Mary Roberts Post World War 1 Summary

Mary Roberts dissects the post World War I, French societal view of women. In a socially tumultuous, economic changing French world, Roberts uses literature to determine the ideas and constructions of women. Robert highlights the war as a critical element in this manuscript, providing this and exponential technological changes as the backdrop for this rapid change. She investigates how the French used gender to navigate the changing social and cultural tensions after a war that seemly exemplifies gender differences. Dividing her book into three sections, Roberts analyzes the three constructed images of French women, the modern women, the mother, and the single women. These images became ways for the French came to terms, debate, and negotiate …show more content…
Beginning with the modern woman, Roberts uses this section to illustrate the change aspect of society, as these women represented the non-traditional, promiscuous, ambiguous gendered liberated women. These women often provided the embodiment of change and insecurities men returning from the front faced, whereas women as mothers symbolized the unchanging conservative French societies before the war. Within the section explaining the idea of motherly women, Roberts uses a diversity of texts -parliamentary debates, sociological reports, novels, and short stories- to emphasize the prominence of natalist rhetoric. This language underscores the old, transitional, multilayer understanding of the motherly figure. The mother ideal became the moral standard for men and natalist propaganda. Constructing a role that in a postwar society embodied the idea of a French redeemer, regarding birth rates, and morality, while further provided a defined gender norm in both appearance and role. Robert’s final section analyzes the single women, who illustrated an in-between for the modern and mother