Christine Adams

Louder Than Words: Ways of Seeing Women Workers in Eighteenth-Century France (review)

leagues to “save” marriages and to a professionalization of marriage counseling. Responding to cultural shifts, the SED encouraged men to help out in the household, converted homes where children were boarded on a weekly basis to daycare centers, and allowed an increasing number of women to work part-time. Abortion laws were liberalized. What the SED did not aim for was the creation of a truly egalitarian society. Women continued to think of themselves as primarily responsible for their families’ welfare, and the SED was disinclined to challenge this attitude, particularly since the SED became convinced in the 1960’s that the family should have an important formative influence on children. On the other hand, there was a growing sense among East German women of their own value and their own rights. All these trends intensified under Erich Honecker (in power 1971-1989), who put social welfare and consumerism first. Harsch believes that Honecker saw women as the “key mediators” (p. 307) between the socialist economic system and a changing, modernizing society. Indeed, she believes that “gender relations and domestic issues were major stimuli of the metamorphosis of the ‘classic Stalinist system’ into the ‘welfare dictatorship’ and ‘consumer socialism.’” (p. 310). But that transformation bankrupted the GDR. The SED’s earlier neglect of women and the family set the stage for a “revenge of the domestic” in the form of an unaffordable welfare/consumerist system. Three major achievements of this book must be highlighted. First, Harsch has succeeded in convincingly showing gender to be a central force in GDR history. Second, she has put a nail in the coffin of totalitarianism theory by portraying the GDR as a dictatorship in which major aspects of society were renegotiated over the course of its history. And third, she has given an important twist to the idea of women’s participation in the making of the modern welfare state by showing that in the GDR, women helped bring about a return to the traditional nuclear family, albeit with female participation in the workforce. This is a major work not to be missed by those interested in GDR history. The book’s readability (despite its complexity) would also make it a good choice for course adoptions on the advanced undergraduate and graduate levels.

Defining État in Eighteenth-Century France: The Lamothe Family of Bordeaux

ABSTRACT: In ancien rŕgime France, ones legal, social, personal, and professional situtation constituted ones état, or ones condition in life. The letters of the Lamothe family of eighteenth-century Bordeaux, a “bourgeois” family in the liberal professions, indicate the ways in which one provincial family defined and maintained its état in life, internal and external, personal and professional, public and private. For the Lamothe family, moderation and balance in life-style and conservation of resources, status, and family were primary goals, rather than risky and psychologically threatening efforts towards social mobility. The solidarity of the Lamothe family and the strength of its values meant that its état was conserved in spite of the challenges it faced.