Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Arts (MA)

Department

History

Faculty/School

Faculty of Arts

First Advisor

Amy Milne-Smith

Advisor Role

Supervisor

Abstract

This thesis acts as both a history of the roles that Parisian working-class women played as writers, society members and insurgents during the revolutionary year of 1848, and an analysis of why they were vilified in the press as bas-bleus, divorceuses, deceitful prostitutes and more extensively as the individuals responsible for the failure of the revolution. It argues that women became “live allegories” of the changes that Paris was experiencing in the first half of the nineteenth century, particularly when a small minority of women radicalized from late April to June. These women galvanized anxieties that men and the upper and middling classes felt about industrializing Paris, the women’s problem and the failure of the Second Republic, and reinforced preconceived vilifications of working-class women as immoral prostitutes and wage-market competitors.

Convocation Year

2018

Convocation Season

Fall

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