: Dieulafoy, famous for her cross-dressing, easily and often mistaken for a young man
ALL DRESSED UP In a Man’s Suit
Hair cropped mannishly short, a board strapped beneath her white linen shirt, and a red ribbon looped through the buttonhole of her well-cut suit jacket, Jane Dieulafoy embraced la vie de l’homme. In a day when new brides were expected to tuck into homemaking, to fluff the nest and prepare for babies to arrive, the Dieulafoys began their marriage in a radically different way. Shortly after their wedding, Jane Dieulafoy dressed herself convincingly as a boy and fought as a front-line solider alongside her husband, Marcel, during the Franco-Prussian war of 1870. She camped with the men, never revealing her identity as a woman, and trekked with the army of the Loire through harsh conditions and definite danger.
Later, as her interest in archaeology blossomed and her explorations in the field took her to what is now Iran, she adopted the dress of a western man completely. Forsaking the ruffled petticoat, Dieulafoy was one of the first European women to slip into a pair of pants. In doing so she became something of celebrity in nineteenth-century Paris where she was both admired and mocked. She never went back to women’s clothing. Her cross-dressing had something of a Charlie Chaplin effect; she looked a touch comic in pictures and sketches yet completely put together and fashionable, her shirt buttoned high up her neck, waistcoat snug, trousers perfectly tailored, black shoes laced and polished.
Through her writings, personal and published, it’s evident that Dieulafoy was bored by Victorian society. She longed to “pass the days and ease the burden”1 of the bourgeois life she was born into, and only upon returning from exhausting field excavations did she allow herself to be fêted by salon society. Hardships of the field were washed away with disinfectant soap and champagne, while the artifacts she and Marcel acquired abroad significantly enriched the collections of the Louvre Museum. Perhaps one of their most famous finds, the Lion Frieze at Susa, spurred both public wonder and long ticket lines. Its discovery was something of a miracle after weeks of bad weather and poor luck.
When she wasn’t on site, Dieulafoy was a prolific travel writer. By virtue of her pen, she was able to leave Parisian life and daily humdrum to roam desert dunes and ancient tells again. She invited the men and women of France to join her on those journeys, bringing the exoticism of the Orient and the feel of camelback sojourns into their reading rooms. Her life of adventure is what led the New York Times to refer to her as the lady “regarded as the most remarkable woman in France and perhaps in all of Europe.”2
Tough, strong-willed, highly singular, Dieulafoy was by her own definition a “collaborateur” with her archaeologist husband, Marcel. She deliberately chose the masculine form of the French word to convey her meaning. No “la” here. Yet what was there was . . . l’amour.
Almost as fascinating as Dieulafoy’s unorthodox way of life was her marriage. The relationship she and Marcel formed was built on professional respect, partnership, equality, and affection in a time when these qualities were rare in a marriage. Dieulafoy reminds us that being an accomplished and daring woman in her time didn’t require a dismissal of the other half. A woman could be a daredevil and married. For unlike some of the other pioneers in this book, she found an outlet for her explorations, intellect, and professional pursuits as a highly regarded and beloved partner.3 Marcel publicly acknowledged her work and her partnership when most women and their contributions, scientific and otherwise, were greeted with silence or at best a slight mention. Even today’s feminist scholars acknowledge that the Dieulafoys had something special going on.
Jane Dieulafoy was a commendable archaeologist and a real first in the field. Her crews, all men, numbered in the hundreds, and she often oversaw them by herself. Beneath desert skies, inland and away from water, having suffered months of sterile digging—where each shovelful of dirt comes up empty, high hopes for a find decrease, and motivation weakens—Dieulafoy remained steadfastly devoted to her purpose. More than a treasure-hunter, she was very much the burgeoning scientist with a clear objective: the site of Susa. Monitoring the excavation trenches, devising field methods when there were few to none established, and meticulously mapping, labeling, and reconstructing what was discovered, Dieulafoy gave archaeology a good name. She gave “woman” a good name too, even if it was all dressed up in a man’s suit.
JANE DIEULAFOY WAS born Jane Henriette Magre in Toulouse on July 29, 1851. Her parents were well off, a family of bourgeoisie merchants that owned two countryside properties where Dieulafoy grew up as a “small, slender and blond” girl who “lacked neither grace nor charm.”4 Dieulafoy’s father died when she was very young, and she and her five siblings grew up under the care of their mother. Jane was bright and intelligent, a girl described as both mocking and affectionate. She was possessed of a quick wit and was already marching to a different beat from that of most little girls her age. Dieulafoy’s mother enrolled her daughter in a convent, the Couvent de l’Assomption d’Auteuil in Paris, at age eleven so that she would have an above-average education. There she was instructed by the sisters in Latin and Greek and lived a life of very strict routine and schedule: early mornings, prayers before breakfast, cleaning, studying, more prayers, bedtime. She didn’t rebel against this routine but, as she did for all of her life, accepted the very conventional conditions and even adhered to them with gusto and conviction. Yet she still managed to turn every assumption and rule on its head.
She stayed at the convent until she was nineteen years old and, a little surprisingly given her nonconformist stance on most matters later on, moved straight into marriage. Her charms, and a “face always crinkled in a smile,”5 caught hold of Marcel Dieulafoy’s heart. Marcel was a well-traveled young man, an engineer who specialized in railways, and he had a handsome face tanned by travels in Africa. Like Jane’s, his family also lived in Toulouse. Both families were well off, influential, and likely acquainted. From the cool confines of the convent, with its musty books and pursuits in spiritual atonement, Dieulafoy must have been gripped with excitement to meet a man who promised so much in the way of warmth and new direction. He was the open door to both opportunity and the Orient. She accepted his marriage proposal quickly, and thus began a life of partnership that would last forty-six years—until death did make them part.
Schooling complete, a comfortable marriage at just the right age, Dieulafoy moved through society smoothly and appropriately, with little upset. But with Marcel now by her side, the two jointly threw open the doors of life and considered a scene of vast possibility. Dieulafoy was powerfully committed to Marcel, not so much as a “wife” in the traditional Victorian sense of service and submission, but as a fiery life partner. As was Marcel to her. And they would make the very most of life.
During the Franco-Prussian War of 1870, when French forces began to buckle under the power of the Prussians and enemy ranks laid siege around the very walls of Paris, Marcel became furious. He requested active service (no draft or obligation to military service was in place) and was enlisted as a captain in command of troops based in the town lyrically named Nevers. When he went to war, Dieulafoy did too. A bride of barely twenty, she donned her first pair of gray trousers and a soldier’s overcoat, disguising herself as a boy—a clean-shaven sharpshooter, to be exact.
Women were only allowed to join the army as canteen workers. They dished food and filled water cups. Whether it was for love of Marcel or for an equally passionate drive to protect her motherland, Dieulafoy didn’t hesitate to choose the rifle over a soup ladle and become a warrior. She and Marcel endured a terrible winter together of marches, hunger, and exhaustion. Although cheered
