Women at Work: The Femme Nouvelle in Belle Epoque Fiction

Women at Work: The Femme Nouvelle in Belle Epoque Fiction Juliette M. Rogers THE FEMINIZATION OF FRENCH CULTURE during the Belle Epoque resulted in a mainstream viewpoint that gave more emphasis and value to those aspects of culture traditionally deemed feminine . However, it also gave rise to more openings for Frenchwomen in conventionally male-dominated fields. One of the most intriguing keys to the rise in women's participation in the public sphere during the Belle Epoque is the development of the "femme nouvelle." This modern and emancipated female figure was caricatured and critiqued by many writers , both male and female, but she was also studied and praised by a variety of novelists during the period. Many of the more common stereotypes about the femme nouvelle come from Anglo-American images of the "New Woman" from a similar time period: the image of the militant bluestocking, for example, stems from the vociferous suffragists who protested publicly in England and the United States during the turn-ofthe -century period. The humorless intellectual and the freewheeling young women who smoked cigarettes and rode bicycles are also imported figures, derived from reports on late 19th-century American popular culture.1 We find this cliché of the femme nouvelle in Belle Epoque literary figures, such as Rachilde's character Marie Chamerot ("Missie") in her 1900 novel La Jongleuse.1 While the central character, Eliante Donalger, is a mixture of the exotic and the decadent, Eliante's young niece Missie is a bicycle-riding science student, portrayed as easily duped, shallow, and rather dull. One of the first impressions that Léon Reille receives of this intelligent young woman reveals these negative qualities: Cette espèce de grande guenon déguisée en enfant de choeur, parlant d'une voix de rogomme, l'air pas trop vicieux, seulement étourdie, maladroite et pressée, pédalant sur la vie parisienne, les prunelles fixes, la langue tirée, arrivant bonne première dans toutes les classes et culbutant dans les salons, comme un clown de cirque ... ce grand singe, modérément femelle, représentait bientôt le repoussoir qui convenait à la rareté de l'autre [Eliante], l'objet de vitrine. (43) VOL. XXXVII, No. 4 17 L'E SPRIT C RÉATEUR We can easily read Rachilde's amused disdain for the femme nouvelle in the passage above. Missie's more enigmatic and seductive aunt Eliante receives all the attentions of Léon Reille during the novel, while Missie remains the stupid "clown," the boring "monkey" who is continually dismissed by Léon as an uninteresting child. Missie's intellect and independence are of no interest to him whatsoever, and she is only able to "catch" Léon in the end by following the manipulative advice of Eliante and giving birth to his child. These stereotypes about the femme nouvelle, whether imported from abroad or created in France, are abundant in Belle Epoque literature. But there is also another type that develops from a specifically French condition: the femme nouvelle as career woman. Following the pedagogical reforms of the 188Os in France, the rise of educated and literate women blossomed into an era of opening doors for women in the liberal professions during the Belle Epoque. After universities and professional schools began opening their doors to women students, it followed that the professions themselves opened their practices to qualified women in education, medicine, the law, journalism and the sciences.3 It is true that numbers of women in the liberal professions remained low during the Belle Epoque and that resistance to women professionals remained high. Nevertheless, the news of the first woman to pass the Paris bar and practice law (Mme Petit, December 1900), or of the first woman scientist to win the Nobel Prize in Physics (Marie Curie, 1903), for example, made headlines everywhere in France, and these events were much discussed in newspapers, magazines, and literature during the Belle Epoque. As one of the first practical manifestations of the modern feminist movement, these pioneering women professionals were important markers in the development of the femme nouvelle and in the continuing "feminization " of French culture. They also inspired a new type of heroine in French...