"Neglected Sisters" of the Women's Movement: The Perception and Experience of Working Mothers in the Parisian Garment Industry, 1860-1915

'1SiEGLECTnED SlSTERS" OF THE WOMEN'S MO VEMENT: The Perception and Experience of Working Mothers in the Parisian Garment Industry, 1860-1915 Lorraine Coons The nineteenth-century notion of "woman's proper place," given its connotation of economic dependency, its vision of the ideal home, and the role of woman as mother and educator, is clearly a bourgeois creation.1 Only then and only among the middle and upper classes did there exist this hierarchical division within the family between wage earner and spender. When we refer to "woman's proper place" in this context, we are identifying an ideal held by bourgeois society alone. The difficulty arose when nineteenth-century middle-class reformers sought to extend this image of women to the working classes. In the pre-industrial age, there was no incompatibiHty between women's productive and reproductive functions. Remunerative work was performed within the confines of the household, thus women could satisfy both responsibihties—nurturer of the family and co-breadwinner. Industrialization brought special challenges for working mothers. While their productive and reproductive responsibüities continued, women found it increasingly difficult to reconcile these two incompatible functions. The significant change coming with industrialization was not so much in the nature of the work but in the locale. This separation of workplace and home posed the greatest chaUenge to women attempting to balance their varied responsibihties. Even the most progressive feminists of the late nineteenth century accepted the narrowly defined roles assigned to the mother of the family. Rather than question tradition, they sought to adapt to it. Within the confines of the bourgeois notion of "proper place," a woman was expected to retire from the active labor force after the birth of her first child to assume her newly assigned roles of wife, mother, and housekeeper. This was one of Napoleon's most powerful legacies. Article 213 of his Code Civil clearly defined the respective roles of each spouse: "The husband owes protection to his wife, the wife obedience to her husband."2 This conventional attitude had complex and underlying religious , pohtical, and socio-economic roots. These attitudes encouraged the revitalization of home industry in the garment trades which was made possible by the impact of economic modernization on certain industries in the late nineteenth century. Moth- © 1993 Journal of Women's History, Vol 5 No. 2 (Fall) 1993 Lorraine Coons 51 ers, faced with the added responsibiHty of acting as co-breadwinner, could now fulfül their economic obHgations without violating society's norms. This article analyzes the concept of the "proper sphere" for working-class mothers in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century French society and its link to the regeneration of home industry in the Parisian garment trades. Women's involvement in homework was restricted to those trades which were an extension of their work in the home, and thus clothing manufacture had a special appeal. Under this rubric, women were employed in the fabrication of lace, artificial flowers, hosiery, tapestries, and were engaged in embroidery and the rnillinery trade.3 By the first quarter of the twentieth century, however, homework had degenerated into a source of exploitive, "sweated" labor. Rather than change the attitudes about the married woman's "proper place," legislators sought to reform homework. The second part of this article focuses on the women's response, first to late nineteenth-century attitudes about woman's "proper place" and then to early twentieth-century concerns about the dangers of home industry to working-class mothers. With minor exceptions, women's rights activists, too, supported the retention of homework . Their idea of improving the system included protective labor legislation and unionization while the attitudes remained securely in place. Industrialization did not open up new opportunities for women in the workforce. It likewise failed to change traditional attitudes which continued to restrict women's growth and development weU into the twentieth century. When confronted with the problem of outside employment for mothers of the working class, feminists, both bourgeois and mihtant alike, generaUy subscribed to the middle-class notion of a "woman's proper place."4 In their caU for equal rights, feminists were championing the cause of the single woman. Once a mother...