Feminism, Masculinity, and
Gender
Dr Chris Pearson
Lecture outline
• Gender history
• Femininity and feminism
• Masculinity
Gender history: An overview
• Associated with postmodernism
• Gender identities are fluid and historical –
they change over time
• Against biological determinism: “nothing
about the body determines univocally how
social divisions will be shaped”
Joan Scott, ‘Gender: a useful category of
historical analysis,’ in Shoemaker and
Vincent (eds.), Gender and History in
Western Europe, (1998), 2
‘“Man” and “women” are at once empty and
overflowing categories. Empty because they
have no ultimate, transcendent meaning.
Overflowing because even when they appear
contain to be fixed, they still within them
alternative, denied, or suppressed definitions.’
Joan Scott, ‘Gender: a useful category of
historical analysis,’ in Shoemaker and Vincent
(eds.), Gender and History in Western Europe,
(1998), 61
Histories of masculinity
• White, European masculinity constructed
against “outsider” males, such as Blacks and
Jews
George L. Mosse, The Image of Man, The
Creation of Modern Masculinity (1996)
• Masculinities “come into existence at
particular times and places and are always
subject to change.”
R. Connell, Masculinities (1995), 185
Gender relations
• Masculinity and femininity exist and change
in relationship to each other
• Masculine and feminine identities are “not…
distinct and separable constructs, but…
parts of a political field whose relations are
characterized by domination, subordination,
collusion and resistance.”
Michael Roper and John Tosh (eds), Manful
Assertions: Masculinities in Britain since 1800
(1991), 8
The “new women”
The ‘new women was most commonly
represented as a dangerous creature,
masculinsed but man-hating,
emancipated politically and sexually, a
perversion of the natural order of things
and a threat to morality and civilisation
itself.’
James McMillan, France and Women,
1789-1914 (2000) 142
Mademoiselle Ly – a “new women”
‘As a women who fashioned her identity
around her professional accomplishments
and her call for women’s political and sexual
emancipation, she subverted the traditional
domestic image of the honorable woman.’
Andrea Mansker, ‘Mademoiselle Arria Ly
Wants Blood!’ French Historical Studies 29:4
(2006), p.630
Changes to women’s lives during
the belle époque
• Republican expansion of education in the
1880s e.g. Camille Sée’s law of 1880
introduces female secondary schools
• More and more women enter university;
2,772 French women enrolled at the
universities by 1911-12, a twentyfold
increase from the 1889-90 period. (Mansker,
p. 639)
Professional women
• Teachers; 57,000 female teachers by 1906,
almost 50% of the profession
• Office and clerical work for banks, railway
companies etc
• By 1914, 30% of the female workforce
were employed offices and department
stores
• McMillan, France and Women, 148-9
Marie Deraismes (1828-1894)
Léon Richer (1824-1911)
Gradualist, liberal feminism
‘Feminism could best advance by making
small dents in the hard wall that patriarchy
had constructed against women’s claims. The
feminist’s task was to locate the loose brick
and hammer against it. It was a realpolitik.’
Claire Goldberg Moses, French Feminism in
the Nineteenth Century (1984), 199
Richer on the family:
‘Since man alone was enfranchised he alone moved
on. Woman, his daily companion, excluded from this
benefit, stayed behind, and within the passing of half
a century an enormous distance, an abyss,
inexorably divided the two sexes. Out of this
division was soon born, within the heart of families,
irreparable dissatisfaction, ruptures that one had not
suspected.’
Quoted in Moses, French Feminism in the Nineteenth
Century, 201
Women not ready for the vote,
according to Richer:
‘I believe that at the present time it would
be dangerous – in France – to give women
the political ballot. They are in great
majority reactionaries and clericals. It they
voted today, the Republic would not last six
months.’
Quoted in James McMillan, Housewife or
Harlot (1981), 84
Hurbertine Auclert (1848-1914)
Hurbertine Auclert, speaking in 1876:
‘In spite of the benefits that came from our
revolution of 1789, two kinds of individuals are still
enslaved: proletarians and women. Women
proletarians have an even more deplorable fate...
We have no rights. As interested as we may be in
the happiness of our country, we are pitilessly
turned away from all meetings, whether elective or
legislative... We count for less than noting in the
state. A stupid and profoundly ignorant man counts
for more in France than the best educated woman.
He can name his legislators; woman cannot. She is a
creature apart who is born with many duties and no
rights.’
Madeleine Pelletier
‘For a feminist, the extreme care of one’s
person and a studied sense of elegance are not
always a diversion, a pleasure, but rather
often excess work, a duty that she
nevertheless must impose upon herself, if
only to deprive shortsighted men of the
argument that feminism is the enemy of
beauty and a feminine aesthetic.’
Margerite Durand, ‘Acting Up,’ French
Historical Studies (1996), 1119
‘In mimicking the real woman, they
exposed its artifice as a role that can be
staged even in the most unconventional
of lives. By mimicking femininity,
Durand... [was] able to defang [her]
opponents and at the same time reveal
the artifice of gender identity.’
Roberts, ‘Acting Up,’ French Historical
Studies (1996), 1130
Modern femininity in Femina
• Beyond the domestic ideal; showed women
performing professional and other roles
• Its ‘coverage presumed that women could
achieve important advances on their own
by raising their sights and exploring their
own individuality.’ Lenard Berlanstein,
‘Selling Modern Femininity,’ French
Historical Studies, 30:4 (2007), 635
Achievements of French feminism
by 1914
• No vote for women but…
• Married women allowed to
dispose of their own incomes
(1908)
• Paternity suits allowed (1912)
• Raised issue of women’s rights
‘Perhaps the greatest tribute to the force of
feminist ideas and activism in fin-de-siècle
France was that it precipitated a major public
debate and gave rise to a vitriolic antifeminism
that forced men (especially those in political
power) to take a position on the women
question.’
Karen Offen, ‘Depopulation, Nationalism, and
Femininsm,’ American Historical Review (1984),
661
French masculinity under threat?
• Defeat to Prussia (1870) and the
Commune shook the confidence of middle
class Frenchmen
• French men ‘feared deep down that
foreigners saw them as lacking in the
honor and warriorlike virility still widely
believed to embody masculinity itself.’
E Berenson, Trial of Madame Caillaux, p.
114
The First Empire’s women had been
overwhelmed “by the intense and
magnificent whirl of activity accomplished by
men who returned home between two battles
to get them with child, only to hasten back to
the front having left behind the
overpowering image of conquerors.’
Le Gaulois (1900), quoted in Berenson, Trial
of Madame Cailloux (1993), 115
Male honour codes
• Hangover from the ancien régime
• In private, men must display sexual
vigour and potency
• In public, they must be ready to defend
their reputation and honour, hence the
popularity of the duel
• See Robert Nye, Masculinity and Male
Codes of Honor in Modern France (1993)
Sketch by Alfred Grévin (c.1880)
‘Culture of force’ (1890s+)
See Christopher Forth, The Dreyfus Affair and the Crisis
of French Manhood (2004)