Writing modern selves: Literacy and the French working class in the early nineteenth century

Journal of Social History

Volumn 40, Issue 1, 2006, Pages

  Rowe, Steven E ^a,b  

^a SAINT XAVIER UNIVERSITY   (United States)

^b Department of History and Political Science ^*  (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 33749253911     PISSN: 00224529     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1353/jsh.2006.0094     Document Type: Article

References (130)

1. Jacques Etienne Bédé, Un Ouvrier en 1820, ed. Rémi Gossez (Paris, 1984), pp. 385-86. Chair-turning was one of the furniture-making trades and involved the use of a lathe to spin parts of a chair (legs, spokes for the back, etc.) so they could be shaped.
2. Bédé's original manuscript is now located at the Bibliothèque Nationale, Manuscrits, Nouvelles Acquisitions des Fonds Français (n.a.f.), no. 25033.
3. There have been several studies of working-class autobiography in modern Europe, revealing that this practice was more widespread than might at first be apparent. In particular, see Mary Jo Maynes, Taking the Hard Road: Life Course in French and German Workers' Autobiographies in the Era of Industrialization (Chapel Hill, NC, 1995)
4. and David Vincent, Bread, Knowledge, and Freedom: A Study of Nineteenth-Century Working Class Autobiography (London, 1981).
5. In addition, Mark Traugott has edited a volume of selected translations from French workers' autobiographies, including some excerpts from Bédé's autobiography, titled The French Worker: Autobiographies from the Early Industrial Era (Berkeley, 1993). The details of Bédé's discussion of the Parisian furniture-making trades have also been the subject of debate in
6. Michael Sonenscher, Work and Wages: Natural Law, Politics, and the Eighteenth-Century French Trades (New York/Cambridge, 1989)
7. and Leora Auslander, Toste and Power: Furnishing Modern France (Berkeley, 1996).
8. One of the few historians who examines popular autobiographies as evidence of particular writing practices is James S. Amelang, The Flight of Icarus; Artisan Autobiograph? in Early Modern Europe (Stanford, 1998), and I use a similar approach to Amelang in my analysis of French working-class autobiographies in this essay. Amelang does not, however, do any of the broader comparative analysis of literacy practices that I suggest here.
9. This practice-based approach to literacy has been developed by several scholars, most notably anthropologists, since about 1980, as a direct critique of viewing literacy in terms of a binary opposition (literate/illiterate or literate/oral). The two best early examples of this approach are Shirley Brice Heath, Ways with Words (New York, 1983) and Sylvia Scribner and Michael Cole, The Psychology of Literacy (Cambridge, MA, 1981). For an argument for this focus on literacy practices as a way to analyze literacy, as opposed to analyzing literacy in terms of the literate/illiterate or literate/oral oppositions,
10. see Brian V. Street, Literacy in Theory and Practice (New York, 1984)
11. and Street, "Introduction: The New Literacy Studies," in Cross-Cultural Approaches to Literacy, ed. Brian V. Street (New York, 1993), pp. 1-22.
12. For a more nuanced approach to developing this theory of literacy practices, see Niko Besnier, Literacy, Emotion, and Authority: Reading and Writing on a Polynesian Atoll (New York, 1995).
13. In this book, Besnier also argues for the importance of analyzing the relationship between literacy practices and personhood, claiming "that, in all social groups, personhood as a sociocultural category plays a particularly important role in the process of giving literacy a specific meaning. This meaning piggy-backs, as it were, on local definitions of personhood, which itself is closely tied to political and economic processes." (p. 187) Besnier initially developed this theme in "Literacy and the Notion of Person on Nukulaelae Atoll" American Anthropologist 93 (1991); 570-587.
14. Several French historians have developed extensive analyses of particular literacy practices, such as reading books, writing letters, etc., particularly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. See, for example, Roger Chartier, Lectures et Lecteurs dans la France d'Ancien Régime (Paris, 1987);
15. Roger Chartier, ed., Pratiques de la Lecture (Paris, 1993);
16. Robert Darnton, The Literary Underground of the Old Regime (Cambridge, MA, 1982);
17. Roger Chartier, ed., La Correspondance: Les Usages de la Lettre au XIXe Siècle (Paris, 1991);
18. and Cécile Dauphin, Pierrette Lebrun-Pézerat, and Danièle Poublan, Ces Bonnes Lettres: Une Correspondance Familiale au XIXe Siècle (Paris, 1995). While I am deeply indebted to these analyses, I am arguing here that we need to recuperate the concept of literacy through a comparative analysis of literacy practices, as the anthropologists cited above discuss.
19. There is an extensive literature on the category of the "worker" in France, in particular focusing on issues of class consciousness. For examples of two very different analyses of the category of the French worker, see William H. Sewell, Jr., Work and Revolution in France: The Language of Labor from the Old Regime to 1848 (New York, 1980)
20. and Jacques Rancière, "The Myth of the Artisan: Critical Reflections on a Category of Social History" International Labor and Working Class History 24 (1983): 1-16. In addition to letters analyzed in this essay, I have also looked at workers' letters to the writers George Sand (in the 1840s-60s) and Eugène Sue (in the 1840s) and the communist publisher Etienne Cabet (in the 1840s). These letters to Sand, Sue, and Cabet indicate further evidence of similar kinds of letter writing, reading , and circulation practices to the ones I analyze in this essay. They are located in the Bibliothèque Nationale, n.a.f. 24811, Papiers George Sand; Bibliothèque Historique de la Ville de Paris (BHVP) CP 3935, Correspondance d'Eugène Sue à propos des Mystères de Paris; and BHVP MS 1052, Papiers Etienne Cabet.
21. François Furet and Jacques Ozouf, Lire et Ecrire: L'Alphabétisation des Français de Calvin à Jules Ferry, 2 Vols. (Paris, 1977), 1:358. While this claim is not the central argument of their larger study, it is used to argue for the broader significance of their previous examination of measuring (quantitatively) the spread of literacy in France from the seventeenth through nineteenth centuries.
22. This typology of selfhood - individualist and collectivist - has also been used by anthropologists to suggest a fundamental distinction between the modern, Western self and the concept of the person held by other peoples in the contemporary world. This is part of the analysis of the conception of the person in Clifford Geertz, " 'From the Native's Point of View': On the Nature of Anthropological Understanding," in Local Knowledge (New York, 1983), pp. 55-70
23. and Richard A. Shweder and E. J. Bourne, "Does the Concept of the Person Vary Cross-Culturally," in Culture Theory: Essays on Mind, Self, and Emotion, ed. R. A. Shweder and R. A. LeVine (New York, 1984), pp. 158-99.
24. Claudia Strauss points out that this distinction continues to be maintained by many cultural psychologists, even if most of her fellow anthropologists reject this division today. See Claudia Strauss, "The Culture Concept and the Individualism-Collectivism Debate: Dominant and Alternative Attributions for Class in the United States," in Larry Nucci, Geoffrey Saxe, and Elliot Turiel, eds., Culture,.Thought, and Development (Mahwah, NJ, 2000), pp. 85-114. In addition, many cognitive anthropologists rely on the concepts of egocentrism and sociocentrism in relatively recent analyses, even if they problematize these concepts to some extent. For example,
25. see Katherine P. Ewing, "The Illusion of Wholeness: Culture, Self, and the Experience of Inconsistency," Ethos 18 (1990): 251-78
26. and Dorothy Holland and Andrew Kipnis, "Metaphors for Embarrassment and Stories of Exposure: The Not-So-Egocentric Self in American Culture," Ethos 22 (1994): 316-42
27. Jerrold Seigel, The Idea of the Self: Thought and Experience in Western Europe since the Seventeenth Century (New York/Cambridge, 2005), pp. 3-32. Seigel specifically deals with Geertz and anthropologists discussed above on pages 25-26.
28. Jan Goldstein, The Post-Revolutionary Self: Politics and Psyche in France, 1750-1850 (Cambridge, MA, 2005).
29. Goldstein, p. 160.
30. Goldstein, p. 170. See pp. 218-228 for her discussion of Cousin and his followers' correspondence, and pp. 182-232 for the general problem of institutionalizing Cousinian selfhood in French schools.
31. Long-term or permanent migration to cities became increasingly common in the nineteenth century. See Louis Chevalier, La Formation de la Population Parisienne au XIXe Siècle (Paris, 1950)
32. and Leslie Page Moch, Paths to the City: Regional Migration in Nineteenth-Century France (London, 1983).
33. The literature on changes in labor processes in manufacturing and industrial work is too numerous to cite, but for some examples that focus on class-formation see Elinor Accampo, Industrialization, Family Life, and Class Relations: Saint-Chamond, 1815-1914 (Berkeley, 1989);
34. Ronald Aminzade, Ballots and Barricades: Class Formation and Republican Politics in France, 1830-1871 (Princeton, 1993);
35. Michael P. Hanagan, Nascent Proletarians: Class Formation in Post-Revolutionary France (Cambridge, 1989);
36. William M. Reddy, The Rise of Market Culture: The Textile Trade and French Society, 1750-1900 (New York, 1984);
37. Gay Gullickson, Spinners and Weavers of Auffay: Rural Industry and the Sexual Division of Labor in a French Village, 1750-1850 (Cambridge, MA, 1986);
38. Tessie Liu, The Weaver's Knot: The Contradictions of Class Struggle and Family Solidarity in Western France, 1750-1914, (Ithaca, NY, 1994);
39. Donald Reid, The Miners of Decazeville: A Genealogy of Deindustrialization (Cambridge, MA, 1985);
40. and William H. Sewell, Jr., Structure and Mobility: The Men and Women of Marseille, 1820-1870 (New York, 1985).
41. See Anthony Giddens' discussion of the separation of "space" from "place" and processes of "disembedding" of social systems that he argues are characteristic of modernity in The Consequences of Modernity (Stanford, 1990), pp. 18-21.
42. In their extensive study of the French postal survey of 1847, Cécile Dauphin, Pierrette Lebrun-Pézerat, and Danièle Poublan argue that letters carried by personal contacts were only a very small percentage of the total letters circulating in nineteenth-century France. See Dauphin et. al, "L'enquête postale de 1847," in La Correspondance, ed. Roger Chartier (Paris, 1991), p. 36. One of the examples that they mention of such personally-carried letters was letters by migrant workers and members of compagnonnage societies, which I discuss below.
43. Prior to 1849 in France (1839 in England), the postal system did not have a uniform rate for sending a letter. The 1847 postal survey was motivated, in part, by a desire to determine a national postal rate, and this eventually led to the production of the first national postage stamps in France. See Daupin et. al., "L'enquête postale de 1847," pp. 21-22.
44. Dauphin et. al., Ces Bonnes Lettres, p. 102.
45. Compagnonnage associations were highly-organized groups of journeyman artisans throughout France that were organized by trade. See Sewell, Work and Revolution in France and Cynthia M. Truant, The Rites of Labor: Brotherhoods of Compagnonnage in Old and New Regime France (Ithaca, NY, 1994).
46. See Truant, The Rites of Labor, especially pp. 172-80 for her discussion of letter writing. While Truant's book includes some analysis of compagnonnage in nineteenth-century France, her analysis of compagnons' writing practices is largely confined to sources from pre-Revolutionary France. Truant's book is particularly important for dispelling the myth that necessarily links "traditional" organizations in the Old Regime, like compagnonnage, with orality, as opposed to literacy.
47. The fact that the Revolution had made compagnonnage associations illegal could have contributed somewhat to this practice, but pre-Revolutionary compagnonnage letters also were transmitted directly by traveling compagnons.
48. 7 9786 in dossiers organized by department. These dossiers contain approximately 31 letters written by compagnons.
49. The "premier compagnon" (first compagnon) was the head of a local compagnonnage society, chosen from among the senior local members. The other main officer was the "rouleur" (keeper of the roles) who maintained lists of compagnons currently located in their town, those compagnons' work assignments, and debts owed by compagnons to the local society.
50. Most workers who were friends tended to open their letters with just the last name of the intended reader of the letter, or sometimes "My Dear," followed by the last name - as in Agricol Perdiguier's letter to Louis-Marie Ponty which began "My Dear Ponty." See Agricol Perdiguier, Correspondance Inédit avec George Sand et ses Amis, ed. Jean Briquet (Paris, 1966), pp. 61-62,
51. A. Perdiguier to L. M. Ponty, January 1, 1842. For other examples of similar greetings in workers' letters to friends, see Perdiguier, Correspondance Inédit and Louis Gabriel Gauny, Le Philosophe Plébéien, ed. Jacques Rancière (Paris, 1983).
52. Compagnons were given their noms de guerre when they were initiated into the society. These names included the city/town where the compagnon was from (e.g. Avignon) plus some personal quality (e.g. virtue).
53. 7 4236, dossier 10.
54. 7 4236, dossier 10, letter from compagnons de montpelliers an langedoc, October 15, 1803.
55. 7 4236, dossier 10, letters dated July 6, 1805, July 7, 1805, July 14, 1805 from compagnons de la rochelle.
56. Compagnons used the word "affaires" to mean both registers or archives of a compagnonnage society or the passport of an individual compagnon. In this case, it appears that they are asking for Contoy san Chagrin's passport and other documents.
57. 7 4236, dossier 10, letter addressed to Charon deumuron dan la rue de Steteruie no 15 a la Rochelle aremon de la Charente; pour remettre a tous compagnons Charon qui son en ville a la Rochelle; a Madame Voisin Mère des compagnons from compagnons de Bordeaux en guienne le 26. jeanvier 1806.
58. 7 4236, dossier 10, letter from Noumans le desside, Bausseron Laprudansse, Breton la prudance, Bourguignon legénie du devoir to Monsieur francois lalemand garçon cordonnier, December 28, 1808. This letter also suggested that either Mr. Lalemand should come to Nantes to be received as a compagnon or the compagnons of Nantes could come to La Rochelle.
59. AN F 4236, Dossier 10, f. 9, Analise d'une procedure instruite pur monsieur k juge d'instruction pres le tribunal de premiere instance de l'arrondissement de toulouse contre plusieurs garçons menuisiers residans a toulouse.
60. All copies of the letter were seized by police when the members of the Toulouse association were arrested in 1811, so the letters were never sent.
61. Jacques Rancière discusses the shoemakers' status in compagnonnage in "The Myth of the Artisan," pp. 2-3. But, the violent confrontations (called "rixes") between rival compagnonnage groups is a theme of both contemporary observers and later scholarly studies on compagnonnage in the early nineteenth century.
62. See Truant, The Rites of Labor, pp. 331-334.
63. The largest collection of Saint-Simonian archives are the Fonds Enfantin, located at the Bibliothèque de l'Arsenal in Paris.
64. Efforts to recruit workers outside of Paris began shortly after the Saint-Simonian movement organized these Parisian workers. And, in fact, many of the Parisian workers were involved in trips to Lyon or other cities in the 1830s, to spread the Saint-Simonian doctrine.
65. Rancière, The Nights of Labor, p. 146.
66. Rancière, The Nights of Labor, p. 144.
67. "Nous vous permetons de vous dires vos Enfants car nous avons l'aintention de Nous En rendre digne, quand Vous nous aurez donné La facilité de connaitre vos institutions duquel nous avons Entendu Parler vaguement par[?) quand vos predication ont Enseigné vos doctrine humaine.... C'est de nous adresser directement á vous pour que vous déniez avoir la complaisance de nous faciliter les moyens de nous instruire sur les Basse de votre moral." Fonds Enfantin 7607, Correspondance du Globe, f. 201, letter from Tortain, serrurier, Vilain, indigant, Riaux, jardinier et. al., February 20, 1832. Similarly, the leatherworkers at the Défroment workshop wrote a letter to Michel Chevalier, the editor of Le Globe, requesting that he send a copy of the newspaper to their workshop. Fonds Enfantin 7607, Correspondance du Globe, f. 218, atelier Défroment to Michel Chevalier, n.d.
68. Fonds Enfantin 7626, Correspondance des Principaux Saint Simoniens de J 832 à 1845, f. 16, Charles Béranger to Enfantin, October 9, 1834.
69. "chose utile en ce sens quils tout une démonstration vivante pour les hommes qui ne sont pas complètement denués d'intelligence, des cents hommes et quelques femmes, dans ce nombre il devait se trouver des gens d'un mérite special incontestable." Correspondance des Principaux Saint Simoniens de J 832 à 1845, f. 16, 1834 Ibid.
70. "vous avez sendoute ete surpris de ne pas resevoir une lettre de moi mais je ne sait que vous aimez et non pas vous acrire." Fonds Enfantin 7626, Correspondance des Principaux Saint Simoniens de 1832 à 1845, f. 16, Sophie Béranger to Enfantin, October 9, 1834.
71. Correspondance des Principaux Saint Simoniens de 1832 à 1845, f. 16, 1834 Ibid.
72. Fonds Enfantin 7607, Correspondance du Globe, f. 242, letter to M. Chevalier, April 17, 183n. (The last number of date is illegible.)
73. Fonds Enfantin 7605, Correspondance du Globe, f. 4, Machereau to Pecqueur, December 16, 1831.
74. Fonds Enfantin 7626, Correspondance des principaux Saint Simoniens de 1832 à 1845, f. 37, Desloges to Enfantin, October 22, 1834.
75. Philippe Régnier, "Usage Saint-Simoniens de l'Épistolaire," in La Lettre à la Croisée de l'Individuel et du Social, ed. Mireille Bossis (Paris, 1994), pp. 95-96. Régnier notes that, among Saint-Simonians, the first reader of letters were frequently "charged to communicate to one or several other readers his knowledge" gained from those letters.
76. Fonds Enfantin 7607, Correspondance du Globe, f. 201, letter from Tortain, serrurier, Vilain, indigant, Riaux, jardinier et. al., February 20, 1832.
77. The Saint-Simonian hierarchy first emerged in 1828 through the transformation of Saint-Simonianism from an economic and political philosophy into a (type of) religion. This transformation was accompanied by a rapid expansion in the Saint-Simonian "school" from a relatively small group of highly educated and mostly wealthy individuals, including Olinde Rodrigues, Barthélémy Prosper Enfantin, and Saint-Amand Bazard, to a much larger and broader organization that incorporated, within a few years, manual laborers from cities throughout France. In organizing themselves as a religious group, Saint-Simonians not only began to speak of certain members as "priests" but also created a hierarchy of "fathers," a "college," a "secondary degree of initiates," and "a third degree of aspirants and teachers," and, by late 1829, also a "workers' degree." Beginning around 1830, Saint-Simonians began to speak of themselves as the "Family," and addressed each other with familial titles, such as "father" and "sister," that indicated their relative positions within the hierarchy/family. Prosper Enfantin, the sole leader of the movement after his split with Bazard, referred to himself as the "Supreme Father." See Georg G. Iggers, The Cult of Authority: The Political Philosophy of the Saint-Simonians A Chapter in the Intellectual History of Totalitarianism (The Hague, 1958);
78. Robert B. Carlisle, The Proffered Crown: Soint-Simonionism and the Doctrine of Hope (Baltimore, 1987);
79. and the entry for "Enfantin, Barthélemy, Prosper" in Dictionnaire Biographique du Mouvement Ouvrier Français. Première Partie: 1789-1864, 3 Vols. (Paris, 1965), 2:153-56.
80. The only exceptions to this in the Saint-Simonian workers' letters that I collected are a handful of letters written in the mid-1840s to early 1850s, after the Saint-Simonian family had largely dissolved (although some members, particularly the more active ones, still maintained contact).
81. "Mes pères et Mères / Recevez je vous prie l'assurance de mes respect et de ma reconnaissance et suis pour la vie votre dévouée fille /Josephine Marie Bedouet / femme Rose Martin." Fonds Enfantin 7608, Correspondance du Globe, f. 80, letter by Josephine Marie Bedouet, femme Rosé Martin, October 1, 1831. Martin Rose was a tailor, but Josephine Marie Bedouet's occupation is unknown.
82. Rancière, The Nights of Labor, pp. 159-60. On the Saint-Simonian family, see note 50.
83. Such a practice was similar to the Saint-Simonian practice of making a "profession of faith," which all new official members of the movement had to make. See Rancière, The Nights of Labor, pp. 164-91 for his detailed analysis of some examples of these professions of faith.
84. In Friendship in the Classical World (New York, 1997), David Konstan argues that "one aspect of friendship universally emphasized in modern discussions is the need for self-disclosure as the basis for intimacy and trust between friends." (pp. 14-15)
85. This concept of "self-disclosure" is similar to Jacobins' emphasis on self-criticism and self-exposure, as discussed by Patrice Higonnet in Goodness Beyond Virtue: Jacobins during the French Revolution (Cambridge, MA, 1998), pp. 81-82.
86. For a discussion of modern friendship, see Anne Vincent-Buffault, L'Exercice de l'Amitié: Pour une Histoire des Pratiques Amicales aux XVIIIe et XIXe Siècles (Paris, 1995).
87. Gauny, Le Philosophe Plébén, pp. 147-61. The four letters from May 1832 are: (1) Bergier to Gauny, Boileau, and Thierry, (2) Gauny to Bergier, (3) Bergier to Gauny, and (4) Bergier to Gauny, Thierry, and Boileau.
88. "Tu t'es trompé mon ami, quand tu m'as écrit que je ne pouvais qu'écouter les plaisirs de votre journée dramatique; nos plaisirs et nos pensées sont trop harmoniques pour que les détails que tu m'en fais avec tant de poésie ne me les aient au moins fait partager.... J'arrive maintenant à te parler de l'expression si douce pour moi qui termine plusieurs phrases de ta lettre ... Tu nous manquais. Eh bien ce vide que mon absence faisait au milieu de vous, je le trouve au milieu de nous par rapport à toi." Gauny, Le Philosophe Plébén, Ibid., pp. 155, 156, letter from Bergier to Gauny, May 1832. The first ellipsis is mine, the second is in Bergier's letter.
89. Jean Briquet has collected Perdiguier's letters from several different private and public archives, some of which he published. In his index of all of the letters that Perdiguier wrote, Jean Briquet notes six total circular letters that Perdiguier wrote between 1840 and 1863. See Agricol Perdiguier, Correspondance Inédit avec George Sand et ses Amis, pp. 23-29. Unfortunately, Briquet only reproduced three of these circular letters, and it is unclear why he claims that one of these three is a circular.
90. Perdiguier also gave drafting lessons and published his autobiography and books on compagnonnage to supplement his income, and his wife Lise Perdiguier supported their family through her work as a seamstress. For more details on his life, see his two autobiographies - La Biographie de l'auteur du livre de compagnonnage (Paris, 1846)
91. and Mémoires d'un compagnon (Paris, 1854)
92. - as well as the biography by Jean Briquet, Agricol Perdiguier, compagnon du Tour de France et representant du peuple, 1805-1875 (Paris, 1981). His first autobiography gives a particularly vivid narrative of the various accidents and Illnesses that befell him due to his work as a carpenter.
93. Calling Perdiguier an active compagnon might be somewhat of an understatement. His publications on compagnonnage, particularly his Livre du Compagnonnage (Paris, 1839), were part of his active efforts to try to reform the associations. He opposed any divisions within compagnonnage and argued actively for the potential benefits of the associations for bringing together manufacturing workers in France.
94. Agricol Perdiguier, Correspondance Inédit, pp. 107-08 (Perdiguier to his friends, September 1849). It is unclear whether Perdiguier wrote one copy of letters like this, which was then circulated among friends, if he wrote multiple copies of the same letter, or some combination of these.
95. Perdiguier, Correspondance Inédit, p. 107.
96. See Giddens, The Consequences of Modernity, pp. 120-24 for a broader discussion of these links between self-disclosure, intimacy, and reflection as part of the development of modernity.
97. On the significance of the comparative method for studying literacy practices and formulating generalizations about literacy, see Besnier, Literacy, Emotion, and Authority, especially pp. 6-10.
98. Studies that specifically focus on working-class or popular autobiographies have worked around this source scarcity problem by analyzing such texts from a wider geographical area and over a broader time span than I do in this essay. For example, in Taking the Hard Road, Mary Jo Maynes located over 300 autobiographies by French and German workers who lived from the eighteenth through the early twentieth centuries. The twenty texts that I refer to here were primarily written by male workers, a source problem that Maynes also notes in her own work. Since the actual act of writing is the central problem in this essay, I have limited myself to discussing texts when they were written, as opposed to texts by workers who lived during the time period discussed in this essay that might have been written significantly later in the nineteenth century.
99. These are some of the essential characteristics given to autobiography in Philippe Lejeune, Le Pacte Autobiographique (Paris, 1975). Lejeune's more recent work, such as Moi Aussi (Paris, 1986), has moved away from such a strictly formal definition of autobiography to also emphasize the importance of the writer's social background.
100. Amelang, The Flight of Icarus, p. 234. Amelang makes this argument for writers of early modern popular autobiographies, but I am arguing that it also applies to nineteenth-century workers' autobiographies.
101. See Jean-Claude Romand, Confessions d'un Malheureux. Vie de Jean-Claude Romand (Paris, 1846);
102. Pierre Gerbier, Mémoires d'un ouvrier. Confessions de Pierre Gerbier (Paris, 1850);
103. and J. B. E. Arnaud, dit Libourne-le-Décidé, Mémoires d'un compagnon du Tour de France (Rochefort, 1859).
104. A mutual-aid society was a flexible type of workers' corporation, in some cases quite similar to compagnonnage. During the Restoration (1815-1830), mutual-aid societies could be legally registered with the police (since in theory they were only supposed to provide aid to unemployed or sick members), while compagnonnage associations were illegal. For more on mutual-aid societies, see William Sewell, Work and Revolution in France.
105. Bédé, Un Ouvrier en 1820, pp. 165-67.
106. Bédé, Un Ouvrier en 1820, Ibid., pp. 169-75.
107. The full original title of the manuscript was Etienne et Maria ou le triomphe de l'amitié Récit historique des ouvriers tourneurs en chaises de la Ville de Paris au dix. neuvième siècle par Jacques Etienne Bédé ouvrier tourneur fondateur et délé gué à vie de la Société des Secours Mutuels précédé d'un abrégé de sa vie civile et militaire écrit par lui-même.
108. Letters written on March 9, 1821, May 3, 1821, and May 5,1821. Bédé, Un Ouvrier en 1820, pp. 325, 333, 336.
109. Letters written on May 8, 1821 and July 30, 1821. Bédé, Un Ouvrier en 1820, Ibid., pp. 358-59, 360.
110. Bédé, Un Ouvrier en 1820, Ibid., pp. 372-73.
111. Bédé, Un Ouvrier en 1820, Ibid., pp. 380-81. Bicheux's title had been changed from "Amie de la Société" (Friend of the Society) to "La Première Dame Honoraire de la Société" (The First Honorary Woman of the Society). Both of these titles caused conflict among society members, particularly the second one.
112. Bédé, Un Ouvrier en 1820, Ibid., p. 380.
113. "Il n'est pourtant pas juste que le riche regorge de superflu et que le pauvre soit privé du nécessaire.... D'ailleurs, nos intérêts ne sont pas les leurs; et tant que nos intérêts seront divisés, nous nous exploiterons les uns les autres en nous asservissant. Je ne sais quelle genre de plaisir éprouve la classe opulente en nous voyant réduit à servir leurs caprices. Je ne sais comment ils ne rougissent pas d'être les vils meurtriers de leurs semblables." D. Durand, Vie, pensées et voyages de D. D. (Saint Etienne, 1837), pp. 62-63.
114. Other examples include Bédé, Un Ouvrier en 1820;
115. Romand, Confessions d'un Malheureux; Perdiguier, Biographie de l'auteur du "Livre du Compagnonnage" and Mémoires d'un Compagnon; Gerbier, Mémoires d'un ouvrier; and P. Deruineau, Souvenirs d'un ouvrier (Angers, 1850).
116. In contrast, almost every worker who published an autobiography between 1848 and 1860 referred to himself in the title as "ouvrier" or a "compagnon." The importance of workers in the Revolution of 1848 - as participants and as symbols of the social problems facing France - no doubt played a role in autobiographers" choices of their titles during this later period.
117. Durand, Vie, pensées et voyages de D. D., pp. 34, 51, 56.
118. What I am calling the narrative framework, Mary Jo Maynes refers to as the "subgenre" or "life trajectory" created in an autobiography. See Maynes, "Autobiography and Class Formation in Nineteenth-Century Europe: Methodological Considerations" Social Science History 16 (1992): 526-31.
119. Durand, Vie, pensées et voyages de D. D., p. 90.
120. Unfortunately, there is little evidence on the precise readership and its extent for the workers' autobiographies that were published in the nineteenth century. In his first autobiography, Agricol Perdiguier lists a group of several hundred subscribers that preordered, and financed, its publication. See Perdiguier, Biographie de l'auteur du "Livre du Compagnonnage, pp. 148-175. Other published autobiographies do not, however, contain such information. In addition, as of the summer of 2004, possible publishers' records at the Archives Nationales were not accessible because of their fragile condition.
121. On the persistence of orality throughout the early modern and modern periods, albeit the context of highly-educated elites, see Françoise Waquet, Parler comme un livre: L'oralité et le savoir, XVIe-XXe siècle (Paris, 2003). /
122. e siècle," in La Correspondance, pp. 229-31
123. and Dauphin, Lebrun-Pérerat, and Poublan, Ces Bonnes Lettres, p. 102.
124. See Chartier, ed., Pratiques de la lecture and Chartier, Lectures et lecteurs dans la France d'Ancien Régime.
125. Naomi J. Andrews, "Utopian Androgyny: Romantic Socialists Confront Individualism in July Monarchy France," French Historical Studies 26 (2003): 457, 437.
126. One of the more interesting texts cited by Andrews is Pierre Leroux, "De l'individualisme et du socialisme," Oeuvres (1825-1850) (Geneva, 1978). Leroux was involved in the early stages of the Saint-Simonian movement in the 1820s and 1830s.
127. Goldstein discusses another counter-narrative to the Cousinian self, that of phrenology, which was aimed at the popular classes and also welcomed women. See Goldstein, pp. 269-315. As Goldstein points our, phrenology also articulated a very different view of ehe self from Cousinian psychology, where reflection was tied the body in the form of "[embedding] the mind in the brain." Goldstein, p. 272.
128. This discussion of resistance is inspired by Lila Abu-Lughod's critique of an over-simplified approach to the analysis of resistance in "The Romance of Resistance: Tracing Transformations of Power Through Bedouin Women," American Ethnologist 17 (1990): 41-55.
129. See Dauphin et. al., Ces Bonnes Lettres, especially pp. 161-82. In addition to an interesting analysis of these letters and the family practices of writing, reading, and exchanging them, this book also includes reproductions of 120 of the letters (written between 1857 and 1873), out of a total of 2,955 letters in the Froissart family archive.
130. Dauphin et. al., Ces Bonnes Lettres, pp. 161, 179.