“If the nightcap fits . . .”: Middle-Class Metonymy and Monotony in July Monarchy Cultural Productions

Abstract: This article provides the first in-depth analysis of the nightcap in French cultural productions and reveals its importance in navigating literary and iconographic representations of the middle classes and King Louis-Philippe during the July Monarchy. Studies of satire and cultural productions to date have demonstrated the symbolic significance of “la poire” in the political landscape of the 1830s and 1840s, but the nightcap has remained conspicuously absent from this picture. This article reinserts this symbol into bourgeois history, revealing how its revolutionary links allowed it to operate as an indispensable tool in fomenting anti-bourgeois sentiment during the Orleanist regime. I argue that the nightcap is a uniquely potent metaphor which enabled writers to think about the social and political landscape of the period. Examining examples from a range of cultural productions (caricatures, short story, physiology), the article shows how the nightcap’s metonymic value is harnessed to criticise not only le roi bourgeois and his “Juste Milieu” government, but also the middle classes. In doing so, the article advances the field of social and material culture by demonstrating how a seemingly anodyne article of clothing can function as a powerful material symbol which can dismantle a carefully crafted political identity.