‘Life will pass quickly for me’: Women, clocks and timekeeping in nineteenth-century France

Scholars of timekeeping have assumed that time was linear and mechanical in the nineteenth century, but have failed to account for women’s temporal experiences. The absence of women’s timekeeping practices has led to a definition of modernity and modern temporality which is limited, failing to take into account continuities with ‘traditional’ modes of timekeeping, and ignoring women’s presence in modern, public timescapes. This paper seeks to redress this imbalance by looking at clock and watch ownership, women’s diaries, and cookery books in order to create a nuanced understanding of the complex ways in which women told time, marked time, and experienced the passage of time. Middle-class women and men cohabited in a culture that placed great value on time as a commodity, which had to be spent wisely in order to denote respectability. Yet paradoxically, women had to adhered to this highly structured timekeeping regime, while also ostentatiously displaying ease and leisure. They filled their homes with clocks and watches, yet used these as decorative rather than functional items. By examining various ways in which women marked time, this paper will argue for the need for a new understanding of what time was in nineteenth-century France.