France after Revolution. Urban Life, Gender, and the New Social Order (review)

This is an imaginative and compelling short book. Drawing on a solid grounding of archival sources in Lyon, Nantes, and Paris, Davidson explores cultural and social relations in the Napoleonic era and the Restoration. She argues that the years of the early nineteenth century, especially the 1820s, were critical in shaping, or reshaping, class and gender relations.

Rather than look at social relations in the workplaces of a slowly industrializing France, Davidson examines the world of leisure. She contends that the Revolution blurred social markers and that men and women in the early nineteenth century sought new ways of defining and recognizing social distinctions. She is cognizant of "larger forces" shaping culture and politics – most notably the state, the Church, and producers of culture, by which she means playwrights, authors of prescriptive literature, journalists, etc. However, she emphasizes the agency of "ordinary people" in shaping class and gender relations by displaying themselves and observing each other's behavior. The book is divided into three parts, focusing respectively on festivals, theater, and associational life. The first two chapters examine the attempts of post-revolutionary governments to promote themselves through festivals. Davidson is particularly interested in the role of women in these ceremonies. "Staging the Napoleonic State" looks at the government's strategies for attracting large crowds, while also trying to control popular activities and attract elites. Davidson emphasizes women's importance in curbing disorder, encouraging male attendance, and influencing relatives to support the regime. She focuses especially on the state-sponsored marriage ceremonies of wounded veterans and poor young women, which she sees as dramatic means of connecting family to state.

The second chapter turns to the Restoration. In contrast to Napoleonic celebrations, Bourbon festivals drew attention to women less as wives and mothers of citizens than as subjects notable for their fidelity to the monarchy and the Church. In certain ways, this can be seen as a more political role for women as women – but also a role that particularly celebrated elite, rather than popular, women and one that would prove problematic under more democratic regimes. Davidson also emphasizes the more general elite character of these festivals, noting the Bourbons' distrust of the lower classes and the growing separation of elite and popular festivities.

The second part of the book follows a more geographical than chronological organization, and turns from the theatrical aspects of state-sponsored festivals to actual theater. Chapter Three looks at the Parisian Boulevard and at the development of melodrama as a genre, following the conventions created by Réné-Charles Guilbert de Pixérécourt. Combining music and spoken dialogue, melodramas were the most popular theatrical genre for all classes from 1800 through the early 1820s. Davidson argues that although these plays depicted a hierarchal world in which social status was clearly visible and predictable, the experiences of theater-going often had very different effects. The plots of melodrama also often centered on female victims / heroes; Davidson suggests that audiences avidly watched not only the characters on the stage, but also each other, especially the women in the audience.

In Chapter Four, Davidson highlights the importance of theater in city life in Lyon and Nantes and the financial challenges of sustaining such enterprises — a theme likely to be familiar to contemporary supporters of drama. She argues that even with censorship, theater was one of few venues in which people could voice political opposition in both the Napoleonic era and the Restoration. However, she ultimately focuses less on explicitly political criticism than on rowdy behavior during performances and the justifications for policing theater to protect the sensibilities of women in the audience.

In the final section of the book, Davidson considers a variety of forums for social interaction, including salons, cercles, and philanthropic organizations, as well as cafés, cabarets, and dancing halls. She argues that by the end of the 1820s, associational life was increasingly bourgeois and masculine, a process that she...