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 collective
soup 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 American
cartoonist 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 was
physically exhausting and demanded considerable concentration as well
as the effort of maintaining an air of politeness.
Chicago’s 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition
Exposition Universelle
The 1900 Paris
World’s Fair
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 Remembrance
of Things Past revealed
that beneath the surface
of French refinement,
there existed all kinds
of vulgar and perverse
behaviors.
England
Pursuit of power through the
colonization of one quarter of the
world
African banana plantation
Queen Victoria
(1819 – 1901)
King Edward VII
(1841-1910)
• Oscar Wilde refused to
play by Victorian rules.
• When he publicly came
“out of the closet”, he
was condemned to jail.
Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas
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 suspected
to 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 British
suffragette 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 victims
of a bomb intended for him when Gavrilo
Princip stepped out of the crowd and killed
him.
Gavrilo Princip being apprehended
by 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