Trial of Madame Caillaux

Book Review of The Trial of Madame Caillaux The period leading up to World War I in France was a time in which war was a pressing issue, and men were trying to regain their “supermasculinity” after coming back from a miserable defeat in the Franco-Prussian war. Deemed the “trial of the century,” the Caillaux Affair presented itself as a trial not ordinarily witnessed. The trial of Madame Caillaux and her murder of journalist Henry …

…Henriette Caillaux, she was acquitted of all charges against her. However, her and Joseph Caiullaux’s lives would never be the same again. The Caillaux Affair “marked the end of an era whose efforts to forsake the culture and values of the nineteenth century only revealed how persistent those mores could be” (247). Berenson illustrates this unusual and complex event in French history with remarkable detail without sacrificing the enjoyment gained by the reader. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ **Bibliography**