Working Women and Socialist Politics in France, 1880-1914: A Regional Study

This enlightening study of the relations between the Marxist wing of the French socialist movement and a substantial female industrial proletariat reveals the failure of the Socialists to assimilate an important potential constituency. Hilden examines the early development of French socialism and recreates the atmosphere of everyday life for textile workers in Lille, Roubaix, and Tourcoing around the turn of the century. She shows that these women demonstrated more political militance in the face of their worsening industrial situation and their exclusion from organized labor resistance than has previously been suggested.