The Journal des Dames et des Modes: Fashioning Women in the Arts, c. 1800-1815

Keywords

androcentric society, women's legal marginalization, male-dominated art

Abstract

Discussions of Revolutionary and Napoleonic France often comment upon its androcentric, or male-centered, nature.1 The French Revolution itself has been characterized as a historical moment in which the "[t]he revolt against the father was also a revolt against women as free and equal public and private beings,"2 and much scholarship on post-Revolutionary society argues that under the notoriously chauvinistic Napoleon, women fared even worse. In 1801, Sylvain Maréchal published a pamphlet introducing (fictitious) legislation to prohibit women from engaging in such activities as "reading, writing, engraving, chanting, singing, painting, etc.;"3 several years later, the Civil Code, which severely limited women's legal rights, became law.4 The most canonical paintings of the period seem to underscore this cultural phenomenon: works such as Jacques-Louis David's Napoleon Crossing the Alps at the St. Bernard (1800) or Antoine-Jean Gros's Battle at Eylau (1808) celebrate militaristic virtue and elevate a realm that is distinctly male. Much of the scholarship devoted to the art of this period seems to corroborate this reading of the "homosocialization" of this culture.5 One could easily extrapolate from such arguments that the French art world was completely monopolized by men.

Original Publication Citation

“The Journal des Dames et des Modes: Fashioning Women in the Arts, c. 1800-1815." Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide 5.1 (March 2006)

Document Type

Peer-Reviewed Article

Publication Date

2006

Publisher

Nineteenth-Century Art Worldwide

Language

English

College

Humanities

Department

Art History

University Standing at Time of Publication

Full Professor

Link to Full Text

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