Week 3

The Bourgeois Century

The “base pageant”: Congress of Vienna,

1815

Major Goals

• Contain France and restore monarchical

territories

• Create a “balance of power” to ensure against

European-wide conflict

• Suppress any threats to status quo; stifle liberal

and nationalist demands

Restoration Europe

Territorial changes

• Growth of Russia, Prussia, and Austria

• “Congress” Poland

• France pushed back to its pre-1790 borders

• Disappearance of republics of Genoa and Venice

• Buffer zones around France: Prussian Westphalia,

Swiss Confederation, Piedmont-Sardinia

• Creation of German Confederation and

Bundestag

Prince Klemens von

Metternich (1821)

Middle class or middle classes?

“The bourgeoisie is not a class, it is a position;

one acquires that position and one loses it. Work,

thrift, and ability confer it; vice, dissipation, and

idless mean that it is lost.”

—Journal des Debats, 1847

Bigbankers,wholesalemerchants,highofficials

Smallerbankersandfinanciers,industrialists,merchants

Lawyers,notaries,doctors

Shopkeepers,teachers,caféowners,smallmerchants,minorofficials,masterartisansandcraftsmen

PettyBourgeoisie

MiddlingBourgeoisie

HighBourgeoisie

Caricaturist of middle classes: Honoré

Daumier (1808–1879)

Verticality of class: typical apartment in 19th

century Paris

Bourgeois domesticity: the private sphere

Christmas, a celebration of middle class

domesticity

Bourgeoisie and books: self-cultivation or

dangerous escapism?

Do you know what your wife needs? said Madame Bovary senior. She needs some hard work, some manual labor. If she were like nearly everyone else, forced to earn a living, she wouldn’t have these vapours of hers, which all come from stuffing her head with nonsense and leading a life of idleness.

–But she is always busy, said Charles.

–Ah! Busy indeed! And with what? Busy reading novels, wicked books, things written against religion, where priests are made a mockery with speeches taken from Voltaire. It all leads to no good, my poor boy, and anyone with no religion always comes to a bad end.

Therefore, it was decided to prevent Emma from reading novels. This was by no means an easy matter. The old lady took it upon herself: on her way through Rouen she was to call in person at the lending library and notify them that Emma was cancelling her subscription. Would they not have the right to tell the police, if the librarian still persisted in his poisonous trade?”

—Gustave Flaubert, Madame Bovary (1856)