The Evolution of the Model of the Ideal Woman in France of the Belle Époque: the case of Marguerite Durand and La Fronde

Although the nineteenth century, in many respects, changed France beyond recognition, with the Civil Code of 1802, it created a legal framework as strong as never before that enclosed women in a world of strictly defined roles and tasks. They were a reflection and legal sanction of the attitudes, understanding of social roles, and necessary attributes allocated to women, that were currently in operation, especially in the bourgeois French society. Any change in them took place extremely slowly, and met with resistance and considerable social reluctance. Suffice it to say, that French women did not gain full civil rights until 1938. Among the activists of women’s movements in France who provoked these changes and actively supported them, promoting new kinds of attitudes and behaviour was Marguerite Durand (1864–1936), feminist, journalist, founder and editor‑in‑chief of the daily (and later monthly) La Fronde, the first newspaper in France run by a woman and employing only women, although it did not only cover women’s issues. La Fronde became an important tribune promoting issues important for women, an advocate of legal changes, but, above all, of changes in the social perception of women, their image, their roles and tasks, their expected and required features, behaviour, and attitudes. And although this change was slow, La Fronde was one of its most important

tools, and Marguerite Durand one of its faces.