Leisure Settings: Bourgeois Culture, Medicine, and the Spa in Modern France / Edition 2

by Douglas P. Mackaman

Overview

The artful use of one's free time was a discipline perfected by the French in the nineteenth century. Casinos, alpine hiking, hotel dinners, romantic gardens, and lavish parks were all part of France's growing desire for the ideal vacation. Perhaps the most intriguing vacation, however, was the ever popular health resort, and this is the main topic of Douglas Mackaman's fascinating study.

Taking us into the vibrant social world of France's great spas, Mackaman explores the links between class identity and vacationing. Mackaman shows how, after 1800, physicians and entrepreneurs zealously tried to break their milieu's strong association with aristocratic excess and indecency by promoting spas as a rational, ordered equivalent to the busy lives of the bourgeoisie. Rather than seeing leisure time as slothful, Mackaman argues, the bourgeoisie willingly became patients at spas and viewed this therapeutic vacation as a sensible, even productive, way of spending time. Mackaman analyzes this transformation, and ultimately shows how the premier vacation of an era made and was made by the bourgeoisie.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226500751
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	12/01/1998
Edition description:	1
Pages:	227
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.50(d)

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1: Baths and Curing in the Old Regime
2: Producing Leisure: Economics, Class Formation, and the Sejour for Sale
3: Respectability Emplaced
4: Medicine and the Rhythming of Bourgeois Rest
5: Social Benefits of Spa Consumption
Epilogue
Notes
Bibliography
Index

What People are Saying About This

George L. Mosse

This is social history at its best. The book gives us a new insight into the development of the manners and morals of the French middle class. It is also excitingly and fluently written.

Editorial Reviews

Visiting a spa has been a favored form of vacation in France for centuries, but the spa industry really took off in the 1800s, and this history traces its growth. Though the spas were nominally medical in nature, Mackaman (history, Univ. of Southern Mississippi) shows that most spa visits had more to do with social position than therapeutic benefits. (Most spas were officially run by doctors, but the medical aspects of "taking the waters" wavered between benign neglect and brutality.) He follows the growth of several spas, particularly Vichy and Aix-les-Bains, as they jockeyed for public funding, discovered the art of advertising, and responded to the shift of their customer base from the nobility to the growing middle classes. Mackaman's writing style is dull, but he does well when using case histories as illustrations of the social and sexual politics among spa goers. Recommended for academic libraries.--Robert Persing, Univ. of Pennsylvania Lib., Philadelphia

Library Journal

Mackaman (history, U. of Southern Mississippi) explores the links between class identity and vacationing by showing how, after 1800, physicians and entrepreneurs zealously tried to break the strong association with aristocratic excess and indecency by promoting spas as a rational, ordered equivalent to the busy lives of the bourgeoisie. Annotation c. by Book News, Inc., Portland, Or.

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