Civilization Without Sexes: Reconstructing Gender in Postwar France, 1917-1927

by Roberts, Mary Louise

• ISBN13: 9780226721224
• ISBN10: 0226721221
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1994-03-01
• Publisher: UNIV OF CHICAGO PRESS

Summary

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.

Author Biography

Elizabeth A. Kaye specializes in communications as part of her coaching and consulting practice. She has edited Requirements for Certification since the 2000-01 edition.

Table of Contents

Foreword by Catharine R. Stimpson

Acknowledgments

Introduction - This Civilization No Longer Has Sexes

La Femme Moderne

This Being Without Breasts, Without Hips

She Stood at the Center of a Shattered World

Women Are Cutting Their Hair as a Sign of Sterility

La Mere

A Matter of Life or Death

Madame Doesn't Want a Child

La Femme Seule

There Is Something Else in Life besides Love

We Must Facilitate the Transition to the New World

Conclusion - Are We Witnessing the Birth of a New Civilization?

Notes

Index

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