Areas of Research
Historical Context
1
Treaty of Versailles
9
3
3
Great Depression in France
Bloc National vs.
Cartel des Gauches
Interwar France
Treaty of Versailles
1919
The signing of the Treaty of Versailles on June 28, 1919 officially ended World War I. Negotiated between the Allied powers of Great Britain, France, the Soviet Union, the United States and China, the treaty reassigned German boundaries, stripped Germany of all its colonies, reduced Germany’s armed forces and prohibited Germany from possessing certain types of weapons. Further, part VIII of the treaty required Germany to pay monetary reparations to the allies among other financial obligations. The German government signed the treaty under protest, and tensions caused by the treaty precipitated a low level unrest that ultimately contributed to WWII.
Interwar France
1919-1938
In the years between WWI and WWII, France in 1933 was riddled with political unrest. The country's economy was devastated by the post WWI decline in need for agriculture and industry, and the budding socialist government lost all control allowing right-wing extremism to sweep the nation in the form of Bloc National- a political party determined not to bow to the needs of the lower classes.
WWI took the lives of over 1.5 million men, with another 3.5 million wounded, which left the workforce severely crippled- predicating a dip in the nation's production of steel. The value of the French franc fell nearly 50 percent. In 1923, in an attempt to compensate for some of their financial losses and as a response to socialist pressures about inaction, the French government invaded the Ruhr region of Germany, calling upon the German government to pay the reparations owed to France as negotiated in the Treaty of Versailles that ended WWI in 1919. This invasion failed and ended up costing the government even more money. Prime Minister Raymond Poincare resigned, throwing the government into disorganized chaos at the hands of the left, and leading to the rise of the right-wing extremism favored by the petite-bourgeoise.
Bloc National vs. Cartel des Gauches
1919-1926
The Bloc National was the right-wing coalition elected to the French legislature in response to wave of nationalist sentiment following WWI from 1919 to 1924. The Bloc was associated with the conservative values of the French petite-bourgeoisie and constituted one of the largest conservative majorities in France's history. It was made up of deeply religious Roman Catholics and war veterans. The Bloc's main goal was to rebuild the French economy by forcing Germany to pay the reparations promised in the Treaty of Versailles. After the failure of the occupation of the Ruhr (1923-1925), support for the Bloc's strict foreign waned, and a sharp drop in the value of the franc the Bloc National was defeated in the parliamentary elections of May 1924 by the Cartel des Gauches.
The Cartel des Gauches, or “Coalition of the Left” was an alliance of left-wing parties in the French legislature who held power from 1924 to 1926. It was made up of The Socialist Party, which stood in opposition to the bourgeois parties of the right, allied with the left-wing Radicals, who held power in France before WWI. The Cartel was formed in opposition to the Bloc National and staged it's defeated it in the elections of 1924. In an attempt to establish an identity contrary to the Bloc National and unify the left, leaders enforced anticlericalism, a policy of secular education. The Cartel des Gauches self-imploded in 1925 due to infighting over tax policies-- Socialists wanted them and Radicals hesitated to act. Their tumultuous governance left the financially unstable French workers disenfranchised and frustrated, and ultimately launched France into a depression.
Great Depression in France
1931-1939
At the end of the 1920s, France was in much better financial shape than it's European neighbors. By 1931, however, due to political turmoil and poor decision making regarding enforcement of the Treaty of Versailles, France succumbed to the effects of the Great Depression.
"On street benches and at métro entrances, groups of exhausted and starving young men would be trying not to die. I don't know how many never came round. I can only say what I saw. In the rue Madame one day I saw a child drop a sweet which someone trod on, then the man behind bent down and picked it up, wiped it and ate it."
Lebesque, Morvan (1960), Chroniques du Canard, Éditions J-J Pauvert
Social/Cultural Context
1
Catholicism in France
9
Petite-Bourgeoise
3
Worker's rights
(The Popular Front)
3
Catholicism in France
Religious Values and the Jeunesse Ouvrière Chrétienne
In Interwar France, French national identity was being rebuilt. Catholicism had come under fire during the French Third Republic (1870-1940), while the horrors of WWI led many to return to their faith as a means of comfort. Like the Lutton sisters, French girls were often educated in convents (a Christian community that houses and is run by nuns).
The Jeunesse Ouvrière Chrétienne (JOC) or "Young Christian Workers"was founded by Rev. Joseph Cardijn in Belgium in an attempt to reconcile the Catholic Church with the industrial workers of the world. This youth movement took off in France in 1924, attracting many young people with the idea that this blend of education and work ethic would mark a return to Christian values to those far away from the corruption of the big city (Paris).
The Petite-Bourgeoise
The Communist Maifesto, Karl Marx (1848)
The Danzard family are members of what Karl Marx refers to in The Communist Manifesto "the petite-bourgeoise," a transitional social class of "the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsmen and peasants "who "benefit directly from the appropriation (or, in Marx's view, stealing) of the proletariat's wage-labor." This social class is distinct from Marx "labor aristocracy-- made up of workers who have managed to negotiate pay for themselves higher than the value they add by their labor."
The petite-bourgeoise are essentially what we'd think of as today's middle-class. They adhere to traditional values such as heteronormative marriage and family roles, christian morality, self-reliance rather than government dependence.
The Popular Front
Worker's Rights
Interwar France was governed during the 1920s and 1930s by rapidly shifting coalitions from the left and from the right. As the effects of Great Depression worsened, the far right grew in popularity and daring, mirroring Hitler's rise in conservative and struggling pre-WWII Germany. Finally, fascist riots in 1934 sparked a political crisis in France that led to the creation of the Popular Front.
In 1933, Communists, Socialists, and many other disenfranchised groups in French society wished to build the working class in response to both Hitler and danger of the rise of fascism in France. The Popular Front, an alliance the left-wing movement’s initial attraction was the idea of unity among workers against facism. It attracted not only workers and peasants, and their unions and leagues, but also the lower middle classes.
A Closer Look
Mental Health
Folie à deux
The phenomenon of "folie à deux" or "the simultaneous occurrence of symptoms of a mental disorder (as delusions) in two persons who are closely related (as siblings or man and wife)" (www.vocabulary.com) is a rare occurrence, but one that has echoes in the story of Christine and Léa Lutton in Wendy Kesselman's My Sister in this House. The limited knowledge we are offered about the manipulative and neglectful mother of Christine and Léa Lutton, as well as the hinted-at sexual abuse perpetrated by the nuns who raised the girls could have contributed to the way they commit their violent crime in tandem.
The 'Insane Lesbian'
In the early 1930s, French psychoanalyst Jacques Lacan published his thesis "On Paranoiac Psychosis in its Relations to the Personality" which introduced the concept of the "insane lesbian" into the dialectic of a culture already deeply ingrained with the idea that femininity was to be feared. Psychologist Ann Boyd notes that according to this line of reasoning which was the prevailing mood at the time, "women who commit violent crimes have breached two laws: "the law of the land, which forbids violence, and the much more fundamental 'natural' law, which says women are passive carers, not active aggressors." Author of "Revisiting the Papin Case: Gender, Sexuality and Violence in "Sister My Sister" Karen Boyle goes on to state that "it is not only the violence, but the murderers' alleged lesbianism that threatens, as the obsession with sexuality" as well as "the anxiety aroused by the incestuous nature of their (alleged) relationship and the apparent revolt against the passive invisibility of their class position."
Sound and Silence
My Sister in this House is pervaded by small, jarring sounds interrupting the silence of the strict Danzard household. The silence on stage can evokes an effectively eerie and paranoid feeling in the audience if staged correctly. The way the violent crimes of the Lutton sisters is described and not shown is Kesselman's choice.
Kesselman's careful use of silence and sound in My Sister in this House is a storytelling device that impacts the audience's experience of and response to the story. It helps to illustrate in an almost physical way the repression and heart-pounding paranoia in the house of the Danzards in the weeks leading up to the women's brutal murder.