What do you think?
Rate this book
The Beast in the Boudoir: Petkeeping in Nineteenth-Century Paris
Kathleen Kete's wise and witty examination of petkeeping in nineteenth-century Paris provides a unique window through which to view the lives of ordinary French people. She demonstrates how that cliché of modern life, the family dog, reveals the tensions that modernity created for the Parisian bourgeoisie.
Kete's study draws on a range of literary and archival sources, from dog-care books to veterinarians's records to Dumas's musings on his cat. The fad for aquariums, attitudes toward vivisection, the dread of rabies, the development of dog breeding—all are shown to reflect the ways middle-class people thought about their lives. Petkeeping, says Kete, was a way to imagine a better, more manageable version of the world—it relieved the pressures of contemporary life and improvised solutions to the intractable mesh that was post-Enlightenment France. The faithful, affectionate family dog became a counterpoint to the isolation of individualism and lack of community in urban life. By century's end, however, animals no longer represented the human condition with such potency, and even the irascible, autonomous cat had been rehabilitated into a creature of fidelity and affection.
Full of fascinating details, this innovative book will contribute to the way we understand culture and the creation of class.
Kete's study draws on a range of literary and archival sources, from dog-care books to veterinarians's records to Dumas's musings on his cat. The fad for aquariums, attitudes toward vivisection, the dread of rabies, the development of dog breeding—all are shown to reflect the ways middle-class people thought about their lives. Petkeeping, says Kete, was a way to imagine a better, more manageable version of the world—it relieved the pressures of contemporary life and improvised solutions to the intractable mesh that was post-Enlightenment France. The faithful, affectionate family dog became a counterpoint to the isolation of individualism and lack of community in urban life. By century's end, however, animals no longer represented the human condition with such potency, and even the irascible, autonomous cat had been rehabilitated into a creature of fidelity and affection.
Full of fascinating details, this innovative book will contribute to the way we understand culture and the creation of class.
- GenresNonfictionHistory
200 pages, Paperback
First published May 26, 1994
32 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 of 1 review
April 9, 2020
Fascinating analysis of the relationship of humans and animals, based on French mostly 19th century sources. A fantasy, a mythology, a compensation, a projection -- the charm of the bourgeoisie in the alienating industrial era was to reanimate urban life with a dose of tamed in-house nature in the form of pets. Sentimentalized like children, endowed with all kinds of winning traits, these domesticated icons of the natural world functioned as symbols of an ideal affective life, if not a paradigm for a conflict-free family order.
Kathleen Kete is sympathetic to her sources but constantly makes us aware of the process of creating these particular versions of the pet. The torrent of sweet tales of animal behaviour is interpreted as a metaphor and lament for actual human conduct. As Pascal said, "The more I know people, the more I love my dog." While skeptics might well disbelieve, the stories of dog fidelity, dog suicide, dog altruism are fascinating as a longstanding genre of mass psychology. Dying on the master's grave, saving the babe in cradle from the ravenous snake, making incredible journeys to reunite with the lost owner -- these are stories that live in modern day versions as well. Other pets get some attention, although it is difficult to wrap the cat in the common fuzzy garb of the dog. "The cat intensified decidedly discordant themes in bourgeois culture." Ferociously autonomous cats could hardly contribute to models of harmonious family life. Odd examples abound, such as French fad for stickleback fish in home aquariums, set up to render mating and male nest tending visible. Very thorough and historical with 50 pp of notes to annotate 139 pages of texts, this is not really a subway read. But it is nevertheless, an entertaining tour of our illusions.
Kathleen Kete is sympathetic to her sources but constantly makes us aware of the process of creating these particular versions of the pet. The torrent of sweet tales of animal behaviour is interpreted as a metaphor and lament for actual human conduct. As Pascal said, "The more I know people, the more I love my dog." While skeptics might well disbelieve, the stories of dog fidelity, dog suicide, dog altruism are fascinating as a longstanding genre of mass psychology. Dying on the master's grave, saving the babe in cradle from the ravenous snake, making incredible journeys to reunite with the lost owner -- these are stories that live in modern day versions as well. Other pets get some attention, although it is difficult to wrap the cat in the common fuzzy garb of the dog. "The cat intensified decidedly discordant themes in bourgeois culture." Ferociously autonomous cats could hardly contribute to models of harmonious family life. Odd examples abound, such as French fad for stickleback fish in home aquariums, set up to render mating and male nest tending visible. Very thorough and historical with 50 pp of notes to annotate 139 pages of texts, this is not really a subway read. But it is nevertheless, an entertaining tour of our illusions.
Displaying 1 of 1 review