The beast in the boudoir
Subtitle: petkeeping in nineteenth-century Paris
By: Kathleen Kete.
Publisher: University of California Press
Published: 1994
Place of publication: Berkeley
Language: eng
Number of pages: 200
Subjects: Pet owners -- France -- Paris -- History -- 19th century.; Pets -- Social aspects -- France -- Paris -- History -- 19th century.; Paris (France) -- Social life and customs -- 19th century.
Other titles: Petkeeping in nineteenth-century Paris.
Description: Kathleen Kete's wise and witty examination of petkeeping in nineteenth-century Paris provides a unique view into the lives of ordinary French people. She demonstrates how that cliche 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 veterinarian'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, helped people 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 people's experience of isolation and lack of community in urban life, while the autonomous cat incarnated the feeling of anomie. By century's end, however, animals no longer represented the human condition with such potency, and the cat had been rehabilitated into a creature of fidelity and warmth.

. Full of fascinating details, this innovative book will contribute to the way we understand culture and the creation of class.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references (p. 169-188) and index.