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From Vichy to the Sexual Revolution Gender and Family Life in Postwar France

2017; Oxford University Press; Volume: 31; Issue: 4 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1093/fh/crx059

1477-4542

Diana Holmes,

Communism, Protests, Social Movements

The decades between the Liberation and May 1968 in France have already been analysed in a number of illuminating socio-cultural studies, from Kristen Ross’s seminal Fast Cars, Clean Bodies to, most notably, Susan Weiner’s Enfants terribles on youth and femininity in the period’s mass media, and Richard Jobs’ Riding the New Wave, on the development of youth culture at a period when ‘new’ and ‘young’ became the emblematic adjectives of a self-consciously modern, consumerist France. Sarah Fishman cites many of these preceding studies but claims that so far insufficient attention has been paid to the Vichy period itself and to both the breaks and continuities with Pétain’s ultra-conservative regime that characterized the post-war era. If the emphasis on the long-term effects of the Occupation years on mentalities is salutary, much of the book’s argument on the effects of economic growth and increased affluence on gender roles, and the burgeoning of a mildly oppositional youth culture, confirms rather than revises existing scholarship. The chief originality of this study lies rather in its choice of sources, and the insights they provide into majority assumptions and attitudes at a period of rapid change. Fishman draws on advice books and pamphlets published to disseminate evolving views on (for example) family roles and child-rearing. She consults not only the glossy, sophisticated women’s press (Elle, Marie-Claire) but also the weekly Confidences, lower-priced and aimed at a less affluent and educated readership. Above all, she has gained access to court records that include social workers’ reports on children and teenagers deemed delinquent, which provide fascinating evidence of what was considered ‘normal’ and of changing attitudes to discipline, the relative responsibilities of family and state, and sexuality.