Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 57-11, Section: A, page: 4574.

Director: Linda Nochlin.

The popularity of the bourgeois woman's veil in late nineteenth-century Paris (1852-1889) and its concomitant appearance in the visual culture of the period frames a series of complex issues. Focusing mainly upon paintings by Gustave Caillebotte, Edgar Degas, and Edouard Manet, and upon various popular images and photographs, this dissertation explores some of the reasons for the increased presence of the veil at the time and its appeal to certain artists.

Drawing upon the images, contemporary periodicals, fiction, and medical studies, I suggest some of the levels of significance that the veil and its representation both held and generated. During a time in which Napoleon III and Baron Haussmann significantly changed the city's structure, the veil had a particular currency. It was advertised by the medical and fashion communities as a shield against the dust caused by the renovations. Yet I contend that this veil was also a means for limiting the proper woman's view of the modern city, for helping to maintain an ideal of femininity and youthfulness, and for differentiating class. I look also at the Parisian veil's subtle complicity in supporting certain stereotypes about the French colonies in North Africa.

Not only was the veil deeply invested in and by the specificity of late nineteenth-century French cultural history, but it was also a device which challenged certain artists. The veil was thus both a topos of urbanism and a means for exploring paint's potential for simultaneously representing transparency and materiality.

Far from being simply a fashion accessory, the Parisian veil was layered with meanings. It was popular in the city and in visual culture during the Second Empire and into the beginning of the Third Republic for precisely those multiple levels of significance and its presence had substantial ramifications for the development of a particularly urban modernity.