The Dreyfus Affair and the Crisis of French Manhood (review)

At the end of the nineteenth century, the definition of "manhood" was in flux. The maturation of the Industrial Revolution had vastly increased the ranks of the bourgeoisie and thus white-collar jobs and the professions. The long peace since the Franco-Prussian War had reduced the prestige associated with military glory. Man no longer lived by the sweat of his brow or through feats of arms. The tension between virility former and contemporary was greatest in France, the only republic among the otherwise monarchist Great Powers, where its bourgeois leaders mistrusted aristocrats and sought to replace them with men from the nouvelles couches sociales, where mental prowess trumped physicality, and where the birthrate had long been the lowest in Europe.

Forth writes about the issue of French manhood in the context of the Dreyfus affair. What he calls "conventional" history has thoroughly treated the narrative details of these years, especially espionage and counterespionage, the courts-martial, the political divisions, the repercussions for the Third Republic, and, more important, the broader issues—above all, the contest between tradition and modernity, between individual rights and collective rights, and between the principle of justice and raison d'état. He insists that cultural history can add a further dimension by analyzing the gender anxieties and the medical discourse of masculinity. To do so, he has examined in a new light the voluminous newspaper accounts and the many political cartoons, excavated the writings of forgotten physicians, reinterpreted critical individuals and events, and clarified the debates about virility that have usually been discussed only in the context of slow population growth.

At the outset, Dreyfusards—"intellectuals," Jews, and antimilitarists against the army, the Catholic church, and incumbent politicians— appeared literally "undermanned" in comparison to anti-Dreyfusards. To assert their masculinity, Dreyfusards recounted stories of Jewish heroism and adopted for themselves the language of noble sacrifice—even to the point of rendering Alfred Dreyfus as a Christ figure. They always portrayed their most famous symbol, Truth as a nude woman, in the company of men, who were necessary to release her. To attack the masculinity of their enemies, they criticized the anti-Dreyfusard reliance on the "hysterical"—and thus feminized—mob. To counter the image of their champion Emile Zola as an obese pornographic novelist, they trumpeted his taking up physical exercise and diet.

Because so much of Forth's analysis depends more upon his own reading of the evidence than on the evidence itself, obvious mistakes weaken his credibility. Gaston Calmette had not published the letters that he had threatened to publish when Henriette Caillaux shot him (29). The 1913 law increased military service to three years, not five (235). Forth occasionally strains to make his case. About Hermann-Paul's famous cartoon—"Juin 99: L'Arrêt de la Cour"—of a magistrate with Truth on his arm saying, "Madame is with me," which celebrated the decision of the Cour de Cassation to order a new trial for Dreyfus, Forth comments, "Here perhaps was proof that Dreyfusards could indeed get dates!" (165). His equation of the pre-1914 nationalist revival as protofascist is tendentious. His inclination throughout to draw a clear line between Dreyfusards and anti-Dreyfusards fails to acknowledge how difficult the choice was for some on both sides. Forth's book will have to be read, if only because of the controversy that it will provoke.