1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910822261403321

Autore

Roberts Mary Louise

Titolo

Civilization without sexes : reconstructing gender in postwar France, 1917-1927 / / Mary Louise Roberts

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Chicago, : University of Chicago Press, c1994

ISBN

1-282-07018-5

9786612070181

0-226-72127-2

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (337 p.)

Collana

Women in culture and society

Disciplina

305.3/0944

Soggetti

Sex role - France - History - 20th century

Women - France - Social conditions

World War, 1914-1918 - Social aspects - France

World War, 1914-1918 - Women - France

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Originally presented as the author's thesis (Ph. D.--Brown University), 1990.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. 219-330) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Front matter -- CONTENTS -- FOREWORD -- ACKNOWLEDGMENTS -- Introduction. "THIS CIVILIZATION NO LONGER HAS SEXES" -- PART ONE. LA FEMME MODERNE -- PART TWO. LA MERE -- PART THREE. LA FEMME SEULE -- Conclusion. 'ARE WE WITNESSING THE BIRTH OF A NEW CIVILIZATION?' -- Notes -- Index

Sommario/riassunto

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.