<p>The creation of Emma Bovary, the major character in Madame Bovary written by Gustave Flaubert, must have been one of the most reckless literaray enterprises of its time. There is no doubt that its inventor, Flaubert, aimed to promote a feminist viewpoint. In this masterwork, Flaubert fully depicts the different options, offered to women in the Napoleon era.</p><p>However, somehow Flaubert’s novel is concerned less with the differences between men and women, as they are pre-given, than with what differentiates men from other men. Therefore, I have in this essay also payed particular attention to the codified social roles and rights for men within the legal framework of the Code Napoléon, leading to a reformulation of ‘masculinity’ and ‘manhood’ in nineteenth-century France. These codified roles and rights reveal a number of negative power-and social relationships with men, as well as with women. Not all men are equal or unaffected by the laws of Patriarchy. In Madame Bovary shifts in gender value, shifts in the codification of what is ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ are present throughout the entire novel, thus creating a real gender trangression or a new woman and a new man.</p>

The creation of Emma Bovary, the major character in Madame Bovary written by Gustave Flaubert, must have been one of the most reckless literaray enterprises of its time. There is no doubt that its inventor, Flaubert, aimed to promote a feminist viewpoint. In this masterwork, Flaubert fully depicts the different options, offered to women in the Napoleon era. However, somehow Flaubert’s novel is concerned less with the differences between men and women, as they are pre-given, than with what differentiates men from other men. Therefore, I have in this essay also payed particular attention to the codified social roles and rights for men within the legal framework of the Code Napoléon, leading to a reformulation of ‘masculinity’ and ‘manhood’ in nineteenth-century France. These codified roles and rights reveal a number of negative power-and social relationships with men, as well as with women. Not all men are equal or unaffected by the laws of Patriarchy. In Madame Bovary shifts in gender value, shifts in the codification of what is ‘feminine’ or ‘masculine’ are present throughout the entire novel, thus creating a real gender trangression or a new woman and a new man.

Au XIXème siècle et jusqu’au début du XXème siècle, les Africaines Américaines étaient exclues des codes de féminité américains, qui posaient en modèle la « femme victorienne ». Souvent jugées « immorales », elles étaient la cible de nombreuses critiques, notamment dans la presse. Au tournant du siècle, lorsque le modèle victorien laissa peu à peu la place à celui de la « nouvelle femme », les Africaines Américaines continuèrent à revendiquer leur statut de femmes et redéfinirent ce que signifiait être une femme noire aux États-Unis.Nous avons voulu étudier la façon dont certaines activistes, membres de clubs de femmes et intellectuelles appartenant à la classe moyenne et supérieure, envisageaient leur identité de femmes entre le début des années 1860 et le début des années 1920. Cette étude s’appuie sur leurs récits de vie, tels que leurs autobiographies, journaux intimes, correspondance, ainsi que sur leurs discours, essais, et articles parus dans la presse.Le but de cette thèse est d’analyser les attitudes et les stratégies adoptées par ces femmes pour défendre l’image de la femme noire aux États-Unis, à une période charnière de l’histoire américaine. Cette biographie collective examine tout particulièrement la vie et la pensée de quatre activistes majeures de cette période: Fannie Barrier Williams (1855-1944), Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931), dont la voix s’éleva contre le lynchage, Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954), et Anna Julia Cooper (1858-1964), qui fut l’une des premières féministes noires américaines. / In the nineteenth century, African American women’s womanhood was denied and constantly under attack. After emancipation (1865), they crafted their own definition of what it meant to be a woman of color in the United States. At the turn of the century, as Victorianism was gradually yielding ground, the model of the modern, “new woman” emerged. In this context, African American women went on redefining the meaning of black womanhood. This dissertation examines how some African American women activists, clubwomen and intellectuals belonging to the middle and upper-classes reflected upon being a woman and asserted their womanhood between the 1860s and the early 1920s.This study analyzes the attitudes and strategies they adopted, in their life writings, – such as their autobiographies, diaries and letters – their articles, essays and speeches and in their club work, to defend the image of women of color in the rapidly changing society of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. This dissertation also explores the importance of the notions of region and nation in the definition of womanhood. This interpretive collective biography particularly examines the lives and thoughts of four major activists of the time period: Fannie Barrier Williams (1855-1944), Ida B. Wells-Barnett (1862-1931), the famous crusader against lynching, Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954), and Anna Julia Cooper (1858-1964), one of the first black feminists in America.

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