Poor Paris

Through George Orwell's firsthand accounts, readers are exposed to the harsh realities of life as a member of the destitute underclass. Orwell works various menial jobs, as dishwasher and plongeur in Parisian restaurants, and encounters a cast of characters from all walks of life. These include fellow down-and-outs, as well as the exploitative and indifferent employers and landlords who profit from their desperation. Down and Out in Paris and London sheds light on the daily challenges faced by those living in poverty, from the constant struggle to secure food and shelter to the lack of dignity and respect afforded to the working poor. Orwell's experiences also serve as a critique of societal structures and attitudes that perpetuate poverty and inequality, offering insight into the systemic failures that marginalize and oppress the most vulnerable members of society. GEORGE ORWELL was born in India in 1903 and passed away in London in 1950. As a journalist, critic, and author, he was a sharp commentator on his era and its political conditions and consequences.

In the second half of the nineteenth century, when Paris became a modern urban center, the problem of working-class housing emerged as a major issue. In this study Ann-Louise Shapiro examines the reform activites of philanthropists, economist, municipal authorities, politicians, and public hygienists as they, together and separately, responded to the quesitons of the worker's foyer. Shapiro shows that the hgousing cmapign touched all aspects of the "the social question." providing a rare perspective on the political, social, and institutional readjustments required by a changing urbgan environment in nineteenth century France. Shapiro's work will prove important reading for students and scholars of French history, urban society and government, and public health issues.

In their attempt to cope with the daunting problems of poverty and pregnancy, poor women in nineteenth-century France struggled with their environment and in some respects helped shape it. Rachel Fuchs reveals who these women were and how they survived. With dramatic detail, and drawing on actual hospital records and court testimonies, Fuchs portrays poor women's childbirth experiences, their use of charity and welfare, and their recourse to abortion and infanticide as desperate alternatives to motherhood. Fuchs also provides a comprehensive description of philanthropic and welfare institutions, and outlines the relationship between the developing welfare state and official conceptions of womanhood. She traces the evolution of a new morality among policymakers in which secular views, medical hygiene, and a new focus on the protection of children replaced religious morality as a driving force in policy formation. Combining social, intellectual, and medical history, this study of poor mothers illuminates both class and gender relations in Paris and brings to light the connection between social policy and the way ordinary women lived their lives. Fuchs's book enriches contemporary debates about maternity leave, abortion rights, and national health care initiatives. Book jacket.

A trip through Paris as it will never be again-dark and dank and poor and slapdash and truly bohemian Paris, the City of Light, the city of fine dining and seductive couture and intellectual hauteur, was until fairly recently always accompanied by its shadow: the city of the poor, the outcast, the criminal, the eccentric, the willfully nonconforming. In The Other Paris, Lucy Sante gives us a panoramic view of that second metropolis, which has nearly vanished but whose traces are in the bricks and stones of the contemporary city, in the culture of France itself, and, by extension, throughout the world. Drawing on testimony from a great range of witnesses-from Balzac and Hugo to assorted boulevardiers, rabble-rousers, and tramps-Sante, whose thorough research is matched only by the vividness of her narration, takes the reader on a whirlwind tour. Richly illustrated with more than three hundred images, The Other Paris scuttles through the knotted streets of pre-Haussmann Paris, through the improvised accommodations of the original bohemians, through the whorehouses and dance halls and hobo shelters of the old city. A lively survey of labor conditions, prostitution, drinking, crime, and popular entertainment, and of the reporters, réaliste singers, pamphleteers, and poets who chronicled their evolution, The Other Paris is a book meant to upend the story of the French capital, to reclaim the city from the bons vivants and the speculators, and to hold a light to the works and lives of those expunged from its center by the forces of profit.

Farmer extends and deepens the understanding of urban poverty in the high middle ages. She explores the ways in which cultural elites thought about the poor and shows that their conceptions of poor men and women were derived from the roles assigned to men and women in the opening chapters of the Book of Genesis - men are associated with productive labour; of labour within the public realm, and women with reproductive labour; or labour within the private realm.

Vanessa Grall is a London girl who moved to Paris and never looked back. With a natural instinct for discovering the off-beat, and an unquenchable curiosity for the city she now calls home, Vanessa (aka Nessy) has amassed a wealth of intimate knowledge, insider tips, little-known haunts and fascinating anecdotes. This book opens the vault and shares her city secrets. Here, Nessy will make you think again about the city you may think you know. Steer clear of tourist traps and follow her down the rabbit hole to uncover the true heart of Paris in all its creative, historic, romantic, idiosyncratic glory.

An excellent general history as well as an innovative synthesis of new research, The Making of Revolutionary Paris offers vivid portraits of individual lives, accounts of social trends, and analyses of significant events, exploring the evolution of Parisian society during the eighteenth century and revealing the city's pivotal role in shaping the French Revolution."--BOOK JACKET.

Looking especially at widows of master craftsmen in early modern Paris, this study provides analysis of the social and cultural structures that shaped widows' lives as well as their day-to-day experiences. Janine Lanza examines widows in early modern Paris at every social and economic level, beginning with the late sixteenth century when changes in royal law curtailed the movement of property within families up to the time of the French Revolution. The glimpses she gives us of widows running businesses, debating remarriage, and negotiating marriage contracts offer precious insights into the daily lives of women in this period. Lanza shows that understanding widows dramatically alters our understanding of gender, not only in terms of how it was lived in this period but also how historians can use this idea as a category of analysis. Her study also engages the historiographical issue of business and entrepreneurship, particularly women's participation in the world of work; and explicitly examines the place of the law in the lived experience of the early modern period. How did widowed women use their newly acquired legal emancipation? How did they handle their emotional loss? How did their roles in their families and their communities change? How did they remain financially solvent without a man in the house? How did they make decisions that had always been made by the men around them? These questions all touch upon the experience of widows and on the ways women related to prevalent structures and ideologies in this society. Lanza's study of these women, the ways they were represented and how they experienced their widowhood, challenges many historical assumptions about women and their roles with respect to the law, the family, and economic activity.