Paris In The 19th Century Essay

In order to understand the lives of the working class in Paris in the 19th Century, it is necessary to understand how their lives were not simply shaped by larger influences such as the economic forces of capitalism or the regulating role of the state. Instead, it is important to unveil how the city itself spatialized and constructed social and gender difference for the working class, while they, in a mutually constitutive manner shaped modes of sociability in the city. Analysis of the works by Faure, Ferguson, Haine, and Ross, makes clear that Shane Ewan’s three features of urban history are vital to a discussion of the working class. The use of interdisciplinarity, ‘history from below’ and the city-as-agent elucidate the hidden history of the working class and their daily relationships with their environment and each other. The working class in Paris created a family, community and …show more content…
The cafes in the bourgeoisie centre’s wide streets became avenues of display and pleasure. As part of the proliferation of mass consumer culture, cafes in this area were no longer political, but rather places of pleasurable pastimes. They became sites for the integration of the working class worker with the white collar worker. They thus became a reflection of the changed urban environment, using a “shared set of rituals for interaction” associated with drinking, to create camaraderie between strangers. Haine notes novels which romanticize ‘café friendships’. However, Haussmannisation also caused the displacement of the working class from the city centre and exacerbation of the housing problem, so that cafes also flourished in the fringes of the city for the working class. Ross notes that the destruction of many brothels also led to the drinking establishment as a site for what the police feared was ‘clandestine