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Looking Through The Parisian Window Cail PDF
Looking Through The Parisian Window Cail PDF
By Jennifer S. Pride
I
n 1870, the French Second Empire
came to its end as Emperor
Napoleon III surrendered in the
Battle of Sedan (Franco-Prussian
War). The year also marks the
official end of the Emperor’s nearly
two-decades long aggressive urban
renewal project commonly referred to as
Haussmannization, a neologism based
on the project director’s name, Baron
George-Eugene Haussmann. In this paper,
I examine Haussmannization through
the lens of trauma studies to understand
why artists and writers such as Gustave
Caillebotte and Émile Zola turned inward
in the 1870’s.2 I use the term cultural
trauma to denote the latent experience
of a cultural or social event that shatters
and fragments social cohesion. Cultural
trauma demands distance, mediation,
and representation.3 Haussmannization
as cultural trauma involves the repetitive
shocks and disruptions encountered in
a city that was rapidly disappearing and
reappearing as something different and
unfamiliar. The latent artistic and literary
visualization of this traumatic period
emphasizes closed interior and fragmented
exterior spaces. In his paintings of the
modern metropolis, Caillebotte uses a
window motif to enclose spaces and convey
a sense of subjective interiority. Likewise,
Zola situates the entire plot of his novel
Pot-Bouille, in the isolated interior of
a newly constructed Haussmannian
apartment. I argue that Caillebotte and
Figure 1. Honoré Daumier, “Behold our Nuptial Chamber,” Le Charivari, December 13, Zola utilized the window motif and
1853. Author’s personal collection. interiority to counter the cultural trauma of
Haussmannization. By looking at shared
techniques specific to each medium, I show
secac art i n q u i r i e s • 17
how these signifying devices represent structure and unsanitary environment and satirical articles chart the process
a social discourse on cultural trauma. made the city vulnerable to the plague and effects of Haussmannization on
Both the painter and the writer reveal and other epidemics that ravaged the people of Paris. 11 These urban
social conditions in medium-specific the city repeatedly over the centuries, changes came at a high cost to the
binary terms that play against one most recently in the cholera outbreak city’s inhabitants, not only financially,
another to create meaning, such as of 1832 which killed nearly twenty- but ethically and psychologically. The
interior/exterior, escape/contain, conceal/ thousand people. The narrow streets Parisian lower-classes were displaced
reveal, and subjective/objective vision. also enabled the city’s impoverished and from the city center to the newly
disenchanted working class to build developed suburbs. This displacement
Part I: Haussmannization barricades across entire streets in their caused transportation problems
as Cultural Trauma efforts to topple unpopular regimes.7 for those who labored in the city
Louis-Napoléon became familiar If Paris were to become a leading center. Cultural changes were equally
with modern urban planning during modern metropolis, the city needed a challenging for the Parisian bourgeoisie.
his exile in London in the 1840’s.4 major overhaul. The process of Many families lost their generational
After taking the French throne in Haussmannization ostensibly began homes and property; women gained
1852, he sought to emulate and with a law enacted by Napoleon III in a new level of autonomy in the new
outdo the British capital’s urban 1852 that allowed for the boulevards and parks; café-concerts and
design in the capital of his new French expropriation of private property as bars brought people out of their homes
empire. Despite previous attempts needed for the creation of new streets and into social establishments; and the
at urban modernization, Paris was through the existing urban fabric.8 social and cultural distinctions that
still a medieval city that had grown Baron Haussmann was appointed were so valued by Parisians became
organically over hundreds of years Prefect of the Seine the following year blurred and confused. The process
in a haphazard fashion.5 The tangled and this law enabled him to demolish of Haussmannization reshaped the
web of dark alleyways, narrow streets, most of the narrow and secluded urban environment which, in turn,
random architectural styles, and streets and passageways of the reshaped the socio-cultural dynamic
dangerous building structures did not medieval city.9 Between 1853 and of Parisian life. Caillebotte was born
match the vision Napoleon III had 1870, the congested neighborhoods into a bourgeois family in Paris at
for his Parisian capital. Moreover, were replaced by large public squares the onset of Haussmannization. The
the population of Paris had more and sidewalks where Parisians could artist developed his artistic sensibilities
than doubled in the first half of the stroll among the crowds. The Prefect during this era of confusion and social
nineteenth-century so that just over instituted many modern conveniences upheaval and absorbed this coded
a million people were occupying just such as a clean water supply, a sewer visual culture as he matured artistically.
under fifteen square miles in the city system, improved sanitation, better Caricatures by artist Honoré
center.6 Housing shortages led to traffic circulation, and healthier air Daumier in the daily satirical
illegal, often dangerous dwellings such quality.10 Haussmann’s most notable newspaper, Le Charivari, document
as shoddy additions to half-timbered achievement was the creation of broad the confusion and anxiety inherent in
houses that were easily susceptible boulevards. To map the ongoing erasure and remarking
to fire. The old houses that lined out these boulevards, he laid maps of of the city’s physiognomy and,
the bridges in the heart of the city, Paris on his desk and drew lines across consequently, social and cultural
around the Île de la Cité, were built them to signify the new wide boulevards traditions. In his December 13, 1853
up to dangerous heights, supported for which Paris is known today. caricature, Daumier satirized the speed
by leaning timber beams that could Haussmann’s lines, or percements as with which Haussmann’s renovations
give way at any moment and collapse they were called, literally pierced occurred and the effect of this on
into the Seine river below. Because through the heart of the city, wiping out people’s psyche (Fig. 1). Here Daumier
the city lacked a sanitation system, entire neighborhoods with the stroke of shows a couple gazing upon the
it was a veritable cesspool with open a pen. Paris became unrecognizable to demolished city and lamenting the loss
gutters lining the streets for raw those who lived in the city during these of their home to Haussmannization.
sewage that people dumped out of sweeping transformations. The caption reads: “Just look at that,
their windows and which emptied Adelaide, that used to be our bedroom
into the Seine river, the city did not Part II: Second Empire Visual Culture … these masons have no respect for
have clean running water, nor were The visualization of cultural trauma anything, they don’t honor memories!”
there open green spaces for fresh takes the form of satirical caricature in This sense of loss and nostalgia for
air circulation or sunshine within the early years of Haussmannization. a life that was ripped away without
the labyrinthine city. Paris’s organic In daily news journals, caricatures any shred of dignity recurs repeatedly