The Dreyfus Affair and the Crisis of French Manhood

In 1894, French army captain Alfred Dreyfus, an Alsatian Jew, was wrongly accused of passing military secrets to the Germans. The ensuing scandal has often been studied for what it reveals about French anti-Semitism and tensions between republicanism and conservatism under the Third Republic. But because treason was considered a cowardly—and therefore effeminate—act, Dreyfus also embodied, for many, the danger of effeminate men masquerading in military uniform.

In The Dreyfus Affair and the ...