In our investigation of late-19th century Parsian society we have so far been focusing primarily on those who were relatively well-off and able to take advantage of all that the new culture had to offer.

  However, a large portion of the city's population lacked these resources and were largely left out of the new world that was emerging. Today, we will be considering their situation and the ways in which class divisions must be taken into consideration in understanding this period. 

Social Classes Above the Poor, 1815-1870

Gordon Wright, France in Modern Times: From the Enlightenment to the Present (New York: W.W. Norton,1981), pp.167-170)

Mark Traugott, The French Worker

• Worker's Lives

Edward R. Udovic, ’What About the Poor?’: Nineteenth-Century Paris and the Revival of Vincentian Charity”

• The City of Paris and its Poor

• Elite Attitudes Towards the "Danngerous Classes"

Ann-Louise Shapiro, Housing the Poor of Paris

Frederick Brown, Zola: A Life

• The Poor of Paris

Rachel Fuchs, Poor and Pregnant in Paris

Victorian Paris: Life in Nineteenth Century Paris

• Parisians at Home
  Paris Downstairs: The upper servants
• Paris Downstairs: La femme de ménage
• Paris Downstairs: Breasts for hire
• Paris Downstairs : La soubrette
• Drink and prostitution: The Belle Epoque Hooters
• Two women turning to prostitution

Charles Baudelaire, "The Eyes of the Poor"

A Comparison -- How the Very Rich Lived