Spenser Robnett
In Having It All in the Belle Epoque: How French Women’s Magazines Invented the Modern Woman by Rachel Mesch, the contradiction of a women’s push for newfound equality without completely abandoning her traditional gender role is highlighted. The balance between the two is largely misrepresented in the predominantly all female magazines in early 1900s France. The discussion within many of these magazines deals with how women should fulfill their dreams and get a secondary education to become knowledgable and enlightened; yet, they should also have a child around the same exact time. These magazines in which many of the Belle Epoch French women were reading described this coexistent situation as a beautiful reality. However, there was a large tension between the post-revolutionary past and a rapidly modernizing future. The editors of the main magazines in the early 1900s were part of the elite group and highly intellectual; though, the literature was available to the masses, thus effectively reaching an audience of women never obtained before. Mesch states that magazines such as Femina consist of a web of fictional texts to help Belle Epoque imagine themselves comfortably into inhabiting their new modern gender role: the diction refrains from using feminist language. In Smiling Madame Beudet, the lead actress spends a large amount of her time on camera flipping through magazines; especially when her husband is in the room. This was Germaine Dulac’s opportunity to respond to the effect of magazine culture on early 1900s French women and relay any assimilation of the values on to Madame Beudet.
Mesch, Rachel. “Having It All in the Belle Epoque How French Women’s Magazines Invented the Modern Woman.” Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press, 2013.