The French Revolution opened a whole new stage in the history of women, despite their conspicuous absence from the playbill. The coming century would see women's subordination to men codified in all manner of new laws and rules; and yet the period would also witness the birth of feminism, the unprecedented emergence of women as a collective force in the political arena. The fourth volume in this world-acclaimed series covers the distance between these two poles, between the French Revolution and World War I. It gives us a vibrant picture of a bourgeois century, dynamic and expansive, in which the role of woman in the home was stressed more and more, even as the economic pressures and opportunities of the industrial revolution drew her out of the house; in which woman's growing role in the family as the center of all morals and virtues pressed her into public service to fight social ills.

Georges Duby, a member of the Académie Française, is Professor of Medieval History at the Collège de France.

Michelle Perrot is Professor of Contemporary History at the Université de Paris VII.

Geneviève Fraisse is Research Associate in Philosophy, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, Paris.

Arthur Goldhammer received the French-American Translation Prize in 1990 for his translation of A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution.

Other HUP Books by Georges Duby

• A History of Private Life, Volume V, Riddles of Identity in Modern Times
• A History of Private Life, Volume III, Passions of the Renaissance
• A History of Women in the West, Volume III, Renaissance and the Enlightenment Paradoxes
• A History of Private Life, Volume II, Revelations of the Medieval World
• A History of Women in the West, Volume II, Silences of the Middle Ages
• A History of Private Life, Volume IV, From the Fires of Revolution to the Great War
• A History of Women in the West, Volume I, From Ancient Goddesses to Christian Saints
• A History of Women in the West, Volume V, Toward a Cultural Identity in the Twentieth Century
• A History of Private Life, Volume I, From Pagan Rome to Byzantium

Other HUP Books by Michelle Perrot

• A History of Women in the West, Volume III, Renaissance and the Enlightenment Paradoxes
• A History of Women in the West, Volume II, Silences of the Middle Ages
• A History of Private Life, Volume IV, From the Fires of Revolution to the Great War
• A History of Women in the West, Volume I, From Ancient Goddesses to Christian Saints
• A History of Women in the West, Volume V, Toward a Cultural Identity in the Twentieth Century

Other HUP Books by Arthur Goldhammer

• France in the Enlightenment
• A History of Private Life, Volume III, Passions of the Renaissance
• The Village of Cannibals: Rage and Murder in France, 1870
• A Critical Dictionary of the French Revolution
• A Small City in France
• A History of Women in the West, Volume II, Silences of the Middle Ages
• The Languages of Paradise: Race, Religion, and Philology in the Nineteenth Century
• A History of Private Life, Volume IV, From the Fires of Revolution to the Great War
• A History of Private Life, Volume V, Riddles of Identity in Modern Times
• The Vichy Syndrome: History and Memory in France Since 1944
• A History of Women in the West, Volume I, From Ancient Goddesses to Christian Saints
• Blessings in Disguise: or, the Morality of Evil
• A History of Private Life, Volume I, From Pagan Rome to Byzantium
• Dionysos at Large
• The Living Eye
• Tocqueville and the Two Democracies
• A History of Private Life, Volume II, Revelations of the Medieval World
• A History of Women in the West, Volume V, Toward a Cultural Identity in the Twentieth Century
• A History of Women in the West, Volume III, Renaissance and the Enlightenment Paradoxes
• Greek Virginity
• Paris: Capital of the World
• The Demands of Liberty: Civil Society in France since the Revolution