The New Woman & Fin-de-Siècle France

BOOK REVIEWS the common cultural possession of even the less-well-educated among their readers. In "'Nurs'd up amongst the scenes I have describ'd': Political Resonances in the Poetry of Working-Class Women," Florence Boos ponders one other aspect of our current academic work: how, as scholars, do we recover unknown or unheard voices from the nineteenth century without adopting the attitude (roughly "this is worth reading since it has been ignored because of class and gender bias in the literary canon") that may privilege awkward, sentimental or derivative writing over "the best that is known and thought in the world"? I am not sure that Boos has solved the problem, but her analysis of examples from her own heroic endeavors at recuperation certainly supply materials for the rest of us to think about. About half way through the collection I was nagged into rereading Matthew Arnold and appreciating once more his description of the relationship between an era's society or politics and its literature: the greatest poets lived in times when "society was, in the fullest measure, permeated by fresh thought, intelligent and alive." There's a sly pleasure in imagining Arnold at an English department's contentious annual meeting on revising the curriculum: every current faction could discover ways to enlist his support while (at the same time) vehemently opposing much that he wrote. As in all collections, some of the contributions are more successful than others. Overall, however, Functions ofVictorian Culture at the Pre sent Time is far more coherent than is often the case, especially since (as the editor tells us) the contributors ranged from graduate students to senior professors. Christine Krueger's firm hand has eliminated the repetitions (and inconsistencies) that often plague such books; she has also won from her contributors an exemplary clarity in language and provided the useful index which some collections lack. And as the authors of these essays show, Victorian ideas are definitely far from dead. SALLY MITCHELL --------------------------- Temple University The New Woman & Fin-de-Siècle France Mary Louise Roberts. Disruptive Acts: The New Woman in Fin-de-Siècle France. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002. xii + 253 pp. $35.00 193 ELT 47 : 2 2004 FOR Les Femmes Nouvelles peopling Mary Roberts's turn-ofthe -century Paris, the battle against restrictive ideologies of womanhood was waged with subtle, subversive manoeuvres; performance was their weapon of choice. Indeed the subject of this lively monograph could be deemed New Women of the nouvelle vague. Unlike their more aggressive Anglo-American or French socialist sisters, these women mimicked conventional behaviours and traits of femininity to increase access to public domains and, as a result, highlighted gender identity as an artificial and performative ideological construct rather than a natural essence implying a fixed destiny. Roberts's impressively researched analysis focuses on an interlinked group of women in theatrical and journalism circles, all in some way connected to one newspaper. La Fronde (the sling-shot), founded by Marguerite Durand in 1897, was staffed entirely by women (aside from the night janitor). This David directly confronted the Goliath of the powerful patriarchal French press. The paper had its roots in the frondeur tradition of journalism that, from the seventeenth-century, gave voice to marginalized perspectives on serious issues. Nonetheless, it was intended as a wide-ranging "hard news" newspaper, not a feminist broadsheet . It reported serious political and economic stories, as well as giving stock market reports and racing news. The women associated with it—from the journalists to the typesetters—demonstrated all the capabilities and skills of their male counterparts but, argues Roberts, they also exploited traditional feminine discourse to new ends. Thus, as journalists they could effectively report women's experience with the hardnosed , persuasive objectivity of the male investigative reporter. Equally they could bring female charm, sensitivity and compassion to discussion of topical social issues and political debates, presenting radical perspectives in a disarming way. The central figure in this informative study is Marguerite Durand. Roberts does not purport to uncover startling new dimensions of Durand 's life or its impact, but she does reinterpret Durand and her circle (les frondeuses) more generously than some previous critics. By...