Constructing order in postrevolutionary France: Women\u27s identities and cultural practices, 1800-1830

Debates about women\u27s roles accompanied efforts to build social order after the French Revolution. Arguments that women should remain in the private sphere became increasingly prevalent. Unlike work that seeks an explanation for the rise of domesticity in politics (the Revolution) or economics (industrialization), this dissertation argues that everyday social interaction, particularly in an urban context, best explains the evolution of gender and class distinctions in the wake of the Revolution. Despite a prominent rhetoric of domesticity, French men and women across classes continued to amuse themselves together, often in public spaces. By the 1820s, however, intensifying class animosities contributed to bourgeois women\u27s more limited participation in urban public life. Their absence then affected perceptions of the working women who remained visible in such spaces. Urban women\u27s leisure practices reflected local variations. At the Parisian Boulevard, melodramatic plays appealed to virtually everyone, but especially bourgeois women whose intense reactions to the emotional suspense of the plays drew theater critics\u27 attention. During the 1820s, however, fewer women of the upper classes numbered among melodrama\u27s devotees. They separated themselves from the tumultuous streets of the Boulevard not because of prescriptions telling them to lead domestic lives, but in response to developing fears of the lower classes. Elite provincial women kept in touch with Parisian trends by subscribing to the Journal des dames et des modes. The satire contained in letters to the editor, which expressed disapproval of aristocratic women\u27s frivolous behavior, manifests both class and regional animosities. Provincial women\u27s lives reflected post-revolutionary ambiguities regarding gender. In Lyon, bourgeois women removed themselves from some public leisure pursuits, but working-class women did not. Differing gender norms then intensified class distinctions. In Nantes, women\u27s presence in the public became more prominent rather than less over the course of the period. Women\u27s assumed political affiliations--clerical and monarchist--meant that Napoleonic authorities tried to silence them, while Restoration officials glorified women as model subjects. Local political and economic developments shaped both the realities and perceptions of French women\u27s participation in urban life