12 September 2012
Modern France: Society, Culture, Politics
Family Fortunes, Family Futures
History B357-Spang
French Regimes, 1789-1848
Constitutional Monarchy (Louis XVI), 1789-1792
First Republic, 1792-1804
Directory, 1795-1799
Consulate, 1799-1804
First Empire (Napoleon), 1804-1815
First Restoration, 1814
Hundred Days, spring 1815
Restoration Monarchy (“Bourbon” or “legitimist”), 1815-1830
Louis XVIII, 1815-1824
Charles X, 1824-1830
July Monarchy (“Orléanist”), 1830-1848
Louis Philippe, 1830-1848
Familial Models and Political Structures (patriarchy vs. fraternity)
Changing Family Law during the Revolution
How did families change? How do we know?
Civil Code and a return to patriarchy? in theory, in reality
“The Citizen-King and His Family” (1831)
Family Fortunes, Family Futures: Lecture Outline
“Louis XVI, King and Father of a Free People…” (1791)
Monarchy: Republic = Father: Brothers
“Fraternity” (1793-1794)
Images from gallica.bnf.fr
Should women gather together in political
associations? . . . No, because they will be
obliged to sacrifice to them the more important
cares to which nature calls them.
Jean-Baptiste Amar, in National Convention, 1793.
“The Festival of the Supreme Being” Prairial 20, Year Two (June 8, 1794)
gallica.bnf.fr
Fraternity=public order constituted by brothers
Revolution, 1789-1794
Napoleonic Civil Code, 1804
decriminalized adultery
adultery as crime defined by gender
legalized divorce on any grounds
divorce only as “extreme remedy”
birth, marriage, death defined in civil terms (état civil)
mandated egalitarian inheritance
(retroactive to 1789)
gave father control over ¼-½ of estate
rest to be divided equally among all children
legalized adoption
adoption only legal for childless > 50;
adoptee must be > 25
“Louis XVI says his final good-byes” (1793?)
“Napoleon says farewell to his family” (1814)
Family Law: radicalism and retrenchment
Notaries, their archives, and French history
“public” officials: that a document has been
drawn up by a notary guarantees its legality
and authenticity
“private” office: to this day, notaries are venal
offices (purchased from the state); their fees
are paid by clients, not taxpayers
for more on notaries in France today, see www.notaires.fr
prepare all documents for sale or purchase of real estate
draw up marriage contracts and wills
conduct probate inventories (inventaire après décès)
arranged loans (in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries)
Family Law: how did families change? how do we know?
Notaries, their archives, and French history
poorest are not represented
formulaic documents
concerned chiefly with property
hence give few indications of motive
not all notaries’ records (minutes) have
been deposited in departmental or
national archives
Archives Nationales (Paris), Min. Cen. XVI-955
probate inventory, François Guillaume
Family Law: how did families change? how do we know?
Marriage and Divorce in a time of Revolution, 1793-Year Ten (1801-1802)
population
divorces
marriages
divorce: marriage ratio
641,000
12,148
53,650
22.6
Marseille 108,000
795
8,866
9.0
Bordeaux 105,000
517
8,649
6.0
Lyon
102,000
884
9,614
9.2
84,000
953
7,543
12.6
Paris
Rouen
Source: Suzanne Desan, The Family on Trial in Revolutionary France
(Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 124.
“The Divorce” (1793)
Family Law: how did families change? how do we know?
gallica.bnf.fr
Inheritance in Montauban (Tarn-et-Garonne)
Will made by a goldsmith’s widow, August 1792*
eldest son as general heir and executor
daughter—2000 livres
third son—500 livres and what was still due him from marriage contract
second son’s son (second son having died) and fourth son—1500 livres
Will made by a landowning peasant, April 1804*
pregnant wife to have: sole use of one room in house, plus access to kitchen,
hallway, staircase, oven, well, and one “square of garden”; use of wardrobe
in her room and its contents; annual pension to be paid by heirs in grain,
flour, wine, pork fat
four children (plus one to be born) as heirs, to divide everything equally,
pay his debts and the pension to their mother
* SOURCE: A.D. Tarn-et-Garonne 5E 1949 and 5E 2130 in Margaret Darrow, Revolution in the House
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1989), 56.
“Louis XVI reads his will to Malesherbes”
gallica.bnf.fr
Family Law: how did families change? how do we know?
Napoleon’s Code and Nineteenth-Century Patriarchy
Fathers are the family’s “first magistrate”
can have a child under 16 children imprisoned
for disobedience; with assent of judge, can have
older child jailed for six months
child under 18 cannot leave father’s house
under 25 must have permission to marry
312. “An infant conceived during marriage claims
the husband as his or her father”
213. “The husband owes protection to his wife,
the wife obedience to her husband.”
214. “The wife is obliged to live with her husband,
and to follow him to every place where he may
judge it convenient to reside: the husband is obliged
to receive her, and to furnish her with every thing
necessary for the wants of life, according to his means and station.”
“His Majesty shows the Civil Code, which he has just finished,
to Her Majesty the Empress” (1807) gallica.bnf.fr
New Regime and Family Ideology
Workforce in French cotton-spinning mills, mid-1840s
men (as %)
women (as %)
children, 8-16 (%)
Mulhouse (Haut Rhin)
942 (30.2)
926 (29.7)
1249 (40%)
Rouen (Seine Maritime)
633 (30)
887 (42.1)
587 (27.9%)
Lille (Nord)
2022 (50.8)
1086 (27.3)
876 (22.0%)
Lille
Rouen
Mulhouse
SOURCE: Katherine Lynch, Family, Class and Ideology in Early Industrial France (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988), 68-70.
New Regime and Family Realities
Abandoned children in Nineteenth-Century France
32,000-35,000 abandoned children nationally every year
mortality rate of roughly 20%
“April 9, 1831, I, the mayor of Vindrimaire (Eure) having been
informed that a child had been abandoned at the home of
Jean-Baptiste Blot, farmer in this community, I went there and
found a male child we believed to be born today… [I questioned
the servants] and was told that Justine Rabot, a homeless girl,
gave birth this morning at the home of M. Benoire, an agricultural
tour (foundling tower), General Hospital,
laborer…and that she abandoned the baby at Blot’s house,
Rouen (Seine Maritime) fr.wikipedia.org
saying to his worker, Catteville, “Look, here is the fruit of your love,”
and then she fled. We asked Catteville, a married man, if he recognized this fact, which he
formally denied, after which I had the child removed and ordered it to be transported to the
Foundling Hospice in Rouen.”
SOURCE: Katherine Lynch, Family, Class and Ideology in Early Industrial France (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1988), 68-70.
New Regime and Family Realities
Chance is the greatest novelist in the world; we have
only to study it. French society would be the real
author—I would only be the secretary. By drawing up
an inventory of vices and virtues, by collecting the
chief facts of the passions, by depicting characters,
by choosing the principle incidents of social life…
I might succeed in writing the history which so many
historians have neglected. …I attach to common,
daily facts, hidden or obvious to the eye, and to the
acts of individual lives, the importance which
historians have hitherto ascribed to the events of
national public life.
Balzac, ‘Introduction’ to The Human Comedy (1846).
Bisson, daguerreotype of Balzac (1842).
New Regime and Family Realities