Feminine widowhood : Images of widows in French humorous illustrated press at the end of the nineteenth century and the beginning of the twentieth century

Résumé 0

Satirists and cartoonists of the Belle Époque denounced the ambiguous relationships between widowhood and womanhood and illustrated the sometimes contradictory yearnings of widows for social welfare and individual freedom. On the one hand they associated widowhood with financial security and the need for taking out provident measures prior to the death of the husband, exacerbating the fear of living in poverty. On the other hand, they showed the paradoxical aspects of the status of widows. Widowhood was actually a rather unclear status; it complied with moral obligations that imposed heavy constraints on the widow, who was as a result protected by a life-long sacred status, but it also freed the woman from the bonds of marriage and thus exposed her, as an independent individual, to the moral judgment of the community. Sometimes cynically, cartoonists figured out the strategies used by the people of the time to bypass the usual social conventions and etiquette while keeping up appearances, particularly during the mourning period. As she was represented as a woman divided between her past, present, and future lives, the widow reflected the common prejudices of the time, but also embodied the doubts and questions that brought about the feminist awakening.