University of Pennsylvania ScholarlyCommons Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations 2013 Designing Women: Fashion, Fiction, and Femininity in Second Empire France Sara Frances Phenix University of Pennsylvania, [email protected] Follow this and additional works at: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations Part of the Other Languages, Societies, and Cultures Commons, and the Women's Studies Commons Recommended Citation Phenix, Sara Frances, "Designing Women: Fashion, Fiction, and Femininity in Second Empire France" (2013). Publicly Accessible Penn Dissertations. 911. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/911 This paper is posted at ScholarlyCommons. https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/911 For more information, please contact [email protected]. Designing Women: Fashion, Fiction, and Femininity in Second Empire France Abstract This dissertation explores the role of fashion and fashion journal discourse in some of the most widely read French novels of the nineteenth century: Gustave Flaubert's Madame Bovary (1857), Ã?mile Zola's La Curée (1871), and Edmond de Goncourt's Chérie (1884). As access to popular styles and fashion magazines became increasingly democratized over the course of the nineteenth century, Second Empire Paris, with its new public parks, cafés, and amusements, became the locus of an unprecedentedly visual culture. Though fashion has often been considered a feminine frivolity in scholarly circles, I argue for its importance in the Second Empire as economic engine, powerful political tool, and visual signifier of social status. The rising significance of fashion in nineteenth-century French cultural life is paralleled by an increased interest in la mode in male-authored realist and naturalist texts. In the decline and dissolution of their respective heroines, I explore how Flaubert, Zola, and Goncourt thematize and problematize the kind of gaze that fashion elicits. Using theorists like Jean Baudrillard, Laura Mulvey, and Anne Higonnet, I examine how Flaubert, Zola, and Goncourt use tropes of vision to show that their protagonists' fixed focus on fashion blinds them to their exploitation by that very pursuit. I argue that Flaubert and Zola both use the discourse of fashion to expose the futility of the fantasy of social ascension and sexual liberty present in Emma and Renée. I also show how Goncourt uses female documents--letters, diaries, and fashion journals--in Chérie to construct, and ultimately to undercut, his stated aim of scientifically depicting the peripeteia of rF ench girl- and young womanhood. As the moral degradation of Emma, Renée, and Chérie is manifest in their increasingly elaborate ensembles, their common obsession with fashion, in one way or another, precipitates their downfalls and eventual deaths. The respective ruins of Emma, Renée, and Chérie represent the authors' critique not only of unbridled feminine consumption, but also of the political and cultural forces driving their protagonists' desires. Degree Type Dissertation Degree Name Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) Graduate Group Romance Languages First Advisor Andrea R. Goulet Second Advisor Maurice A. Samuels Keywords Fashion, French literature, Realism Subject Categories Other Languages, Societies, and Cultures | Women's Studies This dissertation is available at ScholarlyCommons: https://repository.upenn.edu/edissertations/911 DESIGNING WOMEN: FASHION, FICTION, AND FEMININITY IN SECOND EMPIRE FRANCE Sara Phenix A DISSERTATION in French For the Graduate Group in Romance Languages Presented to the Faculties of the University of Pennsylvania in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy 2013 Supervisor of Dissertation ______________ Andrea Goulet, Associate Professor of French Graduate Group Chairperson _________________ Kevin Brownlee, Professor of French Dissertation Committee Gerald Prince, Professor of French Maurice Samuels, Professor of French DESIGNING WOMEN: FASHION, FICTION, AND FEMININITY IN SECOND EMPIRE FRANCE COPYRIGHT 2013 Sara Frances Phenix This work is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution- NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 License To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-ny-sa/2.0/ iii To CMP & TMP iv ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I have been exceptionally fortunate to have the support of a remarkable group of people and institutions over the course of this project. I am profoundly indebted to my adviser, Maurice Samuels, for his patient and expert guidance throughout the entire dissertation process. His seminar on Realism and Naturalism was the original inspiration for this project, and I am a much better scholar and cultural historian of nineteenth-century France because of his mentorship. I am very grateful to my committee members, Andrea Goulet and Gerald Prince, for their kindness, encouragement, and first-rate readings of my work. Their invaluable input at various stages of the writing process helped me craft a more coherent and meaningful project. I am also grateful to the Queens of Fashion -- Caroline Weber and Marie Antoinette -- for introducing me to the world of inscrutable facts and all things à la mode. Bryan Cameron, Ian McConnon, Elizabeth McCartney, and Mélanie Péron provided invaluable support and suggestions along the way, and I am truly fortunate to call them friends. I am also thankful for generous gifts of funding, resources, and time from the faculty and staff of the Department of Romance Languages. Finally, to my family: this project would have never been completed without their indefatigable enthusiasm and encouragement. This dissertation is just as much their accomplishment as it is mine. v ABSTRACT DESIGNING WOMEN: FASHION, FICTION, AND FEMININITY IN SECOND EMPIRE FRANCE Sara Phenix Andrea Goulet This dissertation explores the role of fashion and fashion journal discourse in some of the most widely read French novels of the nineteenth century: Gustave Flaubert’s Madame Bovary (1857), Émile Zola’s La Curée (1871), and Edmond de Goncourt’s Chérie (1884). As access to popular styles and fashion magazines became increasingly democratized over the course of the nineteenth century, Second Empire Paris, with its new public parks, cafés, and amusements, became the locus of an unprecedentedly visual culture. Though fashion has often been considered a feminine frivolity in scholarly circles, I argue for its importance in the Second Empire as economic engine, powerful political tool, and visual signifier of social status. The rising significance of fashion in nineteenth-century French cultural life is paralleled by an increased interest in la mode in male-authored realist and naturalist texts. In the decline and dissolution of their respective heroines, I explore how Flaubert, Zola, and Goncourt thematize and problematize the kind of gaze that fashion elicits. Using theorists like Jean Baudrillard, Laura Mulvey, and Anne Higonnet, I examine how Flaubert, Zola, and Goncourt use tropes of vision to show that their protagonists’ fixed focus on fashion blinds them to their exploitation by that very pursuit. I argue that Flaubert and Zola both use the discourse of fashion to vi expose the futility of the fantasy of social ascension and sexual liberty present in Emma and Renée. I also show how Goncourt uses female documents—letters, diaries, and fashion journals—in Chérie to construct, and ultimately to undercut, his stated aim of scientifically depicting the peripeteia of French girl- and young womanhood. As the moral degradation of Emma, Renée, and Chérie is manifest in their increasingly elaborate ensembles, their common obsession with fashion, in one way or another, precipitates their downfalls and eventual deaths. The respective ruins of Emma, Renée, and Chérie represent the authors’ critique not only of unbridled feminine consumption, but also of the political and cultural forces driving their protagonists’ desires. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS DEDICATION iii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS iv ABSTRACT v CHAPTER ONE 1 “The Sartorial Imagination of the Second Empire” CHAPTER TWO 33 “Dubious Distinction: Flaubert’s Revolution in Style” CHAPTER THREE 89 “Empire Wastes: Fashion and Fractured Femininity in La Curée” CHAPTER FOUR 137 “Dressed to Kill: Fashion and Female Writing in Chérie” CHAPTER FIVE 171 “Fashion Victims” BIBLIOGRAPHY 175 1 CHAPTER ONE The Sartorial Imagination of the Second Empire “L’être qui ne vient pas souvent à Paris ne sera jamais complètement élégant.”1 In one of his famous 1855 caricatures, Honoré Daumier depicts a scene typical of Second Empire Paris: the setting is a public park; the foreground is crowded with three crinoline-wearing women, depicted in profile; the background is populated with more soberly dressed men, also shown in profile. The women’s exaggerated facial features reflect the grotesque dimensions of their garments. “Ce ne sont plus des femmes,” the caption reads, “ce sont des ballons.” With just a few lines, Daumier’s lithograph captures so many of the facets of fashion’s role in the social life of Second Empire France. The setting of the sketch reveals the popularity of the public spaces newly created by Haussmann’s renovations. The foregrounding of the female figures in the frame visually represents the relative importance of women in the social practice of fashion. Economically, the women’s clothing industry became an important engine for growth as France successfully exported its trends across the globe while solidifying Paris’ place as the capital of female fashion. The focus on women’s