Abstract
The dominant historical interpretation presents the 1930s as the ‘triumph of familialism’ rather than of the ‘new woman’.1 In this scenario, the period from the 1890s to the 1920s was merely a ‘phoney war’ of the sexes: change threatened but did not really eventuate. The longer skirts and hair of the 1930s symbolised, in this analysis, the recovery of conventional femininity and the return to domesticity.2 French films of the 1930s illustrate this pattern, presenting a panoply of female characters who, having dabbled in independence, find their fulfilment in marriage and devotion to a husband.3
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Suggestions for Further Reading
Bard, C. and J.-L. Robert, ‘The French Communist Party and Women 1920–1939: From “feminism” to familialism’, trans. N. Dombrowski, in H. Gruber and P. Graves (eds), Women and Socialism, Socialism and Women: Europe between the two World Wars (New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books, 1998).
Bernard, P. and H. Dubief, The Decline of the Third Republic 1914–1938, trans. A. Forster (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press; Paris: Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme, 1985).
Koven, S. and S. Michel. Mothers of a new world: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States (New York: Routledge, 1993).
Jackson, J. The Popular Front in France: Defending Democracy, 1934–1938 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1988).
Pedersen, S. Family, Dependence and the Origins of the Welfare State: Britain and France, 1914–1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993).
Prost, A. and G. Vincent (eds), A History of Private Life, Vol. V: Riddles of Identity in Modern Times, trans. A. Goldhammer (Cambridge and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1991).
Reynolds, R. ‘Women and the Popular Front in France: The Case of the Three Women Ministers’, French History 8, 4 (1994), 196–224.
Siegel, M. ‘“To the Unknown Mother of the Unknown Soldier”: Pacifism, Feminism, and the Politics of Sexual Difference among French Institutrices between the Wars’, French Historical Studies 22, 3 (1999), 421–51.
Soucy, R. French Fascism: The First Wave, 1924–1933 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1986).
Soucy, R. French Fascism: The Second Wave, 1933–1939 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1995).
Whitney, S. B. ‘Embracing the status quo: French Communists, Young Women and the Popular Front’, Journal of Social History 30, 1 (Fall, 1996), 29–53.
Whitney, S. B. ‘Gender, Class and Generation in Interwar French Catholicism: The Case of the Jeunesse ouvrière chrétienne féminine’, Journal of Family History 26, 4 (2001), 480–507.
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© 2004 Susan K. Foley
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Foley, S.K. (2004). Taking Sides: Women in the 1930s. In: Women in France since 1789. European Studies Series. Palgrave, London. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-230-80214-8_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-0-230-80214-8_8
Publisher Name: Palgrave, London
Print ISBN: 978-0-333-61993-3
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