Foley on Clark (2023)

Linda Clark’s impressive study examines a group of women who played a pivotal role in the establishment of secular education for girls under the Third Republic, specifically the directrices of the “normal schools” where teachers were trained. At a time when the majority of girls were still taught by nuns, republicans realized that training female lay teachers was essential in order to staff new secular schools for girls. In 1879, only eighteen departments had normal schools for women; between 1879 and 1890, sixty-nine new institutions were opened in other departments. In addition, an école normale supérieure was established at Fontenay-aux-Roses in 1880 to provide formal training for those directrices. Together, as Clark’s book shows, these institutions provided the beginnings of a career structure for women in education. Moreover, by studying the backgrounds and careers of the directrices, Clark tells a compelling story of upward social mobility and ambition. 

In chapter one, the author explains the republicans’ determination to secularize public schooling once they achieved power in 1879. She then examines the backgrounds and careers of the first cohorts of directrices and their “mission” in the normal schools: to “take the lead in creating a model for the new woman teacher loyal to the Third Republic and its policies” (41). Chapter two explores the “knowledge, values, and conduct” that the directrices sought to instil in teachers (43). They encouraged independent thought and intellectual self-confidence and, given the public scrutiny teachers received, sought to ensure that the young women’s conduct was above reproach. Chapter three examines the interactions of the directrices with inspectors, with local and national officials, and with their local communities. It investigates controversies engulfing the directrices, such the Dreyfus affair. The author argues that criticisms of both directrices and students were often indirect attacks on republican education itself and reflected politico-religious conflict in the broader community. The particular challenges posed for republican education in deeply Catholic regions like Brittany and the Vendée, and in the complex cultural environment of Algeria, are explored in chapter four. Chapter five then considers the directrices’ relationships with the emerging feminist movement. Chapter six provides an overview of developments from the First World War until the vote to end the Third Republic in 1940. An epilogue surveys the fate of the directrices under Vichy, which closed the normal schools, and also traces their diverse roles under the Fourth and into the Fifth Republic, as a succession of legal and social changes re-shaped educational policy and practice. The normal schools put in place under the Third Republic were finally replaced by university institutes for professional formation (instituts universitaires de formation des maîtres, IUFM) under the Jospin law of 1989. 

Clark’s book highlights the paradox at the heart of republican education for women. The directrices (like the women teachers they trained) were career women. Yet they were charged with reinforcing the republican message that a woman’s most important role was as wife and mother. A considerable proportion of the directrices––increasing from 1900––were married, many with children. The husbands of some directrices retired or took up new positions so that their wives could accept posts in distant cities or departments: we might not have expected husbands to offer such support for their wives’ careers in that period. As Clark’s study shows, notions of “equality in difference” loomed large in republican educational thought (20-1). But in practice that notion was unstable, opening up new possibilities and expectations for women’s lives that exceeded its limits. 

It is perhaps not surprising that many of these career women, experiencing that shift in possibilities, embraced the aspirations of the feminist movement from the 1880s. Indeed, they provided many of the movement’s leaders and activists. This study shows that women’s sense of grievance at being paid less than men in similar roles motivated even those with little interest in politics to take action for equal pay. Many others went further, joining the Union Française pour le Suffrage des Femmes to advocate for voting rights for women. Clark’s detailed analysis of the roles of directrices, and of women teachers in general, in feminist organisations and activism across the departments, illuminates our picture of the movement’s grassroots operation. It also highlights the work of impressive educational leaders like Albertine Eidenschenk and Pauline Kergomard.  

Clark’s exhaustive research has produced a book that is at once broad-ranging and finely tuned. Along with official documents, she has mined the directrices’ personnel files for insights into individual circumstances, using their correspondence to uncover individual voices and a range of experiences. Rather than simply examining the curricula of the normal schools, she examines the directrices’ speeches, lesson plans, and exam papers to reveal how they actually taught that curriculum, and to illuminate the understanding of republican education that they developed. Clark has also read widely in such sources as professional journals and local newspapers, and in the feminist press, in order to assess the directrices’ relations with parents, local communities, and republican authorities.  

While the level of detail can be daunting at times, this rich and vibrant account is extremely valuable. Clark’s new book will be welcomed by all those interested in women’s and gender history, as well as in the history of education and the history of French republicanism.