Reviews of Books
252
ties, academies, and laboratories, she asserted that she
had not had to contend with the problems connected
to scientific specialization. As a result, her work could
be more creative, synthetic, and original. Unrestrained
by "gentlemanly" codes of honor, she could challenge
great scientists, such as Newton and Darwin. Nevertheless, Royer's independence came at a price. Her
work was not remunerated or properly recognized.
Finding it difficult to exchange ideas with scholars,
who deplored her wide-ranging interests and status as
an unwed mother, she lacked the means to express,
test, and defend her thought. In 1895 she remarked, "I
have done only the smallest part of what I could have
done" (p. 169). Five years later, she finally received the
Legion of Honor, the first such award granted to a
woman for scientific work. Based partly on unpublished materials at the Bibliotheque Marguerite Durand, Harvey's even-handed, well-written book brings
to light a pioneer woman scientist who served as an
important role model.
MARY PICKERING
San Jose State University
SYLVIA SCHAFER. Children in Moral Danger and the
Problem of Government in Third Republic France.
(Princeton Studies in Culture/Power/History.) Princeton: Princeton University Press. 1997. Pp. x, 232.
$49.50.
The July 24, 1889 law on the "moral abandonment"
(abandon moral) of children is the centerpiece of this
study of the early Third Republic's preoccupation with
the family and population issues. Influenced by Michel
Foucault and other deconstructionists, Sylvia Schafer
is equally concerned with the language used by legislators and administrators to frame a new category of
social "problem" and then develop ways to treat it. The
nineteenth-century French state long had policies for
aiding physically abandoned children or dealing with
juvenile delinquents removed from parental custody.
The "morally abandoned" were those judged by civil
courts to be neglected or abused by parents. If children
were so identified, public authorities provided alternate living arrangements for them. Yet, Schafer repeatedly emphasizes, this new category was also ambiguous, for it fell in between the obviously abandoned
and juvenile delinquents. Officials thus pondered
whether to place the morally abandoned (likely to have
bad habits) alongside "normal" and presumably uncorrupted state wards. Ambiguity ultimately made the
category problematical, and soon after 1900 it suffered
"conceptual evisceration" (p. 145). Morally abandoned
children often did not receive separate treatment, and
a 1904 law added them to other classifications of
children who were wards of the state (pupilles). Although the category lingered on after World War I,
state policy after 1904 was more concerned with
separating "innocent" wards from those labeled "vicious."
Schafer considers the moral abandonment law to be
AMERICAN HISTORICAL REVIEW
an important illustration of the state's assumption of
the paternal role, and she argues that the Third
Republic launched a new phase in this development.
Paternal authority in the home was, of course, rooted
in Roman law, Catholic teaching, and Old Regime
legislation. If the French Revolution increased the
power of the state at the expense of paternal authority,
the Napoleonic civil code soon reinforced fathers'
position. A department-level service for enfants assistes, begun by the First Empire in 1811, was further
developed by subsequent regimes. Particularly stimulating is Schafer's discussion of the linkage between
the circumstances surrounding the Third Republic's
creation and new policies increasing the state's role in
the lives of families-a theme previously addressed by
Rachel Fuchs, among others. Born after the humiliating loss of the Franco-Prussian War and preoccupied
with the issue of France's declining birthrate vis-a-vis
that of Germany, the young republic quickly passed
three laws in 1874 to protect children: one regulated
child labor in industry, another addressed children
who were traveling performers or beggars, and the
Roussel Law protected infants placed with wet nurses.
By the time the moral abandonment law was passed,
the republic also had spent a decade reforming public
education, beginning with the normal school law of
1879 and the Ferry Laws of 1881-1882 and culminating
with a measure not mentioned by Schafer (but passed
just before the object of her concern), the July 19, 1889
law making the national government responsible for
public schoolteachers' salaries and thus better able to
control what they actually taught. Although Schafer
stresses that using familial metaphors made intrusions
into private life more palatable to the republic's liberal
supporters, she is not especially concerned with the
"maternalist" discourse employed not only by philanthropists, male and female, but also by state officials
who envisioned a larger public role for women, particularly as teachers. Indeed, nursery schools-first labeled salles d'asile-were brought under the state
regulatory umbrella during the 1830s and given a
maternal cast well before the Third Republic renamed
them ecoles maternelles in 1881.
Schafer has ably marshalled documentary evidence
concerning the Seine department's initiation of a
service for the morally abandoned in 1881, the legislature's debate on turning the Seine model into national policy,. and the implementation of the 1889 law
by public assistance offices in Paris and the departments. Some readers may find the book's linguistic
concerns perplexing on occasion: for example, contexts
for understanding the meaning of words become "situated grids of signification" (p. 7). Never explained (as
author's choice or publisher's dictate) is the repeated
use of the French term abandon moral-and other
French words-without quotation marks or italics.
Such quibbles do not undercut this monograph's value,
however. Schafer takes her subject from legislative
action to administrative implementation and the impact on selected individuals and families, skillfully
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1999
Europe: Early Modern and Modern
linking it to the young republic's preoccupation with
social issues and its ensuing decisions to intrude into
the family circle to enhance the morality and health of
future generations.
LINDA L. CLARK
Millersville University,
Pennsylvania
ANNE COVA. Matemite et droits des femmes en France
(XIXe _XXe steeles), (Historiques.) Paris: Anthropos.
1997. Pp. viii, 435. 250 fro
France during the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries presents the paradox of a country that was
obsessed with the "problems" of depopulation and the
"degeneration of the race" and yet was in many ways
slow to respond with the type of legislation that might
have helped. Anne Cova takes us to the heart of this
situation with her absorbing study of maternal welfare
provision under the Third Republic. As she is at pains
to show, France did have an exceptionally slow rate of
demographic increase, but no less important in provoking the perception of a crisis was the background of
military insecurity vis-a-vis Germany. There was fertile
ground for measures to protect maternity, which feminists hoped to use to their own advantage. However,
what Stanley Hoffmann described as the "stalemate
society" of the French Republic was notoriously prone
to indecisiveness when it came to enacting social
legislation. Talk of a French lag was common at the
time, although, as Cova points out, it was not always
justified: if France was more reluctant than its neighbors to introduce maternity leave, it did, at least,
pioneer family allowances.
The book's main concern is to discover where
various feminist groups stood on the key issues of who
was to be protected and how this was to be done. At
this early stage, it was a matter of debate whether only
working mothers would be covered, and whether the
protection of maternity was a matter for labor legislation or the welfare services. Moreover, like most of
their counterparts abroad, French women faced the
problem of lobbying politicians answerable only to an
all-male electorate. The approach taken is broadly
chronological, with five significant periods being discerned: the 1890s, the run-up to World War I, the war
period itself, the "mad years" of the 1920s, and finally
the Depression of the 1930s. This survey takes us from
the first suggestions for encouraging maternity leave
and breast feeding to the extensive program embodied
in the Family Code of 1939.
Cova has unearthed a mass of material from conference reports, newspapers, and periodicals, which, as
she convincingly argues, allows us to hear what women
had to say in an area all too often dominated by men.
There was, of course, no single feminist view; the cast
of characters in the work ranges from the militant
syndicalist Aline Valette to the more moderate Duchesse Edmee de La Rochefoucauld. Nonetheless, all of
these women strove to have maternity recognized as an
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253
issue of public interest and acted as stern critics of any
laws that were passed. Cova keeps a broad perspective
on her subject, bringing in comparisons with other
countries where appropriate and setting maternity
protection in its context. For example, the passing of
the 1913 Strauss Law on maternity leave is usefully
linked to the patriotic feeling stirred that year by the
Balkan Wars, the Agadir Crisis, and the voting of a
military law in Germany. No less importantly, the book
conveys in great detail the theoretical debates, the
wheeling and dealing, and the numerous setbacks that
lay behind maternity legislation. As Cova acknowledges, however, we remain locked in the rarefied
atmosphere of the congress hall and the hemicycles of
the legislature. How the mass of women responded to
the feminist line remains another story. There are also
pros and cons to the chronological framework
adopted. It has the advantage of bringing out the
tortuous path that led to the protection of maternity by
the state. The downside is the need to disperse discussion of debates that ran throughout the period, concerning, for example, the case for allowing paternity
suits or the costs and benefits of legislation to protect
women in the workplace.
The upshot is that this book makes an important
contribution to the history of women in France and,
more specifically, to a growing body of literature on
the gender dimension of early welfare legislation. The
latter supersedes an earlier historiography that focused heavily on adult male workers and social control.
A number of historians in Europe and the United
States have begun to develop a more balanced approach by highlighting the centrality of maternity
policies to the rise of the welfare state. It is interesting
to note that Cova does not share Frank Prochaska's
concern to emphasize the benefits of private as opposed to public initiatives in welfare provision. Is this
because French political culture has been less influenced than the "Anglo-Saxon" one by Thatcherism
and Reaganism? Or is it perhaps difficult to envisage
employers voluntarily supporting mothers around
childbirth?
COLIN HEYWOOD
University of Nottingham
KEVIN PASSMORE. From Liberalism to Fascism: The
Right in a French Province, 1928-1939. New York:
Cambridge University Press. 1997. Pp. xvii, 333.
$59.95.
Kevin Passmore's study seeks to account for the
volatility of right-wing voters in the Rhone in the
1930s, many of whom abandoned liberalism for fascism
after the Popular Front began to threaten in 1935.
Some of Passmore's analyses dispute previous interpretations of the French right advanced by Stanley
Hoffman, Rene Remond, Pierre Milza, Philippe
Burrin, William Irvine, and myself (in some cases,
Passmore greatly oversimplying the views he attacks).
Passmore notes that the failure of the right to unite
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