This is my first time posting so try to bear with me.
I'm working on a short story for a historical fiction course I'm taking and am looking for a little help researching normal living situations in France (or Europe more broadly) during the First World War. I was hoping to make my two main characters, who are both male, roommates, but can't find any sources that explicitly confirm whether or not this was commonplace at the time. Was it common for men to live together in France and if so, was there any stigma surrounding this kind of living situation?
I'm open to both any information anyone may know or even just a push in the right direction in terms of which journals or sources to look at. I have done some searching on JSTOR and through my school's online databases, but I'm having trouble finding exactly what I'm looking for.
I mean is the context you're going for, "and they were roommates" ?
You will have better luck finding sources (or being directed to sources) with more context surrounding their living circumstances. Are they students? Artists? Are they from France? Where are they living in France? Any involvement in the war effort? etc.
This might not be much help, but same sex cohabitation happened in 19th century Paris across classes. Biographer Robert Alter notes that in 1810, at the age of 27, Stendhal shared a "spacious and fashionably appointed apartment" with a male friend. At the other end of the century, Puccini's La bohème shows four young men sharing a Garrett apartment -- although it's worth noting that in the novella on which the libretto is based, Scènes de la vie de bohème, the four friends have their own cramped, shabby apartments. Judging from French fiction, it seems more likely that a young bachelor would live in a small apartment or (as in Balzac's Le Père Goriot, 1835) in a boarding house, with a private bedroom and two daily meals in the dining room.