| Review | Journal of Social History, 39.1

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| Review | Journal of Social History, 39.1 | The History Cooperative

REVIEWS

French Salons: High Society and Political Sociability From the Old Regime to the Revolution of 1848. By Steven Kale (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004. x plus 308 pp.).

This study of the history of the French (Parisian) salon differs from some recent histories of le tout Paris and the social rituals of the French aristocracy by focusing on the forms of sociability particular to the salon and its relation to politics. The work of Dena Goodman, Joan Landes and others on the old regime salon and the rupture in its nature and function in 1789 is challenged here by Kale in important respects, though this is principally a consequence of the benefits of his considering salon sociability in a longer historical perspective rather than ending the story with the French Revolution. When one considers the post-Revolutionary evolution of the salon and the changes in its personnel, partisanship, and functions, the old regime salon is thrown into far clearer relief. In brief, Kale does not contest the notion that the salons contributed to the creation of a quasi-public sphere by cultivating the expression of political opinions and philosophical discussion that were, inevitably before 1789, generally critical of the monarchy and the church, but he argues that the salonnières who presided over them had less power than is often thought and so cannot be regarded as somehow precipitating the regime of separate spheres that was the immediate legal consequence of the Revolution.

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