibson Girl” image of the beautiful, well-bred woman with upswept hair and tiny waist was created by the Americancartoonist Charles Dana Gibson and inspired by his wife.
The grim reality of a poor family
The children of the wealthy were brought up by servants and had little contact with their parents.
Diana of Dobsons, a play based on the grind and squalor of the London shop girl. Shop assistants worked long hours for low pay. Their work wasphysically exhausting and demanded considerable concentration as wellas the effort of maintaining an air of politeness.
Chicago’s 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition
The 1900 Paris World’s Fair
Exposition Universelle
The Machine Gallery
National Idiosyncrasies
Characteristics
France
Pursuit of pleasure, culture, and beauty
Paris was the fashion capital of the world
Marcel Proust
• His novel Remembranceof Things Past revealedthat beneath the surfaceof French refinement,there existed all kindsof vulgar and perversebehaviors.
England
Pursuit of power through the colonization of one quarter of the
world
African banana plantation
Queen Victoria King Edward VII (1819 – 1901) (1841-1910)
Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas
• Oscar Wilde refused to play by Victorian rules.• When he publicly came “out of the closet”, he was condemned to jail.
United States
Pursuit of wealth
The Biltmore Estate, Asheville, North Carolina
Consuelo Vanderbilt (1876–1964) was “sold” to the highest title in England.
Forces that Destroyed La Belle Époque
• Anarchism
• Artists and intellectuals
• The suffragette movement
• Technology
• World War I
Anarchism
• Anarchists did not believe in the rule of law.
• As many as five heads of states were assassinated by anarchists.
President McKinley’s assassination (1901).
A police file card of a Russian woman suspectedto be an anarchist
Artists and Intellectuals
• began to question the accepted rules and ideas
• explored the interior world of the psyche as well as the hypocrisy of society
• created their own conventions
Sigmund Freud
Freud’s couch
The Suffragette Movement
• Women wanted equal rights and the right to vote.
• Women protested their dehumanization into men’s “playthings”.
Protestor being led away by bobbies
A suffragette on a hunger strike in prison being force-fed
Emeline Pankhurst,founder of the Britishsuffragette movement
Emily Davison threw herself under the King’s Derby horse Anmer on June 4, 1913.
Technology
• was deified by La Belle Époque
• was the means of living a more leisurely life style
• leveled class barriers when it became more accessible to many
• turned treachorous when used to create the new WW I weaponry
Entrance to the 1900 Paris World Fair
Interior, 1900 Paris World Fair
German three-phase motors and transformer factory
Ford Motors auto workers’ assembly line
The front page of the New York Times, April 16, 1912
World War I
• The reality of the war could not be kept at bay by the privileged classes.
• Many aristocrats and rich people volunteered and were killed.
Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand
The Archduke had just visited the victimsof a bomb intended for him when GavriloPrincip stepped out of the crowd and killedhim.
Gavrilo Princip being apprehendedby Serbian police.
The European Powers, many of whom were related by blood,attended Archduke Ferdinand’s funeral in Vienna.
The reality of World War I
The end of La Belle Époque