La Belle Époque

The fairy-tale state of mind of the privileged classes occurring between

1890 - 1914

Origins

• took place during a period of world peace

• was the product of a new class that had acquired wealth through the industrial revolution and technological advances

• based on a new kind of order imposed by an insecure privileged class

Characteristics

• Denial of the grim realities of life

• Embrace of manners and etiquette

• Rejection of showing any kind of emotions

• Deification of technology

Dormitory at a Russian factory

Salvation Army “coffins” were used as beds for the destitute.

Poor children were dependent on collectivesoup kitchens.

Children at work under terrible conditions

Welsh mine workers

Ascot

Fashions seen at Ascot, 1905

Sandown

A prim and proper British Edwardian family

The “Gibson Girl” image of the beautiful, well-bred woman with upswept hair and tiny waist was created by the Americancartoonist Charles Dana Gibson and inspired by his wife.

The grim reality of a poor family

The children of the wealthy were brought up by servants and had little contact with their parents.

Diana of Dobsons, a play based on the grind and squalor of the London shop girl. Shop assistants worked long hours for low pay. Their work wasphysically exhausting and demanded considerable concentration as wellas the effort of maintaining an air of politeness.

Chicago’s 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition

The 1900 Paris World’s Fair

Exposition Universelle

The Machine Gallery

National Idiosyncrasies

Characteristics

France

Pursuit of pleasure, culture, and beauty

Paris was the fashion capital of the world

Marcel Proust

• His novel Remembranceof Things Past revealedthat beneath the surfaceof French refinement,there existed all kindsof vulgar and perversebehaviors.

England

Pursuit of power through the colonization of one quarter of the

world

African banana plantation

Queen Victoria King Edward VII (1819 – 1901) (1841-1910)

Oscar Wilde and Lord Alfred Douglas

• Oscar Wilde refused to play by Victorian rules.• When he publicly came “out of the closet”, he was condemned to jail.

United States

Pursuit of wealth

The Biltmore Estate, Asheville, North Carolina

Consuelo Vanderbilt (1876–1964) was “sold” to the highest title in England.

Forces that Destroyed La Belle Époque

• Anarchism

• Artists and intellectuals

• The suffragette movement

• Technology

• World War I

Anarchism

• Anarchists did not believe in the rule of law.

• As many as five heads of states were assassinated by anarchists.

President McKinley’s assassination (1901).

A police file card of a Russian woman suspectedto be an anarchist

Artists and Intellectuals

• began to question the accepted rules and ideas

• explored the interior world of the psyche as well as the hypocrisy of society

• created their own conventions

Sigmund Freud

Freud’s couch

The Suffragette Movement

• Women wanted equal rights and the right to vote.

• Women protested their dehumanization into men’s “playthings”.

Protestor being led away by bobbies

A suffragette on a hunger strike in prison being force-fed

Emeline Pankhurst,founder of the Britishsuffragette movement

Emily Davison threw herself under the King’s Derby horse Anmer on June 4, 1913.

Technology

• was deified by La Belle Époque

• was the means of living a more leisurely life style

• leveled class barriers when it became more accessible to many

• turned treachorous when used to create the new WW I weaponry

Entrance to the 1900 Paris World Fair

Interior, 1900 Paris World Fair

German three-phase motors and transformer factory

Ford Motors auto workers’ assembly line

The front page of the New York Times, April 16, 1912

World War I

• The reality of the war could not be kept at bay by the privileged classes.

• Many aristocrats and rich people volunteered and were killed.

Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand

The Archduke had just visited the victimsof a bomb intended for him when GavriloPrincip stepped out of the crowd and killedhim.

Gavrilo Princip being apprehendedby Serbian police.

The European Powers, many of whom were related by blood,attended Archduke Ferdinand’s funeral in Vienna.

The reality of World War I

The end of La Belle Époque