The French Review

This work and its companion volume, Debating the Woman Question in the French Third Republic, 1870–1920, are the result of years of research devoted to the history of the "woman question" in France. Taking a completely new view of the history of French beliefs concerning woman's position and role in society, it is a revelatory study reflecting extraordinary depth of scholarship and analysis. While investigating the subject, Karen Offen found that no aspect of the debates on the woman question began with the Third Republic, motivating her to undertake a longue durée approach and to analyze the history of these debates prior to that period. The central, and original, premise of the book is that there are particular elements specific to French culture that influenced attitudes concerning women's rights. The chapters of the book are organized around an analysis of each of these elements. The first element peculiar to French society is the fact that, over the centuries, men attributed enormous cultural [End Page 238] power and influence to women, despite their having few legal or political rights. Offen cites writers, philosophers, and political theorists from early centuries who perceived women as being superior in morals and exercising considerable empire over men in various ways. This phenomenon explains why men felt compelled to control and counter feminine influence. According to Offen, this circumstance is essential for understanding the politics of French culture. The elements that Offen treats in the subsequent chapters include the exclusion of women from political authority, the increase of biomedical thinking that relegated women to biological inferiority, the sexual politics of education, and the division of labor. This last chapter is particularly fascinating as it takes the "long view" on women's work and examines several economic issues, such as the rise of the work ethic, the history of work guilds, salaries, the norms of work, the concept of the male breadwinner, and others. The chapter deals with the complicated conflicts that occurred during the Industrial Revolution, when technological changes shifted the borders between traditionally masculine and feminine trades. In each chapter we find a broad range of opinions and attitudes on various sides of the debates. These include quotations from male writers, politicians, and philosophers, as well as writings of famous and less well-known women who boldly participated in the debates. The volume opens with a section entitled Reconnaissance, which lists a series of quotations that represent differing sides of the question from the sixteenth century through the first half of the nineteenth century. These remarks set the stage for the study that follows. In addition, the appendix at the end of the volume provides important dates for the woman question during this period. This revelatory study offers new insight into the history of these controversies and represents an invaluable contribution to the history of women. The sometimes shocking and baffling beliefs and policies that Offen reveals bring to the fore how long and complicated this struggle was.