French Noblewomen and the New Domesticity, 1750-1850

In eighteenth-century France, both noblemen & noblewomen lived public lives. The most personal & familial moments -- birth, marriage, & death -- are played out as part of the spectacle of Versailles. Women were courtiers, pursuing offices, prestige, & patronage. By contrast, in the early nineteenth century, although many noblemen continued to seek public power, women exerted their influence in the privacy of the home. This triumph of domesticity did not result from a gradual assimilation of bourgeois values; it was an abrupt & often conscious change in behavior accomplished within one generation. Noblewomen appropriated domesticity as a class ideal in an effort to answer Mc criticism &, consequently, to forestall the political hegemony of the bourgeoisie during the Restoration. Domesticity, along with royalism & clericalism, was fundamental to the nobility's program for class preservation & political revival. Appendix. AA.