Reading national identity: Gender and ‘prostitution’ during the occupation

Abstract

The reconstruction of France at the end of the Second World War began, paradoxically, long before the Liberation. This article explores how certain categories of people were deemed appropriate for discursive inclusion in the ‘new’ nation by examining ideas about prostitution as they appeared in the clandestine press. The representation of the prostitute is related to the difficult return of female volunteer workers from Germany in the summer of 1944. This article disentangles the views of such women as simultaneously victims and collaborators and discusses the complex ways in which national belonging was constructed via gender.