September 01, 2009

Contact:   Bill Giduz

Tilburg notes that the French still enjoy discussing the meaning and impact of Colette's work more than 50 years after her death.

Most French people today consider the late fin de siècle writer and dance hall performer Colette as an eccentric celebrity, an anomaly in the reformist current of the Third Republic. But Davidson College Associate Professor of History Patricia Tilburg argues in a new book that Colette was in many ways entirely representative of her time in ways that have been overlooked by historians and most of her many biographers. In fact, Tilburg contends that Colette’s enormous popularity is due in large part to her embodiment of the values of the Third Republic pedagogical revolution.

Colette’s Republic: Work, Gender, and Popular Culture in France, 1870-1914 (Berghahn, 2009) is the first book by Tilburg, a European cultural historian who specializes in post-revolutionary French history. In this study of belle époque culture, Tilburg uses Colette, who lived from 1873 to 1954, as an entree to discuss changes in education, popular entertainment, and women’s public roles in this period.

Tilburg explained, “Historians of Third Republic popular entertainment and literature have rarely connected that period of artistic change with the political, educational and pedagogical government reforms of the day. My study connects those spheres.”

She continued, “I wanted to show how Colette was connected to important historical trends. She has a reputation as being a delightful celebrity outside of history, but I see her work and performance as representative of important political and educational changes in the Third Republic.”

France’s Third Republic arose in 1870 following the country’s humiliating defeat in war by Prussia. France had swung back and forth between monarchy and republic for a century, and the new reformist government could not guarantee that the Third Republic would endure. Its leaders promoted a social revolution to remake the country built on a fervent belief in secular government, universal public education, public libraries, honest wages for honest work, and physical fitness. The Republican pedagogical revolution expanded the possibilities for what it could mean to be a public woman, and Colette is representative of that.

Though women’s liberation was not specifically addressed by the reforms (and women in France only won the vote in 1944!) Colette was able to create a lifestyle that not only adhered to staid Republican values, but also enthralled French audiences at the same time.

Tilburg focuses on several several historical episodes in Third Republic government and arts to demonstrate how Colette serves as a link between the tumultuous, bohemian, artistic France of the day, and bureaucratic government reforms. In one chapter, Tilburg explores school system reform by examining its implementation in Colette’s home village in Burgundy. While Colette’s early writing included a scandalous novel that critiqued the new school system, it also demonstrated a sincere connection to the educational values of the new Republican pedagogy.

Patricia Tilburg joined the Davidson faculty in 2003.

In another chapter, Tilburg demonstrates that Colette’s career as a risqué dancer in vaudeville shows can be viewed as an expansion of Frenchwomen’s sphere rather than exploitation. She said, “Girls began to get the Third Republic message about the importance of working hard, earning money and pursuing a profession. Colette rationalized her dance hall performances as honorable work because she was earning honest wages and keeping her body fit.”

Colette’s Republic began as a seminar paper that Tilburg wrote as a master’s degree student in French history at UCLA in 1997. It became the topic of her Ph.D. dissertation as well, and she spent nine months in France in 2000 to conduct the bulk of her research.

In the Bibliotheque National in Paris, Tilburg had access to Colette’s unpublished correspondence. She reviewed huge scrapbooks of news articles about Colette at the Paris Opera House, comparing the write-ups from conservative newspapers and Republican newspapers. She also traveled to Colette’s hometown in Burgundy and reviewed files there that contained valuable historical minutia from more than 100 years ago, such as lists of books used in school classes, school inspection reports, and descriptions of curricular pedagogy. “That allowed me to see how national reform played out in a small village like theirs,” Tilburg said. “Her father served on the school board, and we still have notes of those board meetings.”

Tilburg received her doctorate in 2002 and began teaching at Davidson the following year. She used her sabbatical during the 2007-2008 school year to complete the book.

She also used the sabbatical to launch another project tangential to her study of Colette. She is now researching philanthropic initiatives in France during the Third Republic to educate young working-class women and teach them performing arts as a way of helping better their lives.

These women, often employed in the sweated garment industry, were popular cultural figures, romanticized and sexualized in the press and novels as “happy-go-lucky girls who sang and sewed.” While they appreciated the philanthropic initiatives on their behalf, they also recognized the bourgeoisie was using the image of their contented lives to ignore their real economic and political grievances.

Tilburg said, “It seems to have been a way for members of the upper and middle class to ignore the women’s very real working grievances. They didn’t have to listen to their demands because they were just charming little girls.”

Davidson is a highly selective independent liberal arts college for 1,800 students located 20 minutes north of Charlotte in Davidson, N.C. Since its establishment in 1837 by Presbyterians, the college has graduated 23 Rhodes Scholars and is consistently regarded as one of the top liberal arts colleges in the country. Through The Davidson Trust, the college became the first liberal arts institution in the nation to replace loans with grants in all financial aid packages, giving all students the opportunity to graduate debt-free. Davidson competes in NCAA athletics at the Division I level, and a longstanding Honor Code is central to student life at the college.
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