Examines roles played by men and women in the French family from well before 1760 to the present. The author shows how changes in the mentalities of family and gender reflect changes in the other structures--social, political, economic, technological--without being mere ideological replicas of them. (RM)

Reviews works of cultural historians of the French Revolution. Analyzes interpretations of what constituted "the people" in three late eighteenth-century sources: Diderot's "Encyclopedie," contemporary political pamphlets, and Louis-Sebastien Mercier's vignettes of Parisian street life. Contends representation of "the…