In:
Enfances, Familles, Générations, Consortium Erudit, , No. 27 ( 2017-08-31)
Abstract:
Research framework: In 1881 the French Third
Republic allocated yearly pensions to nearly 25,000 elderly citizens as reparations for political oppression suffered thirty years earlier during the previous regime.
To receive a pension, each former political prisoner ( proscrit ), their widows or children, wrote letters describing their
punishment and the wider multi-generational impact of that oppression. Objectives: This article uncovers
understandings shared by Republican administrators and a particular group of their staunch working-class supporters - artisans, rural laborers, and small-town
shopkeepers - of the definitions of old age, expectations for life trajectories, and how gender affected both expectations and experiences. Methodology: Historical, qualitative analysis
of archival documents at the French National Archives and departments of the Ain, Allier, Drôme, Hérault, Rhône, Saône-et-Loire, Vaucluse and Yonne, France. Results: Analysis demonstrates pension
applicants drew upon common understandings of gender and age-based roles to strengthen their claims to pensions both as erstwhile heroes of the newly democratic regime and as members of an indigent, elderly poor worthy of government
aid. Conclusions: Former proscrits , their families and Republican
administrators shared assumptions about the definition of the onset of old age as linked to gender; about expectations that elderly men would work indefinitely in old
age until physically unable to do so but that the specter of elderly working women was shameful and a blot on Republican values; and about an understanding that
pensions allowed a dignified old-age for both male and female applicants by undoing dangerous shifts in gender roles perceived as triggered by the political oppression
decades earlier. Contribution: The article contributes to
scholarship on changing European understandings of the gendered dimensions of old age in the late 19th century, just before decades of social welfare legislation.
Type of Medium:
Online Resource
ISSN:
1708-6310
Language:
French
Publisher:
Consortium Erudit
Publication Date:
2017
detail.hit.zdb_id:
2197562-0
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