Dickens, Haussmann, and the Transformation of Paris

Abstract

This essay examines Charles Dickens’ evolving attitude toward Baron Haussmann’s reconstruction of large parts of Paris in the 1850s and 1860s, particularly as it relates to the political rhetoric surrounding ideas of centralization and authorization. In Household Words and All the Year Round, Dickens and his writers felt themselves compelled to distinguish between centralization and despotism, between organized and wholesale urban planning in Paris and the repressive ruler who made it possible, Napoleon III. As is represented in Dickens’ two journals, Haussmann’s centralized “improvements” typically do not signify autocratic control and restriction or the fixing in place, but its opposite: the expansion of choice and liberation from a set itinerary, and the free-flowing circulation of people and goods. This idea of unimpeded flow and circulation reflects Dickens’ understanding of modernization and his ambivalence toward the abstraction that accompanies it. The essay ends by arguing that by 1860 Dickens’ early enthusiasm for Haussmann’s changes had begun to fade, particularly as their financial and social costs became more apparent, and in light of Napoleon III’s increasingly bellicose tactics in Europe.