Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Date of Degree

2-2014

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Program

French

Advisor

Mary Ann Caws

Subject Categories

French and Francophone Literature

Abstract

The restaurant, like so many of the institutions of French modern society, developed at a very particular moment in history. In this project, I tell the story of the maturation of the restaurant and study its unique role in the social history of Paris during the nineteenth century. By examining the restaurant as a site of modernity, I illuminate its important role in precipitating class distinctions, locating the emerging consumer culture, highlighting gender differentiation, challenging prevailing views of domesticity, and revealing a debate over public and private space.

Through a close reading of the realist novel as a discourse on daily life, I intertwine cultural history and literary theory to look at some of the critical questions about the nineteenth century restaurant. I examine a sampling of novels in which the restaurant is integral to the author’s narrative project. I demonstrate how Balzac uses the restaurant in Père Goriot as a signifier of one’s social status and how Maupassant uses the restaurant in Bel-Ami to differentiate gender roles. In my analysis of Flaubert’s Madame Bovary and L’Éducation Sentimentale and of Henry Céard’s Une Belle Journée I write about the restaurant’s unique role as both a public and private space in French society by highlighting its ability to sumultaneously satisfy many “appetites.” I read Balzac’s Le Cousin Pons, Dujardin’s Les Lauriers sont coupés, and Huysmans’ À Vaul’eau through the lens of an anxious bourgeoisie trying to navigate the emerging restaurant culture of Paris. In my final chapter, I address the social issues that rose to the surface as a result of the emergence of a nineteenth century consumer society focused around the restaurant through an analysis of Baudelaire’s poem “Les Yeux des pauvres” and Zola’s Le Ventre de Paris.

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