ABSTRACT
The processes of exclusion sketched out along religious fault lines in the definition of citizenship were not the only ones in French society. Beyond class and beliefs, the French were divided on gender-and agerelated issues. This chapter is thus another step in understanding the divisions in French society. The three sample groups selected here demonstrate the wide-angle approach needed to consider citizenship and exclusion in history. Beyond class categories, gender provides a much more trenchant instrument for dissecting French fears. Age is also central to this narrative of fear. The first group, however, is structured neither by age nor gender, but by difference and otherness: in Michel de Certeau’s terms, an alterity which did not invite further knowledge but rejection and hatred.2
