MASTER-SLAVE NARRATIVES IN POPULAR FRENCH ILLUSTRATION

Henry Somm, Toys, 1879

In late nineteenth-century France, artists and writers used poupees and pantins to symbolize the changing nature of the relationship between the sexes. Both are toys, yet each suggests a unique power relationship. Gender specific dolls were used to teach domestic skills to little girls. The puppet was gender-neutral, yet implied manipulation. This paper interprets the significance of a particular motif -- woman in control of puppet-like men -- in journal illustration and popular literature.

Henry Somm and Felicien Rops were among the artists to provide this visual narrative of domination and control during Third Republic. Puppet men can be found chained to perches in the place of parrots, or walked like dogs on leashes by fashionably-clad amazones. The motif will be analyzed and interpreted through consideration of three key issues: the rise of the women's rights movement, bourgeoise fear of hypnotism and the concept of a "fetish figure."

It is no coincidence that the motif evolved during advancements in women's rights. Following early achievements during the French Revolution in 1789 and the subsequent suppression of Feminist organizations by the Jacobins, the advocates for women's rights made progress throughout the 1800's. The 1880's came to be known as the "epoch of suffragist activism." In 1879 the government restored the right of women to hold public meetings. By 1881 women had gained the right to publish feminist journals.

Aside from any personal fears that Henry Somm and Felicien Rops had where women were concerned, these images can be seen as relating to general societal implications of the "New Woman," who is visually presented as an amazone through the proportional relationship with the diminutive puppet-men. A specific work by Henry Somm, titled Droits de la Femme, (ca. 1881) connects women's rights directly to the puppet motif. In this work, a woman holds the scales of justice in one hand and in the other a pistol, which she uses to systematically murder puppet-sized men. Her gaze is blank; she appears almost like a mindless zombie completing her predetermined mission.

The demeanor of the amazones wielding puppets is frequently suggestive of a trance-like state, the somnambulism stage following hypnotism. Sciences of the mind were very much in vogue with the general public -- an article on "Magnetisme et le somnambulisme" appeared in the mainstream periodical L'Illustration in 1878. Paul Janet (like Sigmund Freud, one of Jean-Martin Charcot's high-profile students) wrote a series of four articles detailing the history and characteristics of hypnotism for the Revue Bleue in 1884. General articles also appeared in La Revue Encyclopedique, in 1894 and 1897.

Public discussion of hypnotism revealed bourgeois anxieties about sexuality, specifically the fear that hypnotized women might fall victim to rape. Magnetism and hypnotism seemed like a viable threat because of the numbers of "amateurs" who performed for large audiences. Women were thought to be more prone to suggestibility than men, due to their nature -- the same nature that predisposed them to hysteria. The possibility that a person could be overcome by desire for some type of object was promoted by the use of objects by "magnetiseurs" to induce the hypnotic state. These objects had a fetishistic quality.

By definition a fetish is an object (most often in human form) which has been ascribed supernatural powers by its owner. The women in the popular illustrations present their puppet-men as fetishes, demonstrating that the artists manipulated the traditional use of the doll for "gender education," in order to suggest that the women are "bad mothers" both to their families and for the country -- which connects to the masculine fear that the "new woman" would neglect her family, leading to a decrease in the birthrate and ultimately the weakening of the country. The motif of the amazone with her puppet reveals that the "new woman" was the nineteenth-century man's nightmare -- a world turned upside down where the master becomes the slave.

Henry Somm, The Gauntlet, 1879