Philippe Aries and the Politics of French Cultural History (review)

Philippe Ariès was a major figure in historical scholarship in the last half of the twentieth century, known principally for Centuries of Childhood (1962; French edition 1960) and The Hour of Our Death (1981; French edition 1977). These were key works in opening up new areas for historians: the history of family, popular culture and "mentalities," the shifting balance between public and private spheres. Patrick Hutton's intellectual biography combines probing analyses of Ariès' scholarship with a careful treatment of the social, political, and professional contexts that shaped the man and his work.

Hutton's major thesis is that Ariès' mature work as a scholar echoes commitments and concerns that come out of his royalist past. In the early chapters of his book he shows us Ariès as a student in Paris working within a network of friends and associates tied to Action Française and its leader, Charles Maurras. France's defeat by Germany in 1940, followed by the Vichy years, constitute a turning point in Ariès' life, as they did for all of the French who lived through these catastrophic events. Hutton pays particular attention to Ariès' time as a teacher at the École des Cadres at La Chapelle, an institution designed to train a new generation of French élites. For Hutton this was a crucial event, although one that Ariès apparently passed over quickly in his own memoirs. At La Chapelle Ariès' work as a history instructor led him to move away from political narrative as the basis for organizing our knowledge of the past, in favor of "the neglected histories of ordinary people in their everyday lives" (p. 42). These concerns show up as well in the columns that Ariès contributed to La Nation Française, the royalist paper he wrote for in the 1950's and 1960's. His royalism, and his failure to win a university position, left Ariès on the margin of French intellectual life until the 1960's. The enormous success of the English translation of his work on childhood led in turn to his acceptance by a later and less ideologically oriented group of French historians, such as Roger Chartier. Hutton's work is particularly valuable for its extensive treatment of the responses to his major historical writings. By the end of his life Ariès was well established at the École Pratique des Hautes Études, where he was a leader in pushing scholars toward the study of private life.

Hutton searches constantly for the roots of Ariès' historical output in his personal history, a position that is at times somewhat speculative. In dealing with Ariès' turn to the history of death, for example, Hutton writes, "One might argue that at some level Ariès was trying to come to terms with losses that he identified with the Vichy years" (p. 113). Perhaps, but Ariès was responding more immediately to the "denial of death" that he saw as a characteristic of the late twentieth century. Hutton is persuasive in his insistence on the importance of the Vichy years, but at times this argumentative line works to push other important motives too far into the background.

Hutton's book is wonderfully lucid and informative, opening up a window on French cultural history that shows us the enduring power of ideas coming from the right. Much attention has been paid recently to the neo-liberalism of individuals such as Raymond Aron, who offered alternatives to the Marxist paradigm that dominated French intellectual life in the 1950's and 1960's. Hutton's portrayal of Ariès shows how the royalist tradition, with its respect for region, family, and religion, managed to find its way into French culture after World War II. His attitude toward Ariès is nicely balanced, for he combines sympathy for his subject...