Time Discipline

The railroad's demand for coordinated schedules had standardized time, but the Belle Époque internalized temporal discipline. Factory whistles, school bells, and office hours carved days into regulated segments. Pocket watches, once luxury items, became necessities. Being "on time" evolved from courtesy to moral imperative.

The Gare du Nord's clock tower became a neighborhood timepiece. Workers set their watches by it, their lives synchronized to its hands. When the clock stopped during a 1902 storm, local factories reported mass tardiness. Time had become a tyrant demanding constant consultation.

This temporal regimentation created resistance. The anarchist magazine "Le Libertaire" advocated destroying clocks as symbols of oppression. Artists proclaimed "elastic time," stretching or compressing duration according to experience rather than mechanics. The philosopher Henri Bergson distinguished mechanical time from lived time, durée, that flowed according to consciousness rather than clocks.

But most Parisians simply adapted. They internalized schedules, hurried between appointments, felt guilty about "wasting" time. The leisurely lunch shortened. The evening promenade accelerated. Even pleasure became scheduled—theater curtains rose punctually, restaurant reservations demanded promptness. The Belle Époque danced quickly because time itself had quickened.