Dissertation
"Se prêter aux autres et se donner à soi-même": rethinking images of women and work in French cinema, 1933-1967
University of Iowa
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
Spring 2020
DOI: 10.17077/etd.005282
Abstract
This project explores images of working women in French films produced between 1933 and 1967. While it has long been a cornerstone of women’s experience, women’s immaterial labor was undervalued and therefore neglected as an official economic sector. Yet, so-called “women’s work” plays an essential role as a reproducer of the conditions of labor. Women’s affective labor, including child-rearing, domestic work, providing care for family members, producing a sense of pleasure and ease, and sex work, is labor necessary to the physical conditions that allow men to sustain the patriarchal labor systems that prevent women from achieving the power that accompanies wage-earning labor. Patriarchal dominant fiction concerning labor requires women to internalize a maternalist ideology that convinces them to forego their own access to independence and power in favor of invisible affective work. The notion of maternalism persists in influencing not only the labor to which women have access, but the ways in which working women are viewed within popular French culture. Commercial cinema as a medium both absorbs and reflects dominant fictions concerning women and labor. Placing films within their historical context, I explore this dynamic in Epstein’s La Maternelle; Vigo’s L’Atalante; Renoir’s Le Crime de Monsieur Lange and French Cancan; Grémillon’s Remorques, Lumière d’été and Le Ciel est à Vous; Max Ophüls’ Lola Montès; and finally Godard’s Vivre sa vie, Le Mépris, and Deux ou trois Choses que je sais d’elle… .These films explore themes of maternalism, mothering work, entertainment work, and sex work. Ultimately, the conclusion of this project is to demonstrate the ways in which cinematic images of working women influence the ideological struggle for women’s labor equity, and thence into the political practice of expanding rights for women workers.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- "Se prêter aux autres et se donner à soi-même": rethinking images of women and work in French cinema, 1933-1967
- Creators
- Jayne Machak
- Contributors
- Rosemarie Scullion (Advisor)Cinzia Blum (Committee Member)Russell Ganim (Committee Member)Roland Racevskis (Committee Member)Steven Ungar (Committee Member)
- Resource Type
- Dissertation
- Degree Awarded
- Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), University of Iowa
- Degree in
- French and Francophone World Studies
- Date degree season
- Spring 2020
- DOI
- 10.17077/etd.005282
- Publisher
- University of Iowa
- Number of pages
- vii, 191 pages
- Copyright
- Copyright 2020 Jayne Machak
- Language
- English
- Description bibliographic
- Includes bibliographical references (pages 181-191).
- Public Abstract (ETD)
This dissertation explores the cultural beliefs and practices regarding women and their work through analysis of several French films produced between 1933 and 1967. The films reflect, and sometimes challenge, the stereotype that women were “by nature” vocationally suited for motherhood. This belief persisted in French society over this time period, which meant that filmmakers and audiences internally processed the screen’s images of working women with preconceived notions. My aim is to expose how and to what extent these films, as artifacts of French culture at particular historical moments, could persuade French audiences that access to paid and independent work is vital to the expansion of women’s access to independence and power.
- Academic Unit
- French and Italian
- Record Identifier
- 9983949593202771
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