Written by Nancy Britten
The second half of the nineteenth century saw significant changes in Europe’s urban environment, occurring against the backdrop of political upheaval following the revolutionary waves of 1848. The accelerating industrialisation, coupled with rural migration to urban centres, led to unprecedented demographic shifts, galvanizing profound political and social transformations. Previous studies by historians like Friedrich Lenger have increasingly tended to focus on demographic changes and socio-economic divides. While not denying the value of such studies, recent studies in cultural and urban history offer a more compelling lens through which to view urbanisation as galvanising a new mass culture. Therefore, rather than attempt to provide comprehensive coverage of the whole of Europe during this period, this essay uses Paris and its late nineteenth-century reconstruction under Baron Georges-Eugene Haussmann as a case study to illustrate how visual culture influenced how individuals saw their society and social order. It is through the notion of exhibition and display that I will explore the visual impact of urban growth in two critical ways: exhibiting the city and exhibiting the self. Firstly, I will demonstrate how urban planning and its physical manifestations reflected a growing sense of national identity in line with the political priorities of Emperor Napoleon III. Secondly, I shift from this aerial view to a ‘from below’ street-level analysis of the impact of urban growth on the ways women across all classes used their own self-expression as a form of agency and political power. Ultimately, a growing appreciation of aesthetics, spectacles, and performance in urbanised Parisian society was reflective of efforts to cultivate a greater sense of national and personal identity.
Baron Haussmann’s 1853 reconstruction of Paris under the commission of Emperor Napoleon III visually exhibited the city as a symbol of both the Second Empires’ changing political priorities and the reassertion of the nation as a viable European power. Despite being labelled a “cruel demolisher” by contemporary poet Charles Vallette—for the destructive renovations which exasperated working-class conditions—in the long-term, Haussmann was a key builder of Paris and, naturally by extension, France’s sense of self-identity. In viewing late nineteenth century Paris through his background in landscape architecture and visual culture, Heath Schenker convincingly argues that beyond its demographic impacts, the reconstruction served as a vital exhibition and visual reflection of the broader political regime of Napoleon III. This is demonstrated through the redesign of public parks and the political connotations of their strategic locations across the city. After the renovation of the Bois de Boulogne in a Bourgeoise stronghold, a subsequent series of public parks were constructed in working-class areas across the 1860s such as the Bois de Vincennes to maintain social and political balance. Therefore, the spatial arrangements of parks across the city anchored strategic neighbourhoods according to class, forging new identities in these quarters and pacifying disparate social interests. Due to the insecure ideological foundations of the Second Empire, it was important for Napoleon III to visually present the notion of a “people’s empire” by performatively exhibiting a pretence of balance and unity. Furthermore, writing in 1856 in the immediate period of the redesign, Théophile Gautier observed, “Paris is getting dressed and wishes to show herself to the world in her best finery”. Not only does this anthropomorphic portrayal of Paris play into the tropes of women as mass consumers discussed later in this essay, but it also valuably illustrates the changing social and political goals of the nation. Paris was proudly exhibited to the rest of Europe as a centralising power and champion of modernisation and grandeur. Although the analysis of the impact of Haussmannization is useful for illustrating the impact of urban growth on national identity and broader class structures, it favours the perspective and promises of its elite architects. Instead, the remainder of this essay will zoom into the ‘from below’ street-level view of Paris, with a focus on women’s self-exhibition in facilitating and participating in mass consumer culture.
The changing landscape of the city facilitated unique new spaces for women’s agency through self-exhibition. These new public feminine spaces were intertwined with the rise of leisure culture, providing opportunities for socialising and entertainment outside of the traditional confines of domesticity. Although Tammy Whitlock describes the innovation of boulevards, grand magasins, and bazaars as creating a “feminine world of materialist fantasy”, this patronising view of women as passive and frivolous consumers of goods should be challenged. Instead, women’s self-expression through their dress, behaviour, and education were demonstrations of a conscious construction and performance of identity and agency. This idea of display is best illustrated through the nineteenth-century obsession with the coquette archetype, which demonstrates a consciously cultivated an image of bourgeoise respectability, navigating the complex social hierarchies through manipulation of the male gaze. Evidence of this is demonstrated in the following extract from the poem Les dangers de la coquetterie by Louis-Damiens Eméric which describes:
“Tous les yeux sont fixés sur ta riche parure,
Et chacun s’entretient de ta rare coiffure.”
[All eyes are fixed on your beautiful clothing,
And each discusses your rare hairstyle.]
Despite concerning a fictional subject and privileging a voyeuristic male perspective, especially in the title of ‘les dangers’, this poem’s acknowledgement of a subversive quality to the woman’s appearance illustrates the visual power she held over her observers and her calculated command of the male gaze. Therefore, these new public arenas afforded by urban growth, provided spaces for women to act with agency and independence in forming their own social identities through self-exhibition.
The impact of urban growth on women’s self-exhibition was not limited to elite consumers, but rather the proliferation of department stores and emergence of shop girls provided liberating new labour opportunities for working-class women in shaping their own identities. Jill Smith studies how department stores modelled on Le Bon Marché, founded in 1852, bazaar shops and drapery emporiums became essential feminine public spaces which transcended class divisions. While Smith’s study tends to cast the working-class shop employees into the role of vulnerable and seductive, at risk of moral-ruin or liable to turn to shop-lifting, further studies by Jennifer Jones into the hierarchical structure of employment within the shops more convincingly acknowledges the existence of cross-class interactions whilst crediting working class women as valuable and employees. Jones splits the female employees into two groups: the marchandes de modes, who possessed their own shops, and the grisettes, consisting of young girls working as wage labourers. Despite the significant disparity in wealth and social status between the marchandes and grisettes, they were perceived in contemporary society as sharing a common appreciation of fashion and an understanding of how patterns of consumption reflected personal identity. Therefore, rather than remaining passive victims of social circumstances working class, women used their new urban context and social enjoyment of self-exhibition to garner relative economic security and participate as a key driving force in the mass consumer culture.
Ultimately, the story of urban growth in Europe during this period is not solely one of division and demographic changes, but one of spectacle, exhibition, and visual display. While grand urban projects like Baron Haussmann’s overhaul of Paris symbolised modernisation and reassertion of the nation’s political aims, they also provided opportunities for women to express themselves and exert agency. Whether as bourgeois coquettes navigating social hierarchies through fashion or working-class shop girls attaining economic autonomy in department stores, women of all backgrounds found means to assert their identities and actively engage in mass consumer cultures, thereby profoundly reshaping the social and political landscape. Although I have only discussed the impact of urbanisation in one individual city, recently historians have broadened the debate to encompass the growth in mass consumption by minority groups across Europe as a whole. This highlights the need for a comparative approach in future studies, to allow us to understand urban develop, not on an individual or national basis, but as a complex process driven by various social, cultural, and political dynamics.
Bibliography
Davidson, Denise Z. ‘Making Society ‘Legible’: People-Watching in Paris after the Revolution.’ French Historical Studies 28, no. 2 (2005): 265–296.
Herbert, Robert. Impressionism: Art, leisure and Parisian Society. Newhaven: Yale University Press, 1988.
Jones, Jennifer. Sexing La Mode: Gender, Fashion and Commercial Culture in Old Regime France. Oxford: Berg Publishers, 2004.
Lenger, Friedrich. European cities in the Modern Era, 1850-1914. Boston: Brill, 2012.
Naed, Lynda. Victorian Babylon : People, Streets and Images in Nineteenth-Century London.New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000.
Schenker, Heath Massey. ‘Parks and Politics During the Second Empire in Paris.’ Landscape Journal 14, no. 2 (1995): 201–219.
Smith, Jill Suzunne. Berlin Coquette: Prostitution and the new German Woman 1890-1933. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2014.
Whitlock, Tammy. Crime, Gender, and Consumer Culture in Nineteenth-Century England. New York: Routledge, 2016.
Image credit: By RoScO from Paris, France – INS5203, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=44129930
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