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Blessed Motherhood, Bitter Fruit

Nelly Roussel and the Politics of Female Pain in Third Republic France

By: Elinor Accampo

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Blessed Motherhood, Bitter Fruit

Nelly Roussel and the Politics of Female Pain in Third Republic France

By: Elinor Accampo

Nelly Roussel (1878–1922)—the first feminist spokeswoman for birth control in Europe—challenged both the men of early twentieth-century France, who sought to preserve the status quo, and the women who aimed to change it. She delivered her messages through public lectures, journalism, and theater, dazzling audiences with her beauty, intelligence, and disarming wit. She did so within the context of a national depopulation crisis caused by the confluence of low birth rates, the rise of international tensions, and the tragedy of the First World War. While her support spread across social classes, strong political resistance to her message revealed deeply conservative precepts about gender which were grounded in French identity itself. In this thoughtful and provocative study, Elinor Accampo follows Roussel's life from her youth, marriage, speaking career, motherhood, and political activism to her decline and death from tuberculosis in the years following World War I. She tells the story of a woman whose life and work spanned a historical moment when womanhood was being redefined by the acceptance of a woman's sexuality as distinct from her biological, reproductive role—a development that is still causing controversy today.

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Page Count

356

Publisher

JHU Press

Published Date

ISBN 10

0801884047

ISBN 13

9780801884047

The Great Nation in Decline

Sex, Modernity and Health Crises in Revolutionary France c.1750–1850

By: Professor Sean M Quinlan

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The Great Nation in Decline

Sex, Modernity and Health Crises in Revolutionary France c.1750–1850

By: Professor Sean M Quinlan

This book studies how doctors responded to – and helped shape – deep-seated fears about nervous degeneracy and population decline in France between 1750 and 1850. It uncovers a rich and far-ranging medical debate in which four generations of hygiene activists used biomedical science to transform the self, sexuality and community in order to regenerate a sick and decaying nation; a programme doctors labelled 'physical and moral hygiene'. Moreover, it is shown how doctors imparted biomedical ideas and language that allowed lay people to make sense of often bewildering socio-political changes, thereby giving them a sense of agency and control over these events. Combining a chronological and thematic approach, the six chapters in this book trace how doctors began their medical crusade during the middle of the Enlightenment, how this activism flowered during the French Revolution, and how they then revised their views during the period of post-revolutionary reaction. The study concludes by arguing that medicine acquired an unprecedented political, social and cultural position in French society, with doctors becoming the primary spokesmen for bourgeois values, and thus helped to define the new world that emerged from the post-revolutionary period.

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Page Count

292

Publisher

Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published Date

ISBN 10

1409479943

ISBN 13

9781409479949