What is it about?
In 1850 and 1851, two plays were staged at the Porte Saint-Martin theatre with working class heroines, Jenny l’ouvrière, drame en cinq actes by Jules Barbier and Adrien Decourcelles and Claudie, drame en trois actes by George Sand. Both plays thus reflect the major challenges facing society in the 1850s following the revolution of 1848 and the bloody days of June: poverty, lack of work, the condition of women in the city and in the countryside. Despite the efforts of government censors to eliminate the subversive aspects of these two plays, their spatial organization continued to question the distinction between social classes.
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Why is it important?
This article explores the use of space on and off stage, and also looks at how these plays were censored by official government censors.
Perspectives
Both of these plays feature young women as the main characters, and the roles were played by the same actress, Lia Félix. Both young women fall victim to unscrupulous men who transgress their domestic space. The spatial movements of the characters on and off stage reveal that there is little difference between the social classes. Before arriving at this state of equilibrium, both women find themselves with nowhere to go, but they eventually find a new space of their own and their honour is reinstated.
Dr Janice Best
Acadia University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Contestation sociale et spatiale dans Jenny l’ouvrière et Claudie, Nineteenth Century French Studies, May 2023, Project Muse,
DOI: 10.1353/ncf.2023.0002.
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