Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-5xszh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-28T11:04:39.716Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

“To Triumph before Feminine Taste”: Bourgeois Women's Consumption and Hand Methods of Production in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Paris

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

Whitney Walton
Affiliation:
Whitney Walton is assistant professor of history at Oakland University.

Abstract

In this article Professor Walton examines the influence of bourgeois women on industrial production in nineteenth-century Paris. She argues that women, as arbiters of taste and consumers for the family, sought art and originality in manufactured goods, and that their demands in turn fostered handicraft and less skilled hand methods of manufacturing as the best means of providing such goods. By establishing the connections between women's roles and bourgeois demand, and between bourgeois demand and hand manufacturing, this study offers a new perspective on the persistence of hand production in France.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1986

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Audiganne, Armand, La Lutte industrielle des peuples (Paris, 1868), 187, 186Google Scholar.

2 The lack of attention to feminine consumption is all the more surprising, given that the economist Thorstein Veblen analyzed its significance as early as 1899. Veblen, Thorstein, The Theory of the Leisure Class: An Economic Study in the Evolution of Institutions (New York, 1899), esp. 8085Google Scholar.

3 Gilboy, Elizabeth Waterman, “Demand as a Factor in the Industrial Revolution,” in Facts and Factors in Economic History: Articles by Former Students of Edwin Francis Cay (Cambridge, Mass., 1932)Google Scholar.

4 McKendrick, Neil,“Home Demand and Economic Growth: A New View of the Role of Women and Children in the Industrial Revolution,” in Historical Perspectives: Studies in English Thought and Society, ed. McKendrick, Neil (London, 1974), 152210Google Scholar. Also by McKendrick and relevant to the subject of consumption is his “Commercialization and the Economy” and “Commercialization of Fashion,” in McKendrick, Neil, Brewer, John, and Plumb, J. H., The Birth of a Consumer Society: The Commercialization of Eighteenth-Century England (Bloomington, Ind., 1982), 9194Google Scholar.

5 O'Brien, Patrick and Keyder, Caglar, Economic Growth in Britain and France, 1780–1914: Two Paths to the Twentieth Century (London, 1978), 160–68, 162Google Scholar. See also Minchinton, Walter, “Patterns of Demand 1750–1914,” in The Industrial Revolution, 1700–1914, ed. Cipolla, Carlo M. (vol. 3 of the Fontana Economic History of Europe) (Hassocks, England, 1976), 77186Google Scholar.

6 Zeldin, Theodore, Taste and Corruption, vol. 4 of France, 1848–1945 (Oxford, England, 1980), 7282Google Scholar.

7 Williams, Rosalind H., Dream Worlds: Mass Consumption in Late Nineteenth-Century France (Berkeley, Calif., 1982), 49–50, 108–10Google Scholar.

8 Welter, Barbara, “The Cult of True Womanhood: 1820–1860,” American Quarterly 18 (1966); 151–74CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Since Welter's pioneering article appeared, historians have found that the domestic ideal applied to women in France and England, as well as in the United States, in the Victorian era. The literature on feminine domesticity in Western Europe is too vast for citation here. Works particularly relevant to this study are: Smith, Bonnie G., Ladies of the Leisure Class: The Bourgeoises of Northern France in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, N.J., 1981)Google Scholar; Hellerstein, Erna Olafson, Hume, Leslie Parker, and Offen, Karen M., eds., Victorian Women: A Documentary Account of Women's Lives in Nineteenth-Century England, France, and the United States (Stanford, Calif., 1981)Google Scholar; Darrow, Margaret H., “French Noble-women and the New Domesticity, 1750–1850,” Feminist Studies 5 (1979): 4165CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Branca, Patricia, Silent Sisterhood: Middle-Class Women in the Victorian Home (Pittsburgh, Pa., 1975)Google Scholar.

9 Hellerstein, et al., Victorian Women, 273–74; Branca, Silent Sisterhood, 6–7; Smith, Ladies of the Leisure Class, 3–4; Tilly, Louise A. and Scott, Joan W., Women, Work, and Family (New York, 1978), 63Google Scholar.

10 Le Conseiller des Dames 1 (18471848): 194Google Scholar.

11 La Gazette des Femmes 3, 88 (11 fev. 1843)Google Scholar. This passage first appeared in Flora Tristan's Promenades dans Londres, which has recently heen translated into English. See Flora Tristan's London Journal, 1840, trans. Palmer, Dennis and Pincetl, Giselle (Charlestown, Mass., 1980), 195–97Google Scholar. To some extent Branca's research on English women of the Victorian era confirms Tristan's observation. Branca writes: “Because the middle-class woman was given little responsibility for administering or organizing in the family, she was often considered untrustworthy.” Branca, Silent Sisterhood, 8.

12 A few examples from the feminine press of the financial control and household authority granted to bourgeois women are: It is by the active intelligence of the homemaker, by her attentive and welldirected supervision that modest fortunes are augmented, and large fortunes preserved.” Le Foyer Domestique 1 (1e juin 1850): 418Google Scholar; It must be understood that domestic economy means not the reduction, but the intelligent and fruitful distribution, of the household budget. The mistress of the home, like the finance minister of a great state, has capital to apportion.” Le Conseiller des Dames 1 (18471848): 98Google Scholar. See also Daumard, Adeline, La Bourgeoisie parisienne de 1815 à 1848 (Paris, 1963), 370–71Google Scholar.

13 Veuillot, L., “L'Honnête femme,” Le Correspondent 1 (1843): 234Google Scholar.

14 La Gazette des Femmes 3, 4 (2 nov. 1844): 15Google Scholar; Pariset, Mme, Nouveau manuel complet de la maîtresse de maison (Paris, 1852), 10Google Scholar; Le Conseiller des Dames 4 (Jan. 1851): 92Google Scholar; Les Modes Parisiennes 424 (22 mars 1851): 3009Google Scholar; Le Foyer Domestique 1 (le juin 1850): 418Google Scholar.

15 Janet, Paul, “La Famille,” Grand Dictionnaire universelle du XIXe siècle (Paris, 18661890), 8:75Google Scholar. These ideas were elaborated in Janet, Paul, La Famille (Paris, 1873)Google Scholar.

16 France, Commission français'e sur l'lndustrie des Nations, Exposition universelle de 1851. Travaux de la Commission française sur l'lndustrie des Nations (Paris, 1855), 7:523Google Scholar.

17 Flaubert, Gustave, Madame Bovary, trans. Marx-Aveling, Eleanor ([1857]; New York, 1930), 74Google Scholar.

18 Daumard, Bourgeoisie, 362–63, 366.

19 Faucon, Emma, Voyage d'une jeune fille autour de sa chambre. Nouvelle morale et instructive (Paris, 1860), 2223Google Scholar.

20 T. J. Markovitch calculates that nearly 60 percent of all French industrial production as late as 1860 was handicraft in nature, occurring in homes or small workshops where artisan manufacturers worked alongside fewer than ten employees. T. J. Markovitch, “Le revenu industriel et artisanal sous la Monarchie de Juillet et le Second Empire,” Economies et sociétés série AF-8 (avril 1967): 85–86.

21 Aminzade, Ronald, Class, Politics and Early Industrial Capitalism: A Study of Mid-Nineteenth-Century Toulouse, France (Albany, N.Y., 1981)Google Scholar; Hanagan, Michael P., The Logic of Solidarity: Artisans and Industrial Workers in Three French Towns, 1871–1914 (Urbana, Ill., 1980)Google Scholar; Sewell, William H. Jr,Work and Revolution in France: The Language of Labor from the Old Regime to 1848 (New York, 1980)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Merriman, John M., ed., Consciousness and Class Experience in Nineteenth-Century Europe (New York, 1979)Google Scholar; Johnson, Christopher H., “Economic Change and Artisan Discontent: The Tailors' History, 1800–1848,” in Revolution and Reaction: 1848 and the Second French Republic, ed. Price, Roger (London, 1975), 87114Google Scholar. A rather different approach to the issue of proletarianization is Reddy, William M., The Rise of Market Culture: The Textile Trade and French Society, 1750–1900 (New York, 1984)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

22 The literature on this subject is vast and covers about three decades of contributions and debate. For a critical review, see Roehl, Richard, “French Industrialization: A Reconsideration,” Explorations in Economic History 13 (1976): 233–81CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

23 Lévy-Leboyer, Maurice, Les banques européennes et l'industrialisation Internationale dans la première moitié du XIXe siècle (Paris, 1964), 74ff.Google Scholar; O'Brien and Keyder, Economic Growth, 160–68; Sewell, Work and Revolution, 151–54.

24 Pariset, Nouveau manuel, 15, 18; Les Modes Parisiennes 424 (22 mars 1851): 3010Google Scholar; Le Conseiller des Dames 2 (18481849): 68Google Scholar; Archives départementales de la Seine, D 4U1 91, 171, 172. Jugements, le arrondissement, 1831 and 1851. Minutier Central, Inventaires après décès, XLIV 917, 918, 919 (1830) and XXIX 1128, 1129, 1130, 1131, 1133 (1850). Daumard also finds that Parisian bourgeois households were almost uniformly furnished with mahogany pieces. Daumard, Bourgeoisie, 136; Paris, Chambre de Commerce et d'Industrie, Statistique de l'Industrie à Paris 1847–1848 (Paris, 1851), 107Google Scholar; L'Illustration 3, 65 (25 mai 1844): 202Google Scholar.

25 La Gazette des Salons 62 (7 nov. 1838): 984Google Scholar; Le Conseiller des Dames et Demoiselles 6 (sept. 1853): 348–49Google Scholar; Le Musée des Families 19 (oct. 1851): 31Google Scholar.

26 Paris, Chambre de Commerce et d'Industrie. Letter to Prefect of the Seine, 6 avril 1850, in Correspondence, 9 avril 1846 au 18 juin 1850, 249.

27 Le Foyer Domestique 1 (1e juin 1850): 421Google Scholar. See also Le Conseiller des Dames 3 (mai 1850): 220Google Scholar and (juin 1850): 250.

28 France, Commission française, Exposition, 7:7.

29 Weissbach, Lee Shai, “Artisanal Responses to Artistic Decline: The Cabinetmakers of Paris in the Era of Industrialization,” Journal of Social History 16 (1982): 6781CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

30 France, Commission française, Exposition, 7:7; La Gazette des Salons 31 (10 juin 1838): 505Google Scholar.

31 France, Commission française, Exposition, 7:13–14.

32 Ibid., 6:124; Bouilhet, Henry, L'Orfèvrerie française aux XVIIIe et XIXe siècles (Paris, 1910), 243Google Scholar; La Gazette des Femmes, 4, 21 (le mars 1845): 16Google Scholar. If consumers needed further proof of the tastefulness of electromagnetically metal-plated goods, surely the cachet of Empress Eugenie was sufficient: she commissioned an entire table service of silver plate using the electromagnetic process. The Second Empire, 1852–1870: Art in France under Napoleon III (Philadelphia, Pa., 1978), 12Google Scholar.

33 Vanier, Henriette, La Mode et ses métiers: Frivolités et luttes des classes 1830–1870 (Paris, 1960)Google Scholar; Johnson, “Economic Change”; Christopher H. Johnson, “Patterns of Proletarianization: Parisian Tailors and Lodeve Woolens Workers,” in Merrinian, Consciousness and Class Experience, 65–84; Perrot, Philippe, Les Dessus et les dessous de la bourgeoisie (Paris, 1981)Google Scholar.

34 Le Petit Messager des Modes 2, 13 (1e juillet 1843); 97Google Scholar.

35 La Gazette des Femmes 3, 4 (2 nov. 1844): 15Google Scholar.

36 Paris, Chambre de Commerce, Statistique 1847–48, 38, 39.

37 Ibid., 39, 38.

38 Paris, Chambre de Commerce et d'Industrie, Statistique de l'industrie à Paris de l'enquête faite par la Chambre de Commerce pour l'année 1860 (Paris, 1864), xlv–xlviGoogle Scholar.

39 Gaillard, Jeanne, Paris, la ville 1852–1870 (Paris, 1977), 380–85Google Scholar.

40 Roehl, “French Industrialization”; O'Brien and Keydor, Economic Growth.

41 Williams, Dream Worlds, 108–11, 9–10.

42 Flamant-Paparatti, Danielle, Bien-pensantes, cocodettes et bas-bleus: La femme bourgeoise à travers la presse féminine et familiale (1873–1887) (Paris, 1984)Google Scholar.

43 Smith, Ladies of the Leisure Class, 7. See also Branca, Silent Sisterhood, for a treatment of bourgeois women in the context of industrialization (or modernization, in Branca's terms).