The Artisan Republic uses the techniques and approaches of local, labour, and social history to test some of the recent theories about the dynamics of revolution, repression, and resistance. It is an important addition to the growing number of studies which are giving a new direction to the formerly Paris-oriented historiography of the Second Republic.

In France, during the 1880s and 1890s, the protection of women and girls in the workplace was advocated by sociologists, social economists, union leaders, enlightened industrialists, and politicians of virtually every ideological hue. In response, laws were enacted restricting not only the number of hours and the time of day that women could work but also their access to dangerous trades. Mary Lynn Stewart argues that these restrictions, though initiated to protect women and girls, were actually a method of exploiting women's dual role of short-time wage worker and unpaid housewife and mother.