Shocking voyage!

Bonsoir lecteurs! 

Yes, it's been a year since I posted. I hardly need explain that 2020 was a year for the books, but I will do so anyway, because its significance for me wasn't even c---d related.

In 2019 I changed my major to history. This was one of the best decisions I ever made, and in 2020, I was extremely blessed to explore my new major in greater depth. Over the course of the year, I interned at two different local history museums, worked as a research assistant for a professor in my department, vastly improved my French (and started learning German!) and applied for an accelerated master's program in history at my university. And more to the point of this post, I made two decisions which have dramatically altered my daily life. First, I decided to take up an independent research project to prepare for my senior thesis/master's research. Second, I applied, was accepted, and was miraculously approved to spend a semester studying abroad in France, where I am now residing.

Which is why I am again taking up my figurative pen to expound upon topics which I hope are of interest to others beside myself. (Also, it's almost 10pm here and this matinal creature has to somehow stay up till 11:00 pm to attend a meeting which is being held online in my hometown at 4:00 pm their time. I have an 8:00 am class tomorrow, so I am greatly in need of some motivation to stay awake another hour.)

Perhaps I ought to be pursuing my research, but after flipping through 300 issues of Le Petit Marseillais (no exaggeration — and that doesn't count the other publications I browsed before settling on LPM for the basis of my research), I am not terribly anxious to jump back into my work.

Not to say that I am not enjoying myself. I actually do like my research. Due to the last-minute news that I was approved to depart for France, I was not as productive as planned in January and got a slow start, which caused a dip in my motivation. Then, my lack of success in finding useful articles was discouraging. It still is, sometimes, but as I persevere, I have also found reading Le Petit Marseillais to be vastly amusing. 

Likely you are aware, dear lecteur, that the newspapers of the fin de siècle are un p'tit peu different than the newspapers of today. The front page is normal enough, containing an update on the current international news (such as the Russo-Japanese war), information on local elections, and the occasional discourse on French grammar. The usual stuff.

On the second page, it gets more interesting. Headlines boldly report on the fate of children attacked by dogs, husbands poisoned by their wives, and villagers burnt to a crisp in cottage fires. People are crushed by trains, run over by automobiles, tromped on by horses, stabbed by their brothers, or merely the victims of a "horrible accident!" which must be too terrible to describe in a single phrase. There are explosions, mine accidents, and at least one attempted suicide every week. It's only a wonder that anyone made it out of 1905 alive!

(The animal kingdom is no less a dangerous place to live. Horses are electrocuted and "automobilisme" seems to be precipitating the end of the canine race.)

Naturally this is all very tragic, but after reading three or four headlines describing "shocking death" in every issue, one starts to feel amused (and eventually fatigued) by the information. If I was writing a paper on nineteenth-century French attitudes towards death, I would have a wealth of information. As it is, my eyes glaze over and I scroll to the next page. 

There I scan the regular sections: the advertisements (Never-fail cure for hernias! British sewing machines! Weight loss pills with no side effects!), the report on yesterday's weather, updates on the daily departures from Marseille's port, and of course, the section devoted to "grèves." One needs a daily section for "grèves" or strikes in a French newspaper because it wouldn't be France if someone wasn't on strike. Only if a strike is particularly widespread or otherwise unique does it make the front page. Otherwise, it is confined to its own little section, like the stock update and the list of local concert showtimes: worthy of mention but not of notice.

Such is France.