In the raucous decade following World War I, newly blurred boundaries between male and female created fears among the French that theirs was becoming a civilization without sexes. This new gender confusion became a central metaphor for the War's impact on French culture and led to a marked increase in public debate concerning female identity and woman's proper role. Mary Louise Roberts examines how in these debates French society came to grips with the catastrophic horrors of the Great War. In sources as diverse as parliamentary records, newspaper articles, novels, medical texts, writings on sexology, and vocational literature, Roberts discovers a central question: how to come to terms with rapid economic, social, and cultural change and articulate a new order of social relationships. She examines the role of French trauma concerning the War in legislative efforts to ban propaganda for abortion and contraception, and explains anxieties about the decline of maternity by a crisis in gender relations that linked soldiery, virility, and paternity. Through these debates, Roberts locates the seeds of actual change. She shows how the willingness to entertain, or simply the need to condemn, nontraditional gender roles created an indecisiveness over female identity that ultimately subverted even the most conservative efforts to return to traditional gender roles and irrevocably altered the social organization of gender in postwar France.
E-Book Content
CIVILIZATION WITHOUT SEXES
WOMEN IN CULTURE AND SOCIETY A series edited by Catharine R. Stimpson
MARY LOUISE ROBERTS
CIVILIZATION
WITHOUT S[X[S RECONSTRUCTING GENDER IN POSTWAR fRANCL
1917-1927
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS Chicago & London
The University of Chicago Press, Chicago 60637 The University of Chicago Press, Ltd., London © 1994 by The University of Chicago All rights reserved. Published 1994 Printed in the United States of America 5432 03 02 01 00 99 98 97 96 ISBN (cloth): 0-226-72121-3 ISBN (paper): 0-226-72122-1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Roberts, Mary Louise. Civilization without sexes: reconstructing gender in Postwar France, 1917-1927 / Mary Louise Roberts. p. cm. - (Women in culture and society) Originally presented as the author's thesis (Ph.D.-Brown University), 1990. Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 0-226-72121-3. - ISBN 0-226-72122-1 (pbk.) 1. Sex role-France-History-20th century. 2. Women-France-Social conditions. 3. World War, 1914-1918-Social aspects-France. 4. World War, 1914-1918-Women-France. I. Title. II. Series. HQI075.5.F8R63 1994 305.3'0944-dc20 93-26899
eIP @ The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of the Amer-
ican National Standard for Information Sciences-Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI Z39.48-1984.
For Jacqueline Roland
CONTENTS
Foreword by Catharine R. Stimpson viii Acknowledgments xii Introduction Part One
This Civilization No Longer Has Sexes 1 La Femme Modeme 17
1 This Being Without Breasts, Without Hips 19 2 She Stood at the Center of a Shattered World 46 3 Women Are Cutting Their Hair as a Sign of Sterility 63
Part Two 4 5
La Mere
89
A Matter of Life or Death 93 Madame Doesnl Want a Child
120
Part Three
La Femme Seule 149 6 There Is Something Else in Life besides Love 7 We Must Facilitate the Transition to the New World 183
Conclusion
153
Are We Witnessing the Birth of a New Civilization? 213
Notes 219 Index 331 Figures follow page 88
fOREWORD
In 1917, World War I was in its third year of mud, rats, poison gas, and gangrene. Marshal Henri Petain, the commander-in-chief of the French forces, was 61 y