Women in Nineteenth Century France

Dr Chris Pearson

Lecture outline

• Women’s history: an overview

• Women and domesticity

• Women and work

• Female agency

How subordinated were women in nineteenth century France?

How much agency were French women able to exert in the nineteenth century?

Did the political, social, and economic position of French women improve, worsen or stay the same by the end of the nineteenth century?

Women’s history

• Until 1970s, women largely “hidden from history”

• The rise of women’s history, inspired by:

“History from below”

Feminism

Influx of female students into universities

“Her-story”

• Women and work

• The history of feminism

• Family life

• Women and the labour movement

• “Marginal women” (such as prostitutes

• Neglected women artists and writers.

From women’s history to gender history: Joan W. Scott

Gender history

• “Sex” is a given, determined by biology

• “Gender” is a social, cultural, and linguistic construct.

• Notions of “masculinity” and “femininity” change over time, and are often constructed against each other

‘Masculinisme’

• ‘A pervasive masculinisme, underpinned by centuries of monarcho-clerical influence, had arisen to ensnare women in a complex web of legal, socioeconomic, and ideological constraints.’

• Women excluded from the public sphere…• …and subordinate to men at home.• Patrick Kay Bidelman, Pariahs Stand Up!

(1982)

‘Woman is born free and lives equal to man in her rights.’

Olympe de Gouges

‘Woman, wake up; the tocsin of reason is being heard throughout the whole universe; discover your rights. The powerful empire of nature is no longer surrounded by prejudice, fanaticism, superstition, and lies. The flame of truth has dispersed all the clouds of folly and usurpation. Enslaved man has multiplied his strength and needs recourse to yours to break his chains. Having become free, he has become unjust to his companion. Oh, women, women! When will you cease to be blind? What advantage have you received from the Revolution?’

Declaration of the Rights of Women, 1791

Female Revolutionaries

• Society of Revolutionary Republican Women created in May 1793

• Opposed moderate republicans

• Ultimately banned by the Convention

• But women still took part in revolutionary demonstrations

Gendered political imagery

• Law of 20 September 1792 on divorce • Women allowed to control family

property• Law of 2 November 1792; ‘there are

no more bastards’ • But: ‘The husband owes his wife

protection, the wife owes her husband obedience’ (Civil Code, 1804)

Rights for women in revolutionary France?

The cult of female domesticity

‘What is especially insufferable in a woman is a restless, bold, domineering manner, for this manner goes against nature… No matter what her worth, no matter that she never forgets that she could be a man by virtue of her superiority of mind and the force of her will, on the outside she must be a women! She must present herself as the creature made to please, to love, to seek support, that being who is inferior to man and who approaches the angels.’

Madame Celnart’s nineteenth century etiquette manual

Right-wing views of women

• Ultra-royalists: nature determined that women should stay in the home

• Louis de Bonald: ‘Women understand better than men how to run domestic affairs, which proves better than lengthy arguments that nature does not summon them to control public affairs.’

Republican motherhood

• Republican men stressed that the woman’s place was in the home, looking after her husband and family

• ‘Every wife who is truly a wife has for a career the career of her husband.’ Ernest Legouvé, Histoire morale des femmes (1848)

Working women

• 1896, adult women represented 34% of the waged work force – 6,411,000 workers.

• By 1906, this had risen to 37%, or 7,604,000 workers

• These figures are probably underestimates

• Patricia Hilden, ‘Women and the Labour Movement,’ Historical Journal 29:4 (1986), 811

Distribution of women workers by occupation (1911)

Occupation % of women workers

Agriculture 38

Rubber, paper, container manufacture

42

Textiles 56

The cloth trades (dress-making, tailoring etc)

88

Precious metals 32

Commerce 39

Precious stones 40

Domestic service 77

Source: Hilden, ‘Women and the labour movement,’ Historical Journal 29:4 (1986), p. 181

‘Industrial homework’

• In 1896, 824,630 textile workers worked in shops, 782,021 at home

• In 1901, 927,705 textile workers worked in shops, 906,512 at home

• Marilyn J Boxer, ‘Women in Industrial Homework,’ French Historical Studies 12:3 (1982), 406-7

‘Home industry could provide an opportunity to fulfil women’s multiple roles with minimal conflict. They could have their “two worlds in one.” And for the strong, the talented, the well-trained, the aggressive, flowermaking at home allowed for the preservation of independence as artisans and as women.’

Boxer, Industrial Homework,’ 422-3

Flowermaking

“Sweated” labour

• The practice of contracting and sub-contracting work to home-based workers, such as producing cheap clothes for department stores

• Sweated labour ‘captured what contemporaries believed were important and disturbing social changes’ (Judith Coffin, ‘Social Science meets Sweated Labour,’ Journal of Modern History 63:2 (1991), 236

Protective legislation• Law of 1892; women’s working day reduced to

(only!) eleven hours; restriction on night working

• Did not apply to family workshops, which subsequently increased

• Marginalization of female workers – pushed further into low paid, exploitative work

• Boxer, ‘Protective legislation and home industry,’ Journal of Social History (1980)

Women and trade unions

• Generally dismissive views of female militancy - for instance criticisms of female strikers at Lyon in the summer of ’69

• Low rates of female participation: In 1911, 1,029,238 workers were unionized – only 101,043 of these were female

• Hilden, ‘Women and the labour movement,’ Historical Journal 29:4 (1986),

• Trade Unionists held patronizing views on female workers and strikers, and often treated them as passive and weak

• Confédération générale du travail (CGT) - dismissive views of female strikers

• Influence of nineteenth century ideas that women were biologically destined to be mothers and nothing more

‘The so-called weaker sex is better prepared for such social occurrences as they may arise then are some male unionists, incapable of action, poor in spirit and energy!’

Georges Yvetot, quoted in Hilden, ‘Women and the labour movement,’ p. 824

• ‘The notion of women’s superior moral worth, latent in the language of domesticity, encouraged the belief that feminine virtue could be harnessed to the project of moralising society as a whole and legitimated female attempts to expand their role from the private into the public sphere.’

James McMillan, France and Women (2000) p.52• E.g. Céleste de Montjustin actively involved in her

husband’s political career

Mobilizing the cult of domesticity

‘I demand rights for women because I am convinced that the ills of the world come from this forgetfulness and scorn that until now have been inflicted on the natural and imprescriptible rights of the female.’

Flora Tristan (1803-44)

Female solidarity in action?

• Tristan on the ribbon-makers of Saint-Etienne :

• ‘They all speak patois and wear clogs… They are quite simply peasants from the mountains, with the stupidest expressions on their faces.’

The 1848 Feminists

‘The reign of brute force is past; the one of morality and intelligence is beginning, The reasons that led our fathers to exclude women from all participation in government no longer have any value today… Women must be called upon to participate in the great work of social regeneration that is preparing itself.’

Working Class Female agency

• By-passed the protective legislation of 1892 to secure enough wages to feed their families (Boxer [1980])

• Role of female trade unionists and strikers, such as Lucie Baud and other silk-workers in the Isère département (Hilden)

George Sand (1804-76)

Did the political, social, and economic position of French women improve, worsen or stay the same by the end of the nineteenth century?