The rules of the game: Respectability, sexuality, and the femme mondaine in late-nineteenth-century Paris

French Historical Studies

Volumn 25, Issue 3, 2002, Pages 531-556

  Plott, Michèle ^a  

^a SUFFOLK UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; EDUCATION; ETHNOLOGY; FAMILY; FEMALE; FRANCE; HISTORY; HUMAN RELATION; LEGAL ASPECT; MARRIAGE; PHYSIOLOGY; PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECT; SEXUAL BEHAVIOR; SEXUALITY; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR; SOCIAL CLASS; SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY; SPOUSE; WOMEN'S HEALTH;

EXTRAMARITAL RELATIONS; FAMILY; HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; INTERPERSONAL RELATIONS; MARRIAGE; PARIS; SEXUAL BEHAVIOR; SEXUALITY; SOCIAL BEHAVIOR; SOCIAL CLASS; SOCIAL VALUES; SPOUSES; WOMEN; WOMEN'S HEALTH;

EID: 61249128589     PISSN: 00161071     EISSN: 15275493     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1215/00161071-25-3-531     Document Type: Article

References (163)

1. Her letter to her husband quoted above is found in Inès Fortoul to Joseph Fortoul, 18 Jan. 1884, Archives nationales (hereafter AN) 246 AP 45
2. The individual women discussed in this article were, for the most part, members of the Parisian elite. While their politics ranged from Bonapartist to avowedly Republican, all were upper middle class or even aristocratic, at least nominally Roman Catholic, and well connected within their own particular circle of high society. However, there is evidence that some of the trends described here did filter down to the more middling levels of the bourgeoisie by 1900. For example, many early-twentieth-century readers of the newspaper Le matin shared with these elite women the expectation of romance and sexual pleasure in marriage and the sense that this expectation was a modern one. See Gustave Téry, ed., Les divorcés peint par eux-mêmes: Mille et une confessions recueillies (Paris, n.d., c. 1908)
3. Anne-Marie Sohn, Du premier baiser à l'alcôve: La sexualité des français au quotidien (1850-1950) (Paris, 1996), 308. Sohn dates the beginning of toleration of men's and women's indiscretions in France to 1870, continuing into the twentieth century
4. Louise d'Alq, Le savoir vivre en toutes les circonstances de la vie, 8th ed. (Paris, n.d.), 123, 247-48, 256
5. Mme. Emmeline Raymond, La civilité non puérile, mais honnête, 10th ed. (Paris, 1875), 100-101
6. and Mme. de Saverny, La femme chez elle et dans le monde (Paris, 1876), 261. Louise d'Alq warned young married women that they should take a chaperon on visits to notaries, lawyers, doctors, and even priests
7. This marked a significant change from the postrevolutionary period; William Reddy's work suggests that early-nineteenth-century mores required a far more careful observance of the rules of society. See William M. Reddy, "Marriage, Honor, and the Public Sphere in Postrevolutionary France: Séparations de Corps, 1815-1848," Journal of Modern History 65 (1993): 437-38, 450-54
8. idem, The Invisible Code: Honor and Sentiment in Postrevolutionary France, 1814-1848 (Berkeley, Calif., 1997), 35-38 and chap. 3
9. Edward Berenson, The Trial of Madame Caillaux (Berkeley, Calif., 1992), 184-85
10. Inès Fortoul to Joseph Fortoul, 31 May 1885, 12 July 1885, 25 July 1885
11. Marie Bro de Comères to Henry Bro de Comères, 15 July 1893, AN 82 AP 15
12. Robert A. Nye, "Sexuality, Sex Difference, and the Cult of Modern Love in the French Third Republic," Historical Reflections/ Réflexions historiques 20 (1994): 66-68, 73-76
13. Whitney Walton, Eve's Proud Descendants: Four Women Writers and Republican Politics in Nineteenth-Century France (Stanford, Calif., 2000)
14. Berenson, Trial of Madame Caittaux
15. Jo Burr Margadant, ed., The New Biography: Performing Femininity in Nineteenth-Century France (Berkeley, Calif., 2000)
16. Anne-Marie Sohn, Chrysalides: Femmes dans la vie privée (XIXe-XXe siècles) (Paris, 1996)
17. and idem, Du premier baiser à l'alcôve
18. Bonnie G. Smith, Ladies of the Leisure Class: The Bourgeoises of Northern France in the Nineteenth Century (Princeton, N.J., 1981), 48, 53-54, 69-72, 93-95
19. and Anne-Marie Sohn, Chrysalides, 88, 90-91, 149-50. While the goal of a fashionable persona existed for upper-middle-class women in cities throughout France, the women of the Nord had a particular suspicion of worldliness
20. Adeline Daumard, Les bourgeois de Paris au XIXe siècle (Paris, 1970), 186-88
21. Anne Martin-Fugier, La vie élégante; ou, La formation du Tout-Paris, 1815-1848 (Paris, 1990), 276, 281-84
22. and Fanny Trollope, Paris and the Parisians (1836; rpt., New York, 1985), 210-18
23. Amanda Vickery, "Golden Age to Separate Spheres? A Review of the Categories and Chronology of English Women's History," in Women's Work: The English Experience 1650-1914, ed. Pamela Sharpe (London, 1998), 294-332
24. Jeanne Peterson, "No Angels in the House: The Victorian Myth and the Paget Women," American Historical Review 89 (1984): 677-708
25. and Linda Kerber, "Separate Sphere, Female Worlds, Woman's Place: The Rhetoric of Women's History," Journal of American History 75 (1988): 9-39
26. Carol Dyhouse, "Mothers and Daughters in the Middle-Class Home, c. 1870-1914," in Labour and Love: Women's Experience of Home and Family, 1850-1914, ed. Jane Lewis (Oxford, 1986)
27. Paul Thompson, The Edwardians: The Remaking of British Society, 2d ed. (London, 1992), 77, 79-80
28. Judith Walkowitz, City of Dreadful Delight: Narratives of Sexual Danger in Late-Victorian London (Chicago, 1992), chap. 5
29. E. M. Forster, Howards End (1910; rpt., New York, 1985), 98-101
30. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, "The Female World of Love and Ritual: Relations between Women in Nineteenth-Century America," in Disorderly Conduct: Visions of Gender in Victorian America (New York, 1985)
31. and Linda W. Rosenzweig, The Anchor of My Life: Middle-Class American Mothers and Daughters, 1880-1920 (New York, 1993), chaps. 4-7
32. see Women's Words: Essay on French Singularity (Chicago, 1997). However, Ozouf's vision of salon society and its influence on relations between the sexes has also been much criticized
33. see Eric Fassin, "The Purloined Gender: American Feminism in a French Mirror," French Historical Studies 22 (1999): 113-38
34. and "Femmes: Une singularité française?" Le débat 87 (1995) (dossier including responses to Ozouf from Elisabeth Badinter, Lynn Hunt, Michelle Perrot, and Joan Scott)
35. Margaret H. Darrow, "French Noblewomen and the New Domesticity, 1750-1850," Feminist Studies 5 (1979): 57-58
36. Martin-Fugier, La vie élégante, 92-94, 174-79, 279
37. and Margadant, New Biography, 18-19, 105, 120, 121
38. Darrow, "French Noblewomen and the New Domesticity," 41-65
39. Dena Goodman, "Filial Rebellion in the Salon: Madame Geoffrin and Her Daughter," French Historical Studies 16 (1989): 35-37
40. Carolyn C. Lougée, Le paradis des femmes: Women, Salons, and Social Stratification in Seventeenth-Century France (Princeton, N.J., 1976)
41. and Sara Chapman, "Patronage As Family Economy: The Role of Women in the Patron-Client Network of the Phélypeaux de Pontchartrain Family, 1670-1715," French Historical Studies 24 (2001): 11-35
42. In the late nineteenth century, these sources included fashionable novels and cartoons, marriage manuals and the medical literature on marriage, the vast literature for and against the reestablishment of divorce in France, and even the literature of the new "science" of criminal anthropology. See (among other works) Gyp, Autour du mariage (Paris, 1883)
43. Octave Feuillet, Le journal d'une femme (Paris, 1878)
44. Pierre Veron, Paris vicieux; ou, Guide de l'adultère (Paris, 1883)
45. Claire Vautier, Adultère et divorce (Paris, 1889)
46. Alexandre Hepp, L'amie de Madame Alice (Paris, 1882)
47. Edmond About, Les mariages à Paris (Paris, 1887)
48. Jean Malic, L'amour et les femmes (Paris, 1888)
49. A. Grévin, Almanach des Parisiennes (Paris, 1870-78); L'assiette au beurre, 5 Apr. 1902 (issue entitled Des mensonges)
50. J. P. Dartigues, De l'amour expérimentale; ou, Des causes d'adultère (Versailles, 1887)
51. le Chevalier de Maynard, L'amour et le divorce (Paris, 1882)
52. Dr. Louis Fiaux, La femme, le mariage, et divorce: Etude de la physiologie et de sociologie (Paris, 1880)
53. Léon Richer, Le divorce (Paris, 1873)
54. Louis Legrand, Le mariage et les moeurs en France (Paris, 1879)
55. Paul Aubry, "De l'homicide commis par la femme, étude médico-légale," Archives d'anthropologie criminelle 6 (1891): 281-82
56. Guillaume Ferrero, "Le mensonge et la véracité chez la femme criminelle," Archives d'anthropologie criminelle 8 (1893): 138-50
57. and Camille Granier, La femme criminelle (Paris, 1906)
58. See Debora L. Silverman, Art Nouveau in Fin-de-Siècle France: Politics, Psychology, and Style (Berkeley, Calif., 1989), chap. 4
59. Karen Offen, "Depopulation, Nationalism, and Feminism in Finde-Siècle France," American Historical Review 89 (1984): 648-76
60. and Susanna Barrows, Distorting Mirrors: Visions of the Crowd in Late-Nineteenth-Century France (New Haven, Conn., 1981), chap. 2. For a discussion of fears of women's power and autonomy earlier in the nineteenth century
61. see Lisa Lieberman, "Crimes of Reason, Crimes of Passion: Suicide and the Adulterous Woman in Nineteenth-Century France," Journal of Family History 24 (1999): 131-47
62. Steven Seidman, "The Power of Desire and the Danger of Pleasure: Victorian Sexuality Reconsidered," Journal of Social History 24 (1990): 48-49
63. Walton, Eve's Proud Descendants, 109
64. and Reddy, Invisible Code, 84-103. In his analysis of Dr. Clelia Mosher's early-twentieth-century survey of American women's sexual attitudes, Seidman distinguishes between women who responded to the questionnaire before and after 1900, arguing that this earlier generation of women saw themselves as less sexual than men and found acknowledging their sexual desires problematic. Walton notes that in the early nineteenth century, even such unconventional women as George Sand and Hortense Allart admired Marie d'Agoult because they saw her as exceptional in her disregard for respectability - as the "living embodiment of their idealized fictional women who placed love above conventional morality" (109)
65. Octave Uzanne quoted in Anne Martin-Fugier, La bourgeoise: Femme au temps de Paul Bourget (Paris, 1983), 181-83
66. Berenson, Trial of Madame Caillaux, 139-40
67. Michelle Perrot, "Roles and Characters,"
68. and Anne Martin-Fugier, "Bourgeois Rituals," in A History of Private Life: From the Fires of the Revolution to the Great War, ed. Michelle Perrot (Cambridge, Mass., 1990), 190-92, 274-78. Earlier in the nineteenth century, middle-class wives in the industrial north of France took an active role in their husbands' businesses
69. however, by the 1870s, even these women had retreated from active participation in business. See Smith, Ladies of the Leisure Class, esp. chap. 4
70. Caroline Brame, journal, 27 July 1865, 27 Oct. 1865, 28 Oct. 1865, 29 Oct. 1865
71. Caroline Orville to Ernest Orville, 7 Aug. 1870, 2 Sept. 1870, in Le journal intime de Caroline B., ed. Michelle Perrot (Paris, 1985), 102-3, 112-13, 141-42, 148-49
72. Léon Richer, Le confesseur de ma femme (Paris, 1875)
73. See Thomas Kselman, "The Perraud Affair: Clergy, Church, and Sexual Politics in Fin-de-Siècle France," Journal of Modern History 70 (1998): 588-618
74. Martine Sevegrand, Les enfants du bon Dieu: Les catholiques français et la procréation au XXe siècle (Paris, 1995)
75. and idem, L'amour en toutes lettres: Questions à l'Abbé Viollet sur la sexualité, 1924-1943 (Paris, 1996). The letters that devout Catholics addressed to the Abbé Viollet in the 1920s and 1930s suggest, however, that the divide between the deeply religious and the mondaine in matters of love and sexuality was profound
76. Marion A. Kaplan, The Making of the Jewish Middle Class: Women, Family, and Identity in Imperial Germany (New York, 1991), 31, 39-40
77. Nancy Reagin, "The Imagined Hausfrau: National Identity, Domesticity, and Colonialism in Imperial Germany," Journal of Modern History 73 (2001): 54-86
78. and Martin-Fugier, La bourgeoise, 186-92
79. When women of this class were forced by circumstances to take primary responsibility for their children's care, they were pitied by other mothers, and they themselves described the task as overwhelming. Inès Fortoul to Joseph Fortoul, 29 Dec. 1883
80. Geneviève Breton, journal (1883-85), 26 Dec. 1884, journal (Dec. 1889-Feb. 1890), undated entries, Bibliothèque Nationale Manuscripts (hereafter BN Mss.), fond Vaudoyer (no call number)
81. Raymond Poincaré to Hélène Wahl, 10 Feb. 1894, BN Mss. n.a.f. 14547
82. Anne Higonnet, "Secluded Vision: Images of Feminine Experience in Nineteenth-Century Europe," Radical History Review 38 (1987): 25-27
83. De Saverny, La femme chez elle et dans le monde, 84, 88-89
84. and Monseigneur Landriot, Conférences aux dames du monde pour faire suite à la femme forte et àl a femme pieuse, 2 vols. (Paris, 1866), 2:104-5
85. Magdeleine Decori, notebooks (1902-7) [notebook entitled "Salons"], 40, BN Mss. n.a.f. 14767; journal (1914-18), 359, BN Mss. n.a.f. 14768
86. and Jo Burr Margadant, New Biography, esp. 1-3. Literary sources also describe such self-awareness as typical of the Parisienne
87. see Edith Wharton, Madame de Treymes (1907; rpt., New York, 1987), 206-7, 223-24. Magdeleine Decori's husband, Félix, was a lawyer and, at his death in 1915, secretary general of the Elysée
88. Inès Fortoul to Joseph Fortoul, 23 Mar. 1884; de Saverny, La femme chez elle et dans le monde, 83
89. Joseph Reinach to Magdeleine Decori, 27 Nov. 1917, in Magdeleine Decori, journal (1914-18), 306, BN Mss. n.a.f. 14768
90. Magdeleine Decori, journal (1914-18), 28 Aug. 1917, 247. In attempting to exercise influence on their family's behalf, French women were following an eighteenth-century model that existed in Great Britain as well as France
91. See Linda Colley, Britons: Forging the Nation, 1707-1837 (New Haven, Conn., 1992), 244-48
92. Robert B. Shoemaker, Gender in English Society, 1650-1850 (New York, 1998), 227-32
93. and Amanda Foreman, Georgiana, Duchess of Devonshire (New York, 1998), chap. 9
94. Raymond, La civilité non puerile, mais honnête, 183-84, 192-93
95. and Marie Valyère, "Pensées féminines," in La grande dame (1893), 136. This model of the salonnière in full command of her guests and their conversation already existed in the 1820s
96. see Martin-Fugier, La vie élégante, 168-69. Magdeleine Decori's "commandments" for the salon included "know how to listen - reply gently . . . don't talk about yourself . . . be patient - simple - calm." However, these reminders to remain, essentially, feminine, are also indications of how assertive Decori normally was in conversation with men and women
97. Decori, journal (1901), 32, BN Mss. n.a.f. 14765
98. Magdeleine Decori, journal (1902-3), 22 Oct. 1902, BN Mss. n.a.f. 14766
99. eadem, journal (1914-18), 30 Sept. 1918, 1 Oct. 1918, 3 Feb. 1915, 20 Dec. 1916
100. Raymond Poincaré to Hélène Wahl, 22 May 1893, 8 Dec. 1893, 25 May 1895, 8 July 1894
101. Both historians and nineteenth-century writers have questioned the ability of middleclass women to engage men's interest; nevertheless, it is clear that many Parisian women could contribute to what passed for serious conversation among the bourgeoisie. For criticism of women's abilities, see de Saverny, La femme chez elle et dans le monde, 105
102. Eugen Weber, France Fin-de-Siècle (Cambridge, Mass., 1986), 91-92
103. Theodore Zeldin, ed., France, 1848-1945: Ambition and Love (Oxford, 1979), 332. For contemporary evidence that suggests that worldly women were well informed
104. Inès de Bourgoing, notebooks, AN 246 AP 45
105. Magdeleine Decori, journal (1902-3), 20 Sept. 1903
106. eadem, journal (1914-18), 3 Feb. 1915
107. See also Margadant, New Biography, 18-21. Margadant observes that by the late nineteenth century, the salon had become less important as an entrée for women into the public sphere; however, for men and women of the Parisian elite, it retained its social - and even political - usefulness until World War I
108. Magdeleine Decori, journal (1902-3), 23
109. Magdeleine Decori, notebooks (1902-7) [notebook entitled "Salons"], 19-21, 40-41
110. Sohn, Chrysalides, 371-72, 379
111. and idem, Du premier baiser à l'alcôve, 136
112. Anne Higonnet, Berthe Morisot (New York, 1990), 114. Salons offered women some opportunity to discuss ideas, but not the possibility of engaging in real creative work. Once the life of the mind began to take a woman away from her social duty, she would find her use of her talents criticized, and middle-class women were well aware of this
113. See Linda Nochlin, "Why Have There Been No Great Woman Artists?" in Women, Art, and Power and Other Essays (New York, 1988), 164-67
114. and Higonnet, Berthe Morisot, 171. Unmarried women suffered even greater restrictions on their creativity and felt them keenly
115. see Marie Bashkirtseff, Journal (Paris, 1887), 2 Jan. 1879
116. Raymond Poincaré to Hélène Wahl, #13, probably 6 June 1893
117. and Christine de Gobineau to Marie Dragonnis, 5 Aug. 1933, #218-19, BN Mss. n.a.f. 14404. In defending her mother's respectability, Christine de Gobineau cited as evidence the behavior of her father's servants: after the Count de Gobineau abandoned his wife, they refused to serve any other woman whom he brought to his château
118. and John F. V. Keiger, Raymond Poincaré (Cambridge, 1997), 102-3. Poincaré was always discreet in his affairs, but his letters to Wahl suggest an even greater degree of caution and secrecy
119. Richer, Le divorce, 21
120. Mme. Suzanne, Le divorce: Etude morale (Paris, 1880), 54-56
121. F. D., Du divorce et des lois que néssicite son rétablissement (Paris, n.d., c. 1882), 10-11. Advocates of the reestablishment of divorce emphasized the dangers of judicial separation to women as an argument for divorce, but other sources support them in this assertion
122. see Christine de Gobineau's description of her parents' separation in the 1870s (Christine de Gobineau to Marie Dragonis, 5 Aug. 1933)
123. Louise d'Alq, Le savoir vivre, 123, 247-48, 256
124. Steven C. Hause with Anne R. Kenney, Women's Suffrage and Social Politics in the French Third Republic (Princeton, N.J., 1984), 33-34, 289-90, 290 n
125. Mary Louise Roberts argues that Durand played deliberately with this boundary in the service of feminism; see "Acting Up: The Feminist Theatrics of Marguerite Durand," French Historical Studies 19 (1996): 1103-38
126. Nye, "Sexuality, Sex Difference, and the Cult of Modern Love," 65-66
127. Alfred Naquet, Religion - Propriété - Famille (Paris, 1869), 209, 216, 234
128. Dartigues, De l'amour expérimentale, 124-25
129. Zeldin, France, 1848-1945, 295
130. Gyp, Autour du mariage, 118-20, 178-80
131. Marcel Prevost, Lettres des femmes (Paris, 1892), 9-14
132. and Martin-Fugier, La bourgeoise, 85-90. As Martin-Fugier notes, whether a man should treat his wife "like his mistress" continued to excite French authors into the twentieth century
133. Valerie Steele, Paris Fashion: A Cultural History, 2d ed. (New York, 1998), 157-61
134. Robert A. Nye, "Sex and Sexuality in France since 1800," in Sexual Cultures in Europe: National Histories, ed
135. Franz X. Eder et al. (Manchester, 1999), 101-2
136. and idem, "Sexuality, Sex Difference, and the Cult of Modern Love," 75
137. and Téry, Les divorcés, 350-51, 135-36
138. Comtesse d'Origny, Pour bien figurer dans le monde (Paris, 1911), 67-69
139. Raymond Poincaré to Hélène Wahl, 20 June 1893, 8 July 1884, 15 May 1895, 18 May 1895, 20 May 1895, 25 May 1895
140. and Hélène Wahl, on a letter from Poincaré dated 15 May 1895
141. and eadem, "The Golden Age of Male Adultery: The Third Republic," Journal of Social History 28 (1995): 473-74
142. Magdeleine Decori, journal (1902-3), 15-18, 111-12
143. and eadem, notebooks (1902-7) [notebook entitled "Salons"], 19-21, 41, 45, 117-18. In this circle, even lifelong friendship was no bar to adultery with another man's wife; Félix Decori was one of Raymond Poincaré's closest friends, but Poincaré was also Magdeleine Decori's lover at the turn of the century
144. and Keiger, Raymond Poincaré, 31, 224
145. Magdeleine Decori, journal (1914-18), 11-12, 271
146. Sohn, "Golden Age of Male Adultery," 471
147. and "Berthe" to Marie Boileau (in 1899), quoted by Caroline Chotard-Lioret, "La socialite familiale en province: Une correspondance privée entre 1870 et 1920" (thèse pour le 3e cycle, Université Paris V, 1983), 359. Of the court actions studied by Anne-Marie Sohn, two-thirds of these cases of male adultery took place in cities; women's adultery, which was normally less tolerated, was likely also concentrated in cities. A letter from "Berthe" to her cousin "Marie Boileau" (both names are pseudonyms) suggests that adultery remained far more unacceptable in provincial towns than in Paris at the turn of the century. Of an acquaintance whose husband had surprised her with her lover, Berthe wrote: "She has nowhere else to go but the demimonde; from now on, every door in the city is closed to her."
148. Le Chevalier de Maynard, L'amour et le divorce, 88-91, 94-96
149. and Octave Uzanne, La femme à Paris: Nos contemporaines (Paris, 1894), 8-9, 11-12, 20-21
150. Anne-Marie Sohn's recent work supports this contemporary impression; see Chrysalides, 930, 1018
151. and "Golden Age of Male Adultery," 471. The marriage of Nelly Roussel and Henri Godet also suggests that a husband's permission could protect a middle-class woman's reputation well beyond the realm of sexuality; Godet's support allowed Roussel to maintain respectability while pursuing a career as a public speaker and a feminist advocate of birth control
152. See Elinor A. Accampo, "Private Life, Public Image: Motherhood and Militancy in the Self-Construction of Nelly Roussel, 1900-1922," in Margadant, New Biography, esp. 220-21, 224-28
153. Hepp, L'amie de Madame Alice
154. About, Les mariages à Paris, 338-39
155. See also Guy de Maupassant, Bel-Ami (1885; rpt., Oxford, 2001), 38-39, 62-65, 261-68; in Bel-Ami, Maupassant describes Paris in the early Third Republic as a city where cynical, well-to-do women could commit adultery with relative impunity, as long as their husbands chose to look the other way
156. See Reddy, Invisible Code, xii-xiii, 112-13
157. Joseph Fortoul to Inès Fortoul, 19 May 1884, 2 Apr. 1884, 4 June 1885, 16 Mar. 1885,15 Apr. 1885
158. and Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina (1877; rpt., New York, 1970), 270. Vronsky's ideas on this subject are also an excellent mirror of society's values: "His relations toward Society were also clear. Every one might know or suspect, but no one must dare to speak about the matter, or he was prepared to silence the speaker and make him respect the non-existent honour of the woman he loved" (278)
159. Alfred Naquet, La loi du divorce (Paris, 1903), 154. Naquet was the Republican legislator largely responsible for the reinstitution of divorce in France in 1884
160. Henri Mesnil, Royal Commission on Divorce and Matrimonial Causes, Minutes of Evidence, 20 Dec. 1910, in Report of the Royal Commission on Divorce and Matrimonial Causes (London, 1912)
161. Anne-Marie Sohn's work on men's adultery also provides evidence of this trend. Court actions involving men's adultery increased fourfold between 1871 and 1891 and tenfold between 1871 and 1921. At the same time, men's infidelity came to be understood quite differently over time; Sohn argues that adultery came to be seen by most French men and women as a "private, strictly conjugal grievance" rather than a crime (Sohn, "Golden Age of Male Adultery," 470, 480-81, 483-84)
162. see Maureen E. Montgomery, Displaying Women: Spectacles of Leisure in Edith's Wharton's New York (New York, 1998)
163. Chotard-Lioret, "La socialite familiale en province," 257-59. Arranged marriages remained the norm throughout France into the first decades of the twentieth century