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Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Wisconsin--Madison, 1960. / Typescript. Vita. eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record. Includes bibliographical references.

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Juxtaposing historical evidence with fiction, this thesis probes into the social marginalization of Third Republic schoolmistresses reflected in literary stereotypes. Despite their manifold representation in novels, the general stereotype is still predominant: a displeasing teacher in misery. Mostly secluded in provincial posts, they suffered not only from material indigence and burdensome teaching, but also from the hostility projected from their surroundings. Under these unfavorable circumstances, many took refuge in professional devotion and abnegation. However, they sometimes developed an ideal of heroism and self-sacrifice, which were comparable to nuns’ religious credos. Women teachers’ political portrait is often left out of literary representation. Because they could not even defend themselves and have their interests protected by superiors, political engagement would mean little to their secluded lives. Yet in the masculine Republic, women educators shouldered a political task of forming girls as qualified mothers and companions who embraced republican values. The Republic’s reinvention of the secular faith and the lay School manifested its inheritance of the Catholic legacy it strived to eradicate, best demonstrated by its imitation of a laicized religious discourse, epitomized in literature by institutrices’ spirit of martyrdom. Through their professional efforts, they came into the public sight and increased their political impact. With their pacifist ideal, militant teachers safeguarded the Republic as well as republican schooling. Above all, as a result of their continuous struggles, they shattered the image of domestic women by proving themselves to be independent and public, shaping the New Woman “prototypes” of the new century. The “vices” of new career women were evident, for their new professional identity contravened conventional norms of gender roles. It was the teaching career that gave them an anomalous sexual experience, by depriving them of their womanly roles as wives and mothers. The image of the embittered “vieille fille” thus became a target for demonization, which was presumably a cultural motive behind Colette’s writings. She arguably employed the image of schoolmistress as a vehicle for exposing a public polemic between traditional and modern views on gender roles, in the context of major social transformations especially in thought. Schoolmistresses are a metonymy of French republicanism: a republican experiment which conflicted with women’s traditional functions and undermined the inveterate masculinist order. Third Republic schoolmistresses underwent a metamorphosis from domestic to public as they acquired new social roles. While institutrice literature shares profound bonds with autobiographical accounts, many testimonies also suggest an inclination of being attached to and even governed by novels. Despite the fact that literature is fabricated upon a universe of stereotypes, many teachers spontaneously chose fictional texts as the representative of their professional voice, making these “republican mythologies” a collective autobiography which articulated institutrices’ individual career pathos to a broader audience. / published_or_final_version / Modern Languages and Cultures / Master / Master of Philosophy

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In this critical inquiry, I look at how individuals who experience social, cultural and economic exclusion in postcolonial societies construct cultural identities and relationships with what they perceive as the dominant cultures of their countries through the process of schooling. Here, the term 'postcolonial' refers to events, places, and conditions that are situated after periods of colonization, and implicate individuals whose histories are linked to colonizers and colonized peoples. / This thesis discusses theoretical, political, philosophical and methodological issues around the design, implementation, interpretation and report of an ethnographic inquiry carried out in Brazil (Sao Paulo area) and southern France in 2004-2005. In this project, I organized focus groups of adolescents from marginalized communities in those two locations with the intention to generate critical dialogues about their experience of schooling and the dynamics between what they perceived as their cultural identity, their school's culture, and the culture of their countries. More than a mere survey of the accommodation and representation of 'minority' histories and peoples in France and Brazil, this study strives to explore and compare how the societal apparatuses of those two countries, with a particular emphasis on schooling, produce categories of cultural difference and inscribe them onto societal subjects. Thus, I carried out my inquiry with the belief that schooling is not simply a site of cultural transmission and reproduction, but also of cultural and identity production: a matrix that recreates, renegotiates, and institutionalizes hierarchical boundaries of difference that become actualized in students' subjectivities (Hall, 1999).

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