Penser la famille au XIX e siècle (1789-1870) by Claudie Bernard

Abstract

MLR, 104.3, 2009 869 these particular experiences. Unsurprisingly, particular prominence is given to the authors sojourns in Britain and to her relationships with Frances Burney, Lord Byron, andWilliam Wilberforce. Given the author's expertise in art history, itwas disappointing not to have any illustrations. Otherwise this excellent and beautifully written study ismuch to be welcomed, both for the illumination it casts on Stael herself and as a stimulating example of the uses towhich biography can be put in accounting foradvances in the history of ideas. Swansea University Caroline Franklin Penser lafamille au XIXe siede (1789-1870). By Claudie Bernard. Saint-Etienne: Publications de l'Universite de Saint-Etienne. 2007. 471pp. 25. ISBN 978 2-86272-453-9. In beginning his landmark studyAdultery and the Novel (Baltimore: JohnsHopkins University Press, 1979), Tony Tanner notes that the very centrality of this theme in Western literaturemeans that it is often taken to be self-evident, and consequently leftunexplored. The same may still be said of the family in general, yet since the late 1970s a steady stream of scholarly work has striven to add contour and nuance to our understanding of the topic.Much of thiswork has emerged from the broad field of nineteenth-century French studies: historical research such as thatof Jacques Donzelot and themonumental Histoire de lafamille (Paris: Armand Colin, 1986), under the direction of Andre Burguiere, has elucidated the shifting historical landscape of the family; while literary studies such as Roddey Reid's Foucauldian Families in Jeopardy (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1993) and Nicholas White's more cultural-historical The Family in Crisis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), to name but two,have done much to show how the literary textdoes notmerely reflect,but is rather a privileged field of, social and historical change. Claudie Bernard's important new book clearly fits into this lineage, but does so in a unique way: among itsmany other qualities, Penser lafamille au XIXe siede successfully gathers together the insights of previous French research into the his toryof the family in a highly readable single-volume work. Not only Donzelot's and Burguiere's work, but also that of Philippe Aries, Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie, and other social historians ispresented here in a format so accessible that itought never again to be possible for a researcher working in nineteenth-century French stu dies tomake an ill-considered or reductive statement about the nineteenth-century family. The firstpart of the book offers an inventory of the family's composantes structurelles' (Chapter 1) and parametres fonctionnels' (Chapter 2), providing a nuanced view of a near-exhaustive listof familial topics with intellectual clarity and stylisticverve. This section above allwill represent an indispensable referencework for all scholars with an interest in nineteenth-century France, and its usefulness in this respect is assured by the inclusion of a decent index (still decidedly rare in French publishing). The second part explores nineteenth-century French thought 870 Reviews on the family,detailing the observations and prescriptions of an impressive range of cultural figures from the period, including arch-royalist Louis de Bonald, Fourier, Leroux, Michelet, and perennially under-studied Catholic sociologist Frederic Le Play, the closest thing the intellectually pallid Second Empire had to a great soci ological and economic mind. The author deals less polemically than Reid with the development of a set of sentimentalized 'familyvalues' in the earlier part of the cen tury,yet retains an awareness of the continuing relevance of that shift?the end of each thematic section projects the issue at hand forwards into the family politics of the twenty-firstcentury. Perhaps surprisingly given Bernard's distinguished career as a literarycritic, the ideas of novelists are addressed only in so faras' [les] hommes de lettres se veulent hommes de savoir, et [. . .] opinent doctement sur les affaires du monde' (p. 23), which effectivelyexcludes from consideration themore symbolic 'thought' of the literary textproper. Indeed, Bernard's literaryallusions tend to refer only to plot?this novel contains a divorce, this a successional disagreement, and so on?without suggesting how novelistic treatments of such themesmight encode more than themere historical fact that divorce and successional disagreements ex isted.Yet this is doubtless a quibble, since literary criticism is...