Civilization without Sexes: Reconstructing Gender in Postwar France, 1917-1927 (Women in Culture and Society)

Roberts, Mary Louise

ISBN 10: 0226721221 / ISBN 13: 9780226721224

Editore: University of Chicago Press, 1994

Book is in good condition and may include underlining highlighting and minimal wear. The book can also include "From the library of" labels. May not contain miscellaneous items toys, dvds, etc. . We offer 100% money back guarantee and 24 7 customer service. Codice articolo ZEV.0226721221.G

Riassunto:

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.

Informazioni sugli autori:

Mary Louise Roberts is associate professor of history at Stanford University.

Mary Louise Roberts is associate professor of history at Stanford University.

Dati bibliografici

Titolo: Civilization without Sexes: Reconstructing ...
Casa editrice: University of Chicago Press
Data di pubblicazione: 1994
Legatura: Brossura
Condizione: good