"The Fabric of Gender combines meticulous research with stimulating analyses of contemporary documents. It is an invaluable contribution to our understanding of working-class culture in the Third Republic." —Margot Irvine, Nineteenth-Century French Studies

"The title of this study truly reflects its content: The Fabric of Gender weaves together an impressive range of primary sources, including archival materials, film and photography, as well as the invaluable oral histories of female textile workers to present the history of a working-class culture formed in the context of a volatile industry controlled by an antagonistic employer class that fought workers‚ rights at every point throughout the Third Republic....Throughout the study, Chenut enriches her presentation with a strong and broad command of secondary sources, ranging from the social history of the 1980s and the gender history of 1990s to interdisciplinary works on consumer behavior and culture. Helen Chenut has produced a case study that illuminates French history beyond the boundaries of the textile industry of Troyes in the Third Republic to do what the best historical studies do: deepen our understand of the past so that we can make sense of the present." —Judith DeGroat, H-France Review

"The Fabric of Gender is a ground-breaking book that reflects years of learning, impeccable research, a deep familiarity with France, and work in an exceptionally broad range of sources—visual, archival, and oral history." —Judith Coffin, University of Texas

“The Fabric of Gender is an extraordinary work of labor history, notable for its remarkable erudition and thoroughness. Chenut takes seriously the multiple identities of the category we call ‘workers.’ I know of no other study that so fully integrates the impact of politics, gender, social conditions, labor relations, private life, and culture into the narrative of labor history.” —Lenard R. Berlanstein, University of Virginia

The years of the Third Republic (1870–1940) in France were ones of intense social and economic transformation as workers struggled to defend their rights in the face of growing industrial capitalism. In The Fabric of Gender, Helen Chenut paints a vivid picture of working life during these years by following four generations of laboring women and men in one community, the textile town of Troyes in the Champagne region.

In Troyes workers were locked in an adversarial relationship with mill owners, whose monopoly over the labor market in a single-industry town largely determined the workers’ future. And yet workers managed to create a counterculture of resistance by founding labor unions, consumer cooperatives, and socialist parties through which they were gradually able to implement change. Women were key actors in this struggle as their garment-making skills became increasingly important to the growing productivity of the knitted textile industry. Drawing upon rich archival records, oral histories, and highly evocative illustrations, Chenut tells a fascinating story of this fight for a “social republic,” one in which both men and women had the right to work for a living wage and to partake in a consumer society.

The Fabric of Gender appears at a time when European labor historians are reexamining their field. Chenut’s innovative study of working-class culture—integrating gender, class, politics, and consumption—stands as a model for the expansion of labor history beyond traditional lines of inquiry.