Sex, Honor and Citizenship in Early Third Republic France

320 Pages·2011·2.139 MB·English

by  Andrea Mansker (auth.)

Genders and Sexualities in History
Series Editors: John H. Arnold, Joanna Bourke and Sean Brady
Palgrave Macmillan’s series, Genders and Sexualities in History, aims to accom-
modate and foster new approaches to historical research in the fields of genders
and sexualities. The series promotes world-class scholarship that concentrates
upon the interconnected themes of genders, sexualities, religions/religiosity,
civil society, class formations, politics and war. Historical studies of gender and
sexuality have often been treated as disconnected fields, while in recent years
historical analyses in these two areas have synthesised, creating new departures
in historiography. By linking genders and sexualities with questions of religion,
civil society, politics and the contexts of war and conflict, this series will reflect
recent developments in scholarship, moving away from the previously domi-
nant and narrow histories of science, scientific thought and legal processes. The
result brings together scholarship from contemporary, modern, early modern,
medieval, classical and non-Western history to provide a diachronic forum for
scholarship that incorporates new approaches to genders and sexualities in
history.
Andrea Mansker’s Sex, Honor and Citizenship in Early Third Republic France fuses
social, cultural and political analysis in an exemplary fashion. The republican
culture of late nineteenth-century France rested on the political status of the
‘honest’ man who, as various books on duelling and other works of the period
advised, was bound to defend his ‘honor’ if and when publicly challenged.
Mansker argues that women’s roles within this system were not as limited or
disempowered as one might think. As she demonstrates, the public discourse on
‘honor’ provided a cultural resource through which women could legitimate
their own civic participation, and that honor functioned less as a prescriptive
code and more as a shifting and contested cultural terrain. Based upon out-
standing original scholarship and insight, Sex, Honor and Citizenship demon-
strates the importance of gender history to our understanding of past societies
and politics.
Titles include
Andrea Mansker
SEX, HONOR AND CITIZENSHIP IN EARLY THIRD REPUBLIC FRANCE
Jessica Meyer
MEN OF WAR
Masculinity and the First World War in Britain
Dagmar Herzog (editor)
BRUTALITY AND DESIRE
War and Sexuality in Europe’s Twentieth Century
Christopher E. Forth and Elinor Accampo (editors)
CONFRONTING MODERNITY IN FIN-DE-SIÈCLE FRANCE
Bodies, Minds and Gender
Hester Vaizey
SURVIVING HITLER’S WAR
Family Life in Germany, 1939–48
Jennifer Evans
RECONSTRUCTION SITES
Spaces of Sexual Encounter in Cold War Berlin
Jennifer D. Thibodeaux (editor)
NEGOTIATING CLERICAL IDENTITIES
Priests, Monks and Masculinity in the Middle Ages
Cordelia Beattie and Kirsten A Fenton (editors)
INTERSECTIONS OF GENDER, RELIGION AND ETHNICITY
IN THE MIDDLE AGES
John H. Arnold and Sean Brady (editors)
WHAT IS MASCULINITY?
Historical Dynamics from Antiquity to the Contemporary World
Peter Cryle and Alison Moore
FRIGIDITY
An Intellectual History
Jennifer V. Evans
LIFE AMONG THE RUINS
Cityscape and Sexuality in Cold War Berlin
Forthcoming titles
Sarah Toulalan and Kate Fisher (editors)
BODIES, SEX AND DESIRE FROM THE RENAISSANCE TO THE PRESENT
Sex, Honor and Citizenship
in Early Third Republic
France
Andrea Mansker
Associate Professor of History,
Sewanee: The University of the South, USA
Palgrave
macmillan
Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2011 978-0-230-29403-5
ISBN 978-1-349-33320-2 ISBN 978-0-230-34819-6 (eBook)
DOI 10.1057/9780230348196
For Will and my family
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Contents
Acknowledgments viii
Introduction 1
1 “Mademoiselle Arria Ly Wants Blood!” The New
Woman and the Debate over Female Honor 19
2 The Sexual Insult: Medicalized Views of Singleness
during the Long Nineteenth Century 57
3 Rethinking Honor in the Republican Family:
Fin-de-Siècle Divorce Suits 89
4 The Honor of a Name: Marital Status,
Property, and the Patronymic 127
5 The Feminist Politics of the Female Surplus:
Constructing Citizenship through Singleness 163
6 Sexual Citizenship and the Political Culture of
Shame in the Women’s Movement 193
Conclusion: Giving the Lie 234
Notes 250
Selected Bibliography 287
Index 301
vii
Acknowledgments
This book represents the culmination of many years of research and
revision enriched by ongoing conversations with the talented histori-
ans of Third Republic France. Above all, I am deeply grateful to Debora
Silverman for her innovative and rigorous methodological approach to
cultural history as well as for her continued guidance and enthusiasm
for this project throughout my professional career. I am equally indebted
to Elinor Accampo, who has served as an unfailing mentor and con-
structive reader of my work since my first contact with her in graduate
school. I also consider myself lucky to have benefited from Bob Nye’s
consistently astute and imaginative critiques of my manuscript. Without
his exceptional insights into the complexities of the prewar gendered
honor system, this book would never have been realized. I also wish to
highlight the indefatigable role that Rachel Fuchs played in bringing
this book to fruition. The judicious and practiced eye she cast over my
entire manuscript truly helped sharpen its argument and make it into a
coherent book. Many thanks as well to Christine Bard, who provided
me with invaluable assistance and hospitality when I visited the Archives
du Féminisme in Angers.
Numerous other scholars have been kind enough to read parts of my
manuscript and to make helpful suggestions at various stages of writing.
Ed Berenson, Claire Moses, Mary Louise Roberts, Jo Burr Margadant,
Jean Pedersen, Karen Offen, Carolyn Eichner, David Sabean, Julie
Berebitsky, Donna Murdock, and Paige Schneider all generously lent
their time and effort to this endeavor. My graduate school cohort was
equally instrumental in helping me realize this project: Patricia Tilburg,
Britta McEwen, Claudia Verhoeven, Amy Woodson-Boulton, Kelly
Maynard, Rob Baker, Jared Poley, Jason Coy, Eric Johnson, Gabriel
Wolfenstein, and Laura Talamante.
I am very grateful to the Appalachian College Association for awarding
me a John B. Stephenson Fellowship, which allowed me to conduct addi-
tional research and to complete several new chapters of the book. The
UCLA History Department, the Faculty Research Committee at Sewanee,
and the Center for German and European Studies at UC Berkeley also
generously funded research trips. My thanks as well to the always con-
genial and helpful staff at the Bibliothèque Marguerite Durand. The
archivists of the Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris, Archives de
viii
Acknowledgments ix
Paris, Archives Départementales de la Haute Garonne, Archives de la
Préfecture de Police de Paris, Archives Nationales, Bibliothèque Nationale,
and Louise M. Darling Biomedical Library in Los Angeles also provided
me with assistance for this book. Michael Strang and Ruth Ireland at
Palgrave Macmillan have lent their vital support to the project and helped
carry it through to completion. Finally, I thank Will Taylor and my par-
ents, all of whom have learned much more about Arria Ly over the years
than they ever cared to know.
Some material in Chapters 1, 2, 5, and 6 appeared previously in some-
what different form in the following articles.
“ ‘Mademoiselle Arria Ly Wants Blood!’ The Debate over Female Honor in Belle
Époque France,” French Historical Studies 29: 4 (Fall 2006): 621–47. Copyright
2006, Society for French Historical Studies. Reprinted by permission of the
publisher, Duke University Press.
“ ‘Vive Mademoiselle!’ The Politics of Singleness in Early Twentieth-Century
French Feminism,” was originally published in Feminist Studies 33: 3 (Fall
2007): 632–58. Reproduced with permission of the publisher, Feminist
Studies, Inc.
“Shaming Men: Feminist Honor and the Sexual Double Standard in Belle Époque
France,” in Christopher E. Forth and Elinor Accampo (eds), Confronting
Modernity in Fin-de-Siècle France: Bodies, Minds and Gender (Palgrave Macmillan,
2010). Reproduced with permission of Palgrave Macmillan.