Jonge vrouw in een deuropening c. 1876

Norbert Goeneutte created this print of a young woman in a doorway using etching. Made in France, probably in the 1880s or early 1890s, the image is a window onto the social world of its time. On the one hand, there is the door, and on the other, a fashionable young woman peers out. The doorframe represents a transitional space; it is neither inside nor outside. The woman herself occupies a similarly ambiguous social position. Is she part of the respectable world, or does she have a hidden life? In this period, many prints and paintings explored the theme of women who were on the margins of Parisian society. To understand the print more fully, we might consult sources that reveal the hierarchies and power dynamics that shaped the lives of women in the Belle Époque.