Civilization without Sexes: Reconstructing Gender in Postwar France, 1917-1927 (Women in Culture & Society Series WCS)
By
Mary Louise Roberts (Author)
Hardback
Available / dispatched within 1 - 4 weeks
Quantity
Description
In the 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, non-traditional 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.
More Details
- Contributor: Mary Louise Roberts
- Imprint: University of Chicago Press
- ISBN13: 9780226721217
- Number of Pages: 352
- Packaged Dimensions: 17x24x3mm
- Packaged Weight: 680
- Format: Hardback
- Publisher: The University of Chicago Press
- Release Date: 1994-01-01
- Series: Women in Culture & Society Series WCS
- Binding: Hardback
Delivery Options
Home Delivery
Store Delivery
Free Returns
We hope you are delighted with everything you buy from us. However, if you are not, we will refund or replace your order up to 30 days after purchase. Terms and exclusions apply; find out more from our Returns and Refunds Policy.