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

Author:   Mary Louise Roberts ,  Catharine Stimpson
Publisher:   The University of Chicago Press
Edition:   2nd ed.
ISBN:  

9780226721217


Pages:   352
Publication Date:   03 March 1994
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   Out of stock   Availability explained
The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available.

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


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Overview

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.

Full Product Details

Author:   Mary Louise Roberts ,  Catharine Stimpson
Publisher:   The University of Chicago Press
Imprint:   University of Chicago Press
Edition:   2nd ed.
Dimensions:   Width: 1.70cm , Height: 0.30cm , Length: 2.40cm
Weight:   0.680kg
ISBN:  

9780226721217


ISBN 10:   0226721213
Pages:   352
Publication Date:   03 March 1994
Audience:   College/higher education ,  Professional and scholarly ,  Undergraduate ,  Postgraduate, Research & Scholarly
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Out of stock   Availability explained
The supplier is temporarily out of stock of this item. It will be ordered for you on backorder and shipped when it becomes available.

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

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