Expectations of Aging as Gendered Political Discourse in 19th-century France

Research framework: In 1881 the French Third Republic allocated yearly pensions tonearly 25,000 elderly citizens as reparations for political oppressionsuffered thirty years earlier during the previous regime. To receive apension, each former political prisoner (proscrit ), their widows or children, wrote letters describing theirpunishment and the wider multi-generational impact of thatoppression. Objectives: This article uncovers understandings shared by Republicanadministrators and a particular group of their staunch working-classsupporters - artisans, rural laborers, and small-town shopkeepers - of thedefinitions of old age, expectations for life trajectories, and how genderaffected both expectations and experiences. Methodology: Historical, qualitative analysis of archival documents at theFrench National Archives and departments of the Ain, Allier, Drôme, Hérault,Rhône, Saône-et-Loire, Vaucluse and Yonne, France. Results: Analysis demonstrates pension applicants drew upon commonunderstandings of gender and age-based roles to strengthen their claims topensions both as erstwhile heroes of the newly democratic regime and asmembers of an indigent, elderly poor worthy of government aid. Conclusions: Former proscrits , their families and Republican administrators sharedassumptions about the definition of the onset of old age as linked togender; about expectations that elderly men would work indefinitely in oldage until physically unable to do so but that the specter of elderly workingwomen was shameful and a blot on Republican values; and about anunderstanding that pensions allowed a dignified old-age for both male andfemale applicants by undoing dangerous shifts in gender roles perceived astriggered by the political oppression decades earlier. Contribution: The article contributes to scholarship on changing Europeanunderstandings of the gendered dimensions of old age in the late 19thcentury, just before decades of social welfare legislation.