Creating Boundaries: Homosexuality and the Changing Social Order in France, 1830-1870

This chapter examines the relationship between homosexuality and the changing social order in France during the period from 1830 to 1870. The publication of Théophile Gautier's Mademoiselle de Maupin caused a tremendous sensation and scandalized bourgeois readers by raising the possibility of a love affair between two men or two women. This chapter suggests that this work played a central role in the larger debate over the social order occurring in mid-19th century France, a debate where definitions of sexuality, linked to categories of class and gender, came to play an important role.