From Cloporte to Janus: about some representations of doormen in the 19th-century French caricatures

There are numerous caricatures of male concierges or doormen in the nineteenth-century texts and drawings. They constitute a very modern phenomenon, as new building layouts of the time, or new buildings in general, almost always included a lodge. Their role of controlling the whereabouts of people getting in and out of the building was subject to the contradictory pressures from landlords and tenants alike. We will try to demonstrate how the doormen and concierges belonged to the in-between places in the nineteenth-century French caricature, with their social position stretched between their landlords and tenants, a function that allowed them to combine servility and an excessive show of strength, and resulted in their depictions ranging from animals to gods.