University of Massachusetts Amherst ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 1-1-1976 The images of woman in France on the eve of the Loi Camille Sée, 1877-1880. Lillian Jane Waugh University of Massachusetts Amherst Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1 Recommended Citation Waugh, Lillian Jane, "The images of woman in France on the eve of the Loi Camille Sée, 1877-1880." (1976). Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014. 1355. https://scholarworks.umass.edu/dissertations_1/1355 This Open Access Dissertation is brought to you for free and open access by ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. It has been accepted for inclusion in Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014 by an authorized administrator of ScholarWorks@UMass Amherst. For more information, please contact [email protected]. THE IMAGES OF WOMAN IN FRANCE ON THE EVE OF THE LOI GAMILLE SEE, 187?-1880 A Dissertation Presented By LILLIAN JANE WAUGH Submitted to the Graduate School of the University of Massachusetts in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY December 1976 History 11 © Lillian Jane Waugh 1976 All Rights Reserved iii THE IMAGES OF WOMAN IN FRANCE ON THE EVE OF THE LOI GAMILLE SEE, 1877-1880 A Dissertation Presented By LILLIAN JANE WAUGH Approved as to style and content by: William M, Johnston, Chairperson of Committee Charles Rearick, Member Beatrice Braude, Member ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to express my profound thanks to William M. Johnston for his patient encourage- ment and long-distance guidance. My debt for the support of feminist friends in Amherst, Massachu- setts and Morgantown, West Virginia, and for daily prodding from my husband David B. Yelton will take much longer to repay than this dissertation took to write. ABSTRACT The Images of Woman in France on the Eve of the Loi Gajnille See, 1877-1880 February 1977 Lillian J. Waugh, B.A., Colby College M.A., Bowling Green State University Ph.D., University of Massachusetts Directed by: Professor William M. Johnston Misogyny in the early Third Republic vitally affected educatio- nal legislation. The Loi Camille See, signed into law December 21, 1880, incorporated contemporary prejudices against women and was designed to preclude female entry into the professions. Employment statistics did not support fears that women with degrees would engulf male purviews. The politics of prejudice evident in passage of the law were heightened by partisan politics, although French legislators shared more as men when dealing with female education than they disputed as ideological enemies u Revival of the classics and the Catholic heritage played an important role in French misogyny. Primary sources selected for this study include the works of Felix Dupanloup and pseudo-feminist Ernest Legouve; articles on women and education, plus short stories from the moderate Catholic monthly reported in the Le Correspondant ; debates on the Loi Camille See as des Femmes ; and the Journal Officiel ; the feminist monthly the Droit works of major 19th-century Republican educational theorists Octave Greard, Gustave Compayre, and Paul Rousselot. It was found that, with the general exception of Droit des Femmes publicists, French attitudes toward women combined ambivalence, fear, and hostitility. These attitudes were consciously enshrined in government policy and rationalized as being fully consonant with wo- men's nature and the public good. The Saint-or-Sinner model of woman, so obvious in the seminal works of Fenelon, dominated all publications reviewed as well as the debates on female secondary education. One fa- cet of this model was the presentation of women as the perpetuators and shapers of mores and of the men who ran (or mis-ran) the State, Na- tional preoccupation with order and unity after the debacle of the Franco-Prussian War, predisposed those in charge of forming public opinion or making public policy, to endorse existing misogynist stereo- types - most often articulated as the femme libre and Amazon - and por- tray women as destroyers or saviors of France. This preoccupation led to reiteration of female seclusion in the home and enhancement of the mystique of the foyer as means to ensure the public good and restore national glory. Women who did not adhere to the mystique or the life style were, in essence, presented by Republicans and anti-Republicans alike as traitors and unnatural monsters. The rhetoric of chivalry used during the debates accentuated national anxieties, capitalized on views of women as "other," and underscored consensus in the legislature that women of all classes constituted a new and dangerous proletariat. French feminists disa- greed vehemently with prevailing views of women, their nature and their proper sphere. But they exploited what seemed like favorable stereo- types, i.e., women as natural teachers, to push for broadening female opportunities for employment. Like their detractors, the feminists considered the woman question a problem of morality. vii TABLE OF CONTENTS PREFACE viii CHAPTER I. HISTORIANS AND HISTORICAL IMAGES 1 II. A MORALIST AND A BISHOP: ERNEST LEGOUVE AND FELIX DUPANLOUP 46 III. WOMAN IN THE CORRESPONDANT 97 IV. LE DROIT PES FEMES 138 V. THE NATIONAL ASSEMBLY ON WOMAN: THE DEBATES ON THE LOI CAMILLE SEE 1?9 VI. COMPARISON AND CONTRAST 2l6 VII. CONCLUSION 232 APPENDICES 242 BIBLIOGRAPHY 249 Vlll PREFACE With the rebirth of the women's movement in the last decade, historians have begun to acknowledge the failure of traditional scho- larship to, in Abigail Adams' words, "remember the Ladies."''" The "La- dies" and their less affluent sisters are now being considered, and to historians falls the task of defining what indeed should be remembered. Each academic profession has need of historians 0 research as its own the- ses are re-examined in light of the new perspective. Thus, to the his- torian qua historian falls the ultimate responsibility of sounding, then beginning to fill, the cultural lacunae which exist because of centu- ries of neglect of the records of half the human race. Every generation reconstructs history to some degree. But this generation of historians is faced with a construction project hitherto unprecedented in its scope. Routine tasks of asking the right questions of past and present, of digging into supposedly familiar territory for clues which might shed light on old and new "woman questions," turn out of to be anything but routine. Where does one start a re-codification culture? Is there any one aspect of the problem which sheds maximum historical land- light on myriad excavation sites beginning to dot the indicates that problems scape? Modern usage of the term "woman question" - building blocks of preju- of basic definition and reflected images the Perusal of titles dice - might serve as useful tools for the historian. 1 as cited Letter of Abigail Adajns to John Adajns, 31 March 1776, Papers: From Adams to de Beau- by Alice S. Rossi, ed., in The Feminist 10 - voir (New York: Bantam Books, 197^) » P- ix in ^men Studies Abstracts suggests that one path of exploration, the study of 2 prejudice against women, or "sexism," has been particularly exciting during the early stages of historical reconstruction. Cent- ral to the study of sexism are the many images which surround the to- pic "woman. 11 The importance of cultural images to history was keynoted by Joseph N. Moody of the Catholic University of America a full decade before those responsible for the rebirth of feminism^ rephrased sex prejudice as "sexism." In prefatory remarks to his Church and Soci - etx (l953)i Moody addressed the question of images in a manner which prompted this writer to see the study of sex images as a sturdy cor- nerstone for the study of women in history. Moody expressed the hope that "the whole process of image formation might become increasingly interesting to historians, for it operates at the vital nerve center 2 As used in this paper "sexism" is understood to be both the fact and the system of thought associated with prejudice based on sex. Although used primarily in discussion of prejudicial assumptions about females, it implies correlative stereotyping of males. A functional working definition of "sexism" was developed by Dr. Jo-Ann Evans Gard- ner for a December 16, 1970, presentation at the Open Plenary Session of the White House Conference on Children. Sexism is: (l) a belief that the human sexes have distinctive makeups that determine their re- spective lives; usually involving the idea that one sex is superior and has the right to rule the other; (2) a policy of enforcing such asser- ted right; (3) a system of government and society based on it. To this concept has been added the descriptive term "sexist," one who believes in or practices sexism. -^Charles Fourier coined the term "feminisme" in the second edi- tion of his Theorie des quatre mouvements (Paris, l84l). Fourier po- sited equality of the sexes before the law and adopted a single moral- ity for both. Following this train of thought, anyone who believed in a double standard, such as Ernest Legouve, could only be termed a "pseu- " be an advocate of women's rights. do feminist f if he/she claimed to vital nerve center 4 of social experience." The intensity of responses, both positive and negative, to the recent growth of feminism in the Uni- ted States and abroad attests to Moody's insight. It further indicates that assessment of the nature and weight of images of women^ at various times and places is of critical importance to understanding women's history. This writer has accordingly been drawn to investigate the images of woman in France during the first decade of the Third French Republic. The Loi Gamille See (see Appendix A), passed 21 December 1880, offers a convenient focal point for the study of women in the early Third Republic.