Law and Order in the Loire: Gender and the Juvenile Delinquent of Fin-de-Siecle France

FAIN: FT-55620-08

Stephen Andrew Toth
Arizona State University (Tempe, AZ 85281-3670)

This project focuses on how two institutions for juvenile delinquents--the Mettray agricultural colony for boys and the Maison du Refuge de Tours for girls--engaged in highly subjective practices that invoked gendered notions of child behavior in fin-de-siècle France. While both institutions were designed to instill the habits of order, discipline, self-control and cheerful submission to authority among their subjects, Mettray's primary objective was to transform male delinquents into hard-working, law-abiding, lower-class citizens, whereas the Maison du Refuge inculcated a bourgeois sensibility to female sexuality. By examining the individual case files of those incarcerated, I will explore the intricacies, complexities, and dilemmas of nineteenth-century social thought, particularly as it relates to deviance, gender, and concepts of childhood.