VISUALIZING MASCULINITY: MEN, FAMILY, AND COUNTRY IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY FRENCH PRINT CULTURE

Abstract

Focusing on satirical prints from illustrated newspapers, this thesis examines nineteenth-century French notions of masculinity in a culture that linked its reputation for success to the productivity of its male citizens. I will focus on man’s connection to marriage and family life, as these institutions were so closely connected to perceptions of masculinity. Specifically, I look at portrayals of the cuckold and the bachelor—tropes of male identity that deviated from the ideal notions of the French man—and how printed images reflected, commented on, and shaped the ways in which conventional French masculinity was imagined. Examining these lithographs in light of specific social and political shifts, including changing marriage and divorce laws, the rising feminist movement, and the loss of the Franco-Prussian war, will ground my project historically. Popular lithographic prints, from the 1840s to the early 1900s, remarked not only on masculinity itself—the ways in which men should act and look—but also on the ways in which any departures from the norm threatened the French family and nation. Although medical journals and etiquette manuals expounded on the ‘natural’ qualities of men, satirical cartoons that were most often published weekly, were immediately pertinent in their commentary. Using prints to decode these ever-prevalent issues of masculinity, my project makes clear why representations and notions of certain types of masculinity were so alarming to French audiences. Although much of the scholarship around nineteenth-century French lithography deals with the censorship issues and political implications of the illustrated newspapers, I focus instead on the social ramifications of such images. I emphasize the distinctive nature of such prints—the audience, the circulation, and the cultural impact of printed images themselves. Looking to both art and social historical texts, I concentrate on the everyday realm of printed images, and what it meant for Parisian men and women to be surrounded by such tropes. My thesis connects the growing concerns over family and marriage to issues of failed masculinity and the ways in which they were addressed in the print culture across the century. It explores how these satirical cartoons provided a humorous, yet urgent, visual attempt to illuminate the tricky and conflicting expectations of French men in the nineteenth century.