Women's Emancipation, the Family and Social Change in Eighteenth-Century France

Author(s): Roderick Phillips

Source: Journal of Social History , Summer, 1979, Vol. 12, No. 4 (Summer, 1979), pp.
553-567
Published by: Oxford University Press

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3787365

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WOMEN'S EMANCIPATION, THE FAMILY AND SOCIAL CHANGE
IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY FRANCE

Recent research on changes in the nature of women's work in eighteenth- an

nineteenth-century Europe has resulted in a debate on putative links betwee
these changes, a sense of emancipation on the part of women, and increa
fertility rates. At issue is Edward Shorter's hypothesis that participation in th
market economy freed women from traditional, especially familial, constraint
and to some extent emancipated them.l Whatever the merits of the vari
contributions to this debate, they are often flawed by a tendency to overgene
alize about women in two important respects. In the first place urban and rur
differences are frequently overlooked, perhaps because of the focus on a rise
fertility rates which took place in both rural and urban areas of Europ
Secondly there has been a failure to distinguish adequately among the variou
familial roles of women. This failure is perhaps a result of the emphasis on
common reproductive capacity of women, but despite their common sexualit
women performed different familial roles according to whether they w
unmarried daughters, mothers, wives or widows. No one would argue that m
should be considered as an undifferentiated type because of a common sexua
ty, and neither should it be so of women.
It is clear that factors such as rural-urban and role distinctions must be taken
into account if the effects of socio-economic change on women are to be ful
appreciated. In the debate on women's work and emancipation, for examp
familial role is a crucial variable. Given that women as a sex were constrained
by familial and other social structures and processes (needless to say, women d
have this in common despite their specific roles), the proximity of the con-
straints must have affected any suggested emancipation. Tilly, Scott, and Co
hen, for instance, refer to the vulnerability of women "far from the protect
of their families."2 Shorter would presumably interpret this "protection" as
"constraint." But while this absence of protection or constraint might w
apply to unmarried rural women who had migrated to the city in search
work, it would not apply to a married woman, whose source of protection o
constraint - her husband - was ever-present. If work outside the family had
the effect of weakening constraints on women, then the proximity and con
comitant strength of the constraints must be taken into account.
What is now called for is case studies which will shed light on some of th
issues in the debate, and this article is one contribution.3 It is primarily a stu
of divorce in Rouen (population 85,000 in the 1790s) during the Frenc

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554 journal of social history

Revolution, and as such, it focusses on married women. It also points to what

appear to be significant differences between the use of divorce by urban
women and by rural women, and it will be argued that the urban conditions
enabled women to divorce more frequently in the city than in the country. A
final section will relate the conclusions of this case study to the broader debate
on social change and women's emancipation.

Divorce was first introduced in France on the 20 September 1792 by a law

which was remarkable for its liberalism. It provided for divorce on such a wide
range of grounds that anyone who wished could have her/his marriage dis-
solved. A couple could divorce by mutual consent, or one spouse could initiate
and obtain a divorce unilaterally. One form of unilateral divorce, divorce for
reason of uncompatibility of temperament (incompatibilite' d'humeur et de
caractere) did not involve the attribution of matrimonial fault, and the petition-
ing spouse did not need to adduce evidence of incompatibility. On the other
hand there were seven specific grounds of divorce which did involve the
concept of fault: either spouse could divorce the other for reason of madness,
condemnation to certain degrading or severe punishments (including imprison-
ment), violence or other ill-treatment, notorious immorality, desertion, absence
for five years, or emigration.4 The law was designed to minimize costs to the
parties: divorce petitions were heard not by the regular courts but by family
courts (tribunaux de famille) and family assemblies (assembl?es de famille),
which were composed ideally of relatives of the spouses, and which were to
provide a speedy, intimate and inexpensive means of divorce.5 It was not
intended that divorces should be undertaken lightly; but rather than impose
restrictions in the form of a limited range of grounds justifying divorce or in the
form of deterrent costs, the 1792 law imposed procedural impediments. These
did not stop a divorce from taking place but were to prevent a too hasty or ill-
considered divorce petition, undertaken in the heat of conjugal conflict, unless
there existed clear evidence of a matrimonial offence. Thus a divorce based on
an offence such as violence or desertion, which had to be proved before a
tribunal defamille, could be obtained in a matter of weeks, or as long as it took
the plaintiff to convoke a tribunal de famille and for the court to hear the
evidence and render a judgement. But a divorce on grounds which were sus-
ceptible of abuse, such as the allegation of incompatibility of temperament,
where no evidence of an offence was required, demanded a longer procedure of
at least six months and involved three meetings of a family assembly. These
procedural provisions were intended as guarantees of the bona fides of the
petitioner, not as inhibitions to divorce per se. In addition to this liberalism, the
1792 divorce law was notable for granting equal access to women and men:
either could divorce the other for any of the reasons set out.'
The liberal nature of the 1792 French divorce law provides the basis for its
usefulness as a source for the study of social behavior. The provisions of law
and procedure were such as not to influence or determine the nature of resort to
divorce: women were not deterred by discriminatory grounds, the less well-off
were not deterred by costs, the comprehensive range of motives justifying
divorce excluded no marital situation. Doubtless there did exist social and

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WOMEN'S EMANCIPATION 555

moral inhibitions, but it seems that the government was anxious to minimize
embarrassment or shame. Divorce was far from officially encouraged, for one
of the themes of the Revolution was family harmony, but it was recognized that
divorce was occasionally necessary as the lesser of two evils. And divorce for
reason of incompatibility of temperament, which required no evidence of
circumstances, was specifically designed to avoid embarrassment on the part of
spouses. Divorce in the Revolutionary period thus presents us with a rare, albeit
brief, opportunity to study the important question of the differential resort to
divorce by women and men. The study of this question in respect of divorce in
eighteenth- and nineteenth-century England or of civil separations in France
(to take two examples) is rendered pointless from the perspective of social
behavior by the interference of the terms of the laws.'
Although no precise national aggregate of divorces in France during the
Revolution is available, one study suggests that about 17,000 divorces were
decreed in the nine largest towns of France between 1792 and 1802.8 In Rouen,
953 divorces were decreed in this period.') Divorce in Revolutionary France had
two prime characteristics, both of which are relevant to the question at hand: it
was predominantly used by women rather than by men, and it was more
common in the cities than in rural areas. It will be useful to consider each of
these characteristics individually before examining their relationship and the
broader implications of their conjunction.
As far as the relationship between women and divorce petitions is concerned,
all three local studies of Revolutionary divorce which have been undertaken
show that the majority of unilateral divorces were sought by the wife. In
Toulouse women sought 64% of all unilateral divorces,l in Metz 73%." In
Rouen an overall 71% of unilateral divorces (N=791) were decreed at the
request of women, but the percentage was greatest (77%; N=305) when the
divorce was based upon one of the specific grounds (violence, desertion, etc.),
rather than on incompatibility of temperament (69%; N=167).12 The only
categories of divorce in which petitions by men outnumbered those by women
were those for reasons of insanity (two petitions by men, one by a woman) and
immorality (14 petitions by men, 12 by women). These were also the only
categories among divorces in Toulouse where petitions by husbands predomi-
nated, and appear to reflect the informal operation of a double standard: it is
not that women were refused divorces for reason of their husbands' immorality
(no divorces were refused in Rouen), but rather that they did not petition for
them, at least for the specific reason of immorality.
The familial reasons for the greater resort to divorce by wives than husbands
have been described elsewhere.13 In general terms, women were likely to be
oppressed within the family, more likely to be beaten, mentally abused, or
subjected to all manner of cruelty such as being evicted from the house by day
or night, being chained up, and being denied food. Men regarded the house-
hold as the one arena in which they could exercise authority, and that meant
dominating their wives. The law and its application did not inhibit this.
Similarly women were more likely to be abandoned by their husbands, who
departed without warning, sometimes leaving their wives as the sole support of
a family. In short,the inferior position allocated to women made it far more

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556 journal of social history

likely that they would require external aid - divorce in this case - to
compensate them for the social and legal superiority of the husband. In familial
terms, then, there was a good reason for women to resort to divorce more
frequently than their husbands. Even so, it seems logical to suppose that despite
the liberalism of the 1792 divorce law, prevailing social values and practices
would have made it more difficult for a women to undertake divorce than a
man. There was the fear of reprisal (which several petitioners expressed) from
the husband when he discovered that his wife was divorcing him: it is reported
that a locksmith in Rouen killed his wife when he discovered that she had
divorced him.14 Moreover, the subordinate position imposed on women within
the family must have been internalized by many women, who accepted their
inferior status as proper. From this perspective, the larger proportion of divorce
petitions by women is that much more impressive.
When we turn to the geographical distribution of divorces we again find
agreement among the three local studies: divorce was an urban phenomenon.
In the departement of Haute-Garonne the urban tendency of divorce was clear,
for between 1792 and 1803 the city of Toulouse had 374 divorces while the
number of divorces diminished the further one went from that city, until the
outlying districts of Revel and Murat each only had two divorces during the
whole period.15 In the departement of Moselle too, divorce was urban. The city
of Metz (population 35,000) had 267 divorces in the period 1792-1803, while
the eight next biggest towns, with a combined population of 25,000, had only 80
divorces.l' In the countryside of Moselle divorce was even rarer: "several
surveys seem to indicate that in the country the population only really used
divorce in the area around Metz: as a result of the influence of the city, the
rural canton of Metz produced 16 divorces for about 13,000 inhabitants."1' In
the departement of Seine-Inferieure (now Seine-Maritime) divorce was also
urban. Between 1792 and 1803, 953 divorces were decreed in Rouen (popula-
tion 85,000) and 31 in the canton of Mont-aux-Malades (population 13,000)
which surrounded the city. Of the eleven communes in this canton, two contri-
buted no divorces at all, while nine of the 31 were provided by the town of
Sotteville-les-Rouen, which had a population of 2,800 in 1795. 1
The canton of Mont-aux-Malades comprised the communes closest to Rouen,
and the 31 divorces there might, if the environs of Metz are any indication,
have been the result of Rouen's influence. An indication of the incidence of
divorce in the rest of the ddpartement of Seine-Inferieure is provided in a
listing of aggregated vital statistics for the Year IV (1795-96),1'( which showed
that of the 69 cantons in the departement only 17 (25%) registered divorces in
that year. Rouen easily led with 82 divorces, followed by le Havre (21 divorces),
Dieppe (6), and Harfleur (4). Three cantons (including Mont-aux-Malades,
adjacent to Rouen) each registered two divorces, while in each of the remaining
ten cantons there was only one divorce. Fifty-two cantons recorded no divorces
at all. While these figures refer to only one year and are not necessarily
representative of the period as a whole, they indicate that divorce was concen-
trated in the larger towns of the ddpartement. The number of divorces was not
proportional to population, however: le Havre, with 21 divorces in that year,
had a population of 21,000, while Dieppe, with only six divorces, had a popula-

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WOMEN'S EMANCIPATION 557

tion of 19,000.
For lack of detailed data on the demographic structures of the urban and
rural areas concerned it is impossible to express the numbers of divorces a
rates (per thousand married couples, for instance). A crude comparative index
of divorce can be obtained by calculating the ratio of the number of divorces to
the total population, but it should be emphasized that this is useful only as an
approximate comparative measure since the number of divorces referred t
here covers a period of ten years while the population is given as at one point in
the same period. (The ratio thus undervalues actual population by taking n
account of turnover due to deaths and births, and the inward and outwar
movement of population.) Nevertheless as an approximate measure we can
express Rouen's 953 divorces (1792-1802) in relation to population (85,000 in
1795), as 1:89. In the canton of Mont-aux-Malades (31 divorces 1792-1802,
population 12,584 in 1795), the ratio was 1:407. Expressed in this way Rouen's
divorce rate was more than four times greater than that of the surrounding
communes. The different ratios of divorces: population might partly reflect a
different age-structure of population or different proportions of married peo-
ple in the respective populations, but at least they do seem to follow from a
proportionately reduced propensity to marry in the rural areas. In the period
1792-1802 the marriages: population ratio in Rouen (calculated as for divorces,
above) was 1:11.5, while that in the canton of Mont-aux-Malades was 1:11.8
This indicates a marginally lower rate of nuptiality in the rural environs of
Rouen, but certainly not low enough to account for the disparity between the
two sets of divorce rates. Overall is is clear that whatever the factors directly
involved, divorce was an urban phenomenon. This and the greater appeal t
women than to men may be described as its prime characteristics.
While students of Revolutionary divorce have noted its two characteristics,
they have tended to explain them independently of each other. The greater us
of divorce by women has been attributed to "fickleness" of women and to their
"oppression" within the family. The urban character of divorce has been seen
as the result of the political agitation (especially Jacobinism) of the cities
making divorce a real Revolutionary phenomenon and a remarkably sensitive
barometer of political pressures - and to the decline of religion in the cities.20
The deficiency of such explanations lies in their failure to relate the urban an
the female preponderance in divorce petitions: that is, in the lack of explicit
recognition that most divorces in France were sought by urban women. From
the communes around Rouen comes evidence that rural women were by n
means as ready to use divorce as their sisters in the city. Of the 31 divorces in
the canton of Mont-aux-Malades, five were decreed by the mutual consent of
the spouses, 15 at the request of the husband, and 11 at the request of the wife
Women thus sought 42% of unilateral divorces in the country (the sma
numerical base for calculation is inevitable) compared with 71% in the city of
Rouen. (The sexual distribution of rural divorce petitions is not provided by the
other local studies). The reversal of the sex ratio of divorce petitioners in the
one rural case indicates more than a coincidental connection between the urban
environment and the greater propensity for women to resort to divorce.
What was it in the environment of the city which enabled urban women to

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558 journal of social history

have greater resort to divorce? If we consider the nature of the family economy
at the end of the eighteenth century, certain distinctions between rural and
urban areas become apparent. In the country the family economy, whether
based on agriculture or cottage industry (or both), remained traditional: the
family was the primary unit of economic production, and economic activity was
carried on for the most part on the family property and within the household.
There was a high degree of interdependence among members of the family
since the work of all the members was essential to the survival of the family as a
unit. The labour of both wife and husband were essential in simple financial
terms, and the work of the wife took other economic forms as well, such as the
management of the household.21 In eighteenth-century Normandy there was a
pattern of men choosing their marriage partners on the basis of the economic
functions they were expected to fulfil, whether it be to sell the family's produce
at the local market or look after the household during the absence of a
fisherman husband.22 The sheer economic necessity of a couple for the family
economy came to the fore when one of the spouses died: "the loss of either
party in a marriage would almost certainly wreck the entire fabric of the family
economy."23 The lists of the bureaux de charite attested to the plight of the
widow with dependent children,24 and the general need to form a new economic
unit inspired the speedy remarriage of many widows and widowers. In the
Norman parish of Crulai, for example, 66% of the widows and 37% of the
widowers had remarried within two years of the death of their former spouses.25
The ideological expression of these interlocking economic relationships was
familial corporativeness.
In Rouen important elements of the family economy which underpinned
coporate family ideology had begun to change in the course of the eighteenth
century. While it remained essentially true that all members of the family
contributed to a family budget, the locus of work had begun to shift from the
family household to specialized work-places - small-scale factories and textile
plants. Textile production, the most significant sector of economic activity in
Rouen, had by 1789 been concentrated into a thousand ateliers, each
employing between eight and sixteen workers, together with apprentices and
spinners. This is not to say that urban domestic industry was non-existent: a
study of the Rouen textile industry in the Revolutionary period points to the
small fabriques but also notes that in the poor quarter of Martainville "it was
not rare to see the whole family, even the father, employed in spinning
cotton."27 In the second half of the eighteenth century, Rouen was evolving
from the domestic production of the mid-eighteenth century to the "modest"
factory town of 1830.28 It is interesting to note that in the comprehensive
inventories of household possessions of divorced spouses (drawn up to facilitate
the division of property), there is no mention of textile-manufacturing
equipment. And of the claims which women submitted in order to get
possession of their most needed effects during the sometimes lengthy (up to six
months) divorce procedure, only one referred to domestic industry: Marie
Causse, a toiliere, entered a petition for interim possession of "her textile loom
in order to be able to work." (
To the extent that work was physically separated from the family dwelling,

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WOMEN'S EMANCIPATION 559

employment was separated from some of the traditional familial constraints.

Work no longer had to be done enfamille, and this created a labour market in
the cities which did not exist in the rural areas. There, where the familial
context of economic activity persisted unrivalled, the only opportunity
approaching that of the urban labor market, as far as women were concerned,
was afforded by the harvest, and that was only temporary. In the city the
opportunities were profuse in comparison. There was employment in all aspects
of the textile industry, for one thing,30 but even for unskilled workers there was
domestic service, employment in the retail trades and service occupations (such
as blanchisseuses), and manual labour. Again, this is not to say that there was
no family industry or work in the city; the distinction is not one of absolutes but
of emphasis: the scope for work outside the family was simply greater in the
city than in the country. Among divorced people, couples with identical or
complementary occupations who manifestly carried on work in their dwelling
appeared rarely. One couple was composed of a chandeliere and a chandelier,
another of a cabaretier and cabareti&re, while some women pointed out that
they had been indispensible to their husbands' business activities, doing
accounts, visiting rural domestic workers, and similar tasks. Still, only one
divorce was contested on economic grounds: a husband argued that divorce
"would necessarily bring about the ruin of the husband and the wife by
destroying their small business."31 These exceptions highlight the urban trend
away from the occupational identity of the married couple, at least among the
divorced population.
These economic changes increased the potential for independence of both
wives and husbands in the city. Without suggesting that it would be easy for a
woman to live on no more than her own income from, say, spinning or from
work as a seamstress (especially if she had children),32 it was least more feasible
in the urban than in the rural context. The economic opportunities offered by
the city must be considered an element in any explanation of the greater resort
to divorce by urban women than by rural women. It is difficult to calculate what
proportion of divorced women was employed, since the registrars of divorce
seem to have ignored women's occupations in many instances. For instance, in
registrations of divorce by mutual consent the occupation of the husband is
noted in 99% of the cases, but that of the wife in only 23% of the cases. Such a
discrepancy argues for under-registration rather than unemployment,
especially when a woman's occupation is provided in 93% of the cases where a
woman was a petitioner for divorce on the ground of incompatibility of
temperament. The adjusted figures for women seeking all forms of unilateral
divorce show that 72% were working women, notably textile workers (fileuses,
lingeres, toilieres) and seamstresses. The remaining women petitioners were
predominantly small retail merchants (marchandes de poisson, marchandes
bonneti&res, etc.) or private means. A random sample of the marriages
contracted at the same time as those which were later dissolved by divorce
suggests that women who sought divorce were in occupational terms generally
representative of married women. Among women petitioners working women
were less represented (72% vs 84% in the sample). There was thus a middle-
class bias in the use of divorce by women,33 but even so the occupational range

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560 journal of social history

of divorce petitioners covered the spectrum of eighteenth-century Rouen. The

very range of women's occupations attests to the wide non-familial employment
opportunities in the city.
It may also be a reflection of the decline of the traditional family economy
that there was a reduced urgency on the part of spouses or dissolved marriages
to remarry and form a new partnership. It is noted that in eighteenth-century
Caen remarriages involving widows and widowers formed a lower proportion of
all marriages than in rural Normandy.34 In Rouen 28% of men and 25% of
women who were divorced between 1792 and 1816 had remarried by 1820.
Even allowing that an indeterminate number of divorced people formed
consensual unions (possibly more frequently than the on average older widows
and widowers), these figures do not attest to a great need to reconstitute an
economic unit. The breakdown of the corporativeness of the family economy,
made increasingly possible by the individualization of work, seems to have
made the dissolution of the family itself less disruptive in economic terms for
the spouses.
But while employment was arguably the most pressing need for a woman
who left her husband, it was not her only requirement. Some form of
accommodation was also necessary, for we must recognize that when a
separation took place it was generally the woman who had to leave the family
dwelling. The registers of divorce in Rouen show that in 80% of the instances
where one of the spouses left the common dwelling during the divorce
proceedings, the wife left first.35 No doubt the husband owned or leased the
dwelling in most cases, but there were examples in Rouen of husbands refusing
to leave a house owned by their wives, and there is also ample evidence of a
general belief that the husband was master of the house. In the few cases in
Rouen where the spouses were partners in a domestic enterprise, the departure
of the wife demanded of her, ipsofacto, a change of occupation. For example
the chandeliere who divorced her chandelier husband became a teinturiere,
while the cabaretiere who divorced her cabaretier husband obtained
employment as an ouvriere en linge. These cases illustrate the effects of
desunion on a woman who was part of an integrated conjugal economy: she was
forced to make both domiciliary and occupational changes. In both of these
cases the women found employment in the textile industry, while the husbands
remained in the former dwelling and maintained their original occupations. We
would expect, however, the because of the tendency towards separation of
dwelling and work, many urban women who did leave home would not
necessarily have had to make an occupational adjustment.
But given that women who divorced generally had to procure new lodgings,
the city offered far more in this respect than the countryside. In the city there
was a multitude of pensions, hotels, apartments, and rooms in private homes,
and the divorce evidence suggests no difficulty on the part of women in finding
alternative accommodation, generally in a private house (chez le citoyen
Lefebvre, chez la veuve Picard, etc.) In cases of emergency the urban
neighbourhood, which manifested a strong solidarity among women, could
provide temporary shelter for a woman until she could obtain long-term
accommodation. Relatives seem to have served the same function: where we

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WOMEN'S EMANCIPATION 561

can trace the movement of a woman during the often lengthy divorce
proceedings we find that in 30% (31/103) of cases she went to stay with a
relative, usually a parent. Frequently women went in turn to a neighbour for
immediate help, then to a relative, and finally to an independent address.30 In
contrast to the facilities offered by the city, the rural areas, where dwellings
were more likely to be exclusively familial, offered few such opportunities for
casual accommodation. The difficultly in obtaining lodgings in the country was
demonstrated by a divorce in Bondeville, a village to the north of Rouen, where
Catherine Joret, divorced from her cultivateur husband Etienne Folain,
reported to a family court that "Folain will leave her the cow-shed in his field
until the next St. Jean-Baptiste day, for her to live and keep her effects there,
she being at present unable to procure any other lodgings."3 Again, the greater
likelihood of isolation in the rural areas made even temporary refuge, with
neighbours or relatives, less accessible. Reine Foret, femme Thierry, a
blanchisseuse living in the village of Canteleu near Rouen, told a court that in
the evening of 21 Floreal Year XII (11 May 1804) after having been beaten by
her husband, 'having no neighbour, her family far away, la dame Thierry,
overwhelmed with despair, traced her steps towards the Seine [towards Rouen]
but her husband pursued her and forced her to return to her dwelling."38 One
can suppose that even if a woman did find refuge with a neighbour, or private
accommodation in a rural community, the very smallness of rural communities
would have made frequent encounters with her former husband inevitable, and
these could have produced continuing difficulties.
Thus in terms of both work and accommodation -the first needs of a
woman who planned to leave or divorce her husband - it is clear that the city
offered much more than the country, and for this reason one would expect less
hesitation to divorce among urban women. This is not to say that life alone was
easy in the eighteenth-century city, but simply that material constraints against
formal or informal separation were less strong there. In view of the
opportunities offered by the city one would also expect to find that women who
did divorce in the country would migrate towards the city in search of work and
accommodation (as thousands of young rural women migrated to the towns in
the eighteenth-century in search of work). In fact a migration of divorced
women is discernible in the communes around Rouen. Of the 21 divorces in the
canton of Mont-aux-Malades in which the domicile of the husband is known
after divorce (this excludes the ten cases in which the husband's address is not
given or where he was described as absent before the divorce), 19 (90%)
remained domiciled in the commune where the couple had their last dwelling.
Thus men rarely moved from the commune following their divorce. But of the
20 cases where the woman's residence is known after divorce, only eight (40%)
remained in the communities where they had lived when married, and of those
eight, one woman was living with her mother, the husband of one was in prison,
and the husbands of two others had deserted them.39 In such circumstances the
pressures compelling a woman to leave a commune after divorce (particularly
the lack of local accommodation) did not operate. Generally, however, because
it was the woman who left the common dwelling and because her occupational
and residential opportunities in the country were limited, she also left the

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562 journal of social history

commune. Of the 12 divorced women who migrated after divorce, eight went to
Rouen and four went to other towns in the area (Elbeuf, Louviers, and
Sotteville-les-Rouen). The attractions of the city in such cases might have
contributed to a higher incidence of divorce in areas close to concentrations of
population, as was suggested for Metz and Toulouse.
Apart from the material advantages of the city which have been cited, other
conditions of urban life must have facilitated divorce. One can hypothesize that
social pressures against divorce were weaker there, a situation reinforced by
familiarity with divorce. The 953 divorces decreed in Rouen between 1792 and
1802 represented only a third to a half of divorce petitions initiated"4 (the rest
were abandoned; no petition was denied) and thousands of rouennais
participated in divorce cases as witnesses in judicial hearings, participants in
family courts and family assemblies, and witnesses to the decree of divorce and
its entry in the etat-civil. There is evidence, too, of emulation in divorce, of
men and women neighbours divorcing in rapid succession, and even a case of a
woman petitioning for divorce within days of acting as a witness in her
daughter's successful divorce petition. Even discounting such exceptional cases
the exposure to divorce must have wakened inhibitions to divorce in the urban
context, and have contributed to material conditions to produce the relatively
high urban divorce rates.
The contributions of these findings on divorce to the debate on women's
emancipation depends upon the significance attributed to divorce. Divorce in
the context of eighteenth-century France represented first a denial of the
corporate nature of the family or conjugal unit. The interdependence of family
members was discussed above, and there is clear evidence of material
imperatives to family formation and re-formation such that corporate and
individual interests were identical. Where there arose a conflict of interests,
individuality was subordinated to the corporate (familial) interest, for example
in such matters as the choice of spouse and vocation. l Divorce, on the contrary,
was the negation of the corporate notion, and implied the assertion of the
interests of the individual over those of the familial or conjugal unit. But when
undertaken by a woman, divorce was more than this. It represented an explicit
rejection of the husband's traditionally-sanctioned authority, and the
concomitant assertion of rights that a married woman was traditionally assumed
not to possess. Under the terms of eighteenth-century (and earlier) French law,
the husband was consistently given superior legal and social authority
(puissance maritale) over his wife. The customary law of Normandy (coutume
de Normandie), for example, provided that "from the moment the marriage
has been celebrated, the wife is deprived, among us, of the right to act without
her husband's authorization."'2 A woman could not enter into a contract
without her husband's consent, and he was given control over the property
which the wife brought to the marriage. The husband's prerogatives extended
implicitly to the right to beat his wife and to commit adultery with virtual
impunity. Thus a woman could obtain a judicial separation (separation de corps
et d'habitation) on the ground of her husband's adultery only if he committed
the act in the family dwelling. If he committed his adultery elsewhere his wife
could "find consolation only in patience."'3 Similarly a woman could obtain a

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WOMEN'S EMANCIPATION 563

separation on the ground of ill-treatment only when her husband's violence was
so severe as to be "capable of endangering the wife's life."44 The right to beat a
wife was euphemistically known as the right of correction moddrde (moderate
punishment), and it was upheld not only implicitly under the old regime laws
governing separations (by providing the woman with legal relief only in the
case of violence which threatened her life), but also by the courts during the
Revolutionary period. The tribunal de police correctionnelle, a court
established in 1790 to deal with minor civil disputes, almost invariably refused
to prosecute husbands who had been accused by their wives of assault. For
example in 1796 citoyenne Musart charged her husband with having beaten
her, but the judges of the court declared that "seeing that citoyenne Musart is
under the authority [puissance] of her husband, that she is not divorced, and
that she has not yet undertaken a divorce action, the court declares that at
present her charge against her husband is not admissible."45 The message of
this and many similar decisions was clear: women remained under puissance
maritale until they emancipated themselves by divorcing their husbands. La
femme Musart, the plaintiff in the case cited above understood this message
clearly, and (like other women in such circumstances) began divorce
proceedings within a week of the court's decision. Divorce, then, was not only
an implicit rejection of the traditional rights of husbands, but was explicitly
recognized as such.46
It is as a surrogate measure of individualism, and specifically individualism
on the part of women, that divorce in eighteenth-century France bears upon the
debate on women's emancipation. Shorter has presented increased fertility as
such a surrogate measure, but divorce is more satisfactory in this role. The
reasons for divorce - the desire to escape from the oppressive marital circums-
tances - are clear from the divorce court records; we do not need to guess at
motivation, as Shorter is compelled to do in hypothesizing about attitudes
resulting in increased sexual activity. It is true that divorce as discussed here
was short-lived and exceptional in that liberal divorce legislation was in force
only from 1792 to 1803. What is argued, however, is that in the absence of legal
determination of aspects of the use of divorce, we are able to discern the
influence of other features, notably gender and urban-rural differences.
The data-base of this study is too narrow to permit broad conclusions, but it
does seem that the urban socio-economic environment weakened the material
imperatives towards familial corporateness and thus permitted a degree of
individualistic behaviour which was not possible in the rural areas. The conclu-
sion from this study is that economic changes in the course of the eighteenth
century did have a liberating effect, not for all women, to be sure, since this
study is concerned only with married women, and within that population with
the small proportion who divorced in the city and the much smaller proportion
who divorced in the rural areas. But to the extent that this difference existed,
and that changes in patterns of employment contributed to the explanation of
it, it is surely an exaggeration for Tilly, Scott and Cohen to write that "women's
work in the late eighteenth century was not 'liberating' in any sense." Whether
the conclusions of the present study have any wider application only further
research will show.47

University of Auckland Roderick Phillips

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564 journal of social history
FOOTNOTES

1. See especially Edward Shorter: "Illegitimacy, Sexual Revolution, and Social Change in Modern
Europe," Journal of Interdisciplinary History II (1971), 237-272. "Female Emancipation, Birth
Control, and Fertility in European History." American Historical Review LXXVIII (1973), 605-
640. "Diffe'rences de classe et sentiment depuis 1750: l'exemple de la France." Annales E.S.C
XXIX (1974), 1034-57. The hypothesis also informs Shorter's The Making of the Modern Flmily
(New York, 1975). These publications provoked two general responses: Louise A. Tilly, Joan W.
Scott, and Miriam Cohen, "Women's Work and European Fertility Patterns." Journal of Interdi
sciplinary History VI (1976), 447-476. Joan W. Scott and Louise A. Tilly, "Women's Work and th
Family in Nineteenth-Century Europe," Comparative Studies in Society and History XVII (1975)
36-64.

2. Tilly, Scott and (ohen. "Women's Work." 475.

3. Case studies directed to specific aspects of the general debate are already appearing. See, for
example, Cissie Fairchilds, "Female Sexual Attitudes and the Rise of Illegitimacy: A Case Study."
Journal of Interdisciplinary History VIII (1978). 627-667, an excellent analysis of sexual attitude
but marred by inconclusive evidence as to the increase of illegitimacy in Aix-en-Provence and it
environs. A further study presented within the framework of the debate is John W. Shaffer
"Family. Class, and Young Women: Occupational Expectations in Nineteenth-Century Paris.
Journal of Familv History III (1978), 62-77.

4. The inclusion of emigration, a criminal offence, on the list of matrimonial offences, reflects th
state of France at the time divorce was introduced, viz. five weeks after the fall of the monarchy,
two weeks after the September massacres in Paris, and the very day the French armies won th
battle of Valmy. Amendments to the 1792 divorce law need not be dealt with here, apart from the
addition to the law by the decree of 4 Flordal Year II (23 April 1794). This made divorce even more
liberal, allowing an immediate divorce on the basis of six months' de facto separation. Introduce
during the Jacobin period of the Revolution, this decree was considered an avenue of abuse of
divorce (it enabled women to divorce their husbands who were absent on military service), and i
was repealed after only 15 months, during the Thermidorian reaction.

5. On the tribunaux defamille. see James F. Traer, "The French Family Court." Histor. CXC(XI
(1974). 211-228.

6. The only discriminatory provision in the 1792 divorce law was in relation to remarriage afte
divorce. In general women had to wait a year before remarrying, while men could remarry
immediately. It was feared that a women who remarried too soon after her divorce might give birth
to a child during the second marriage which she had conceived during her first.

7. In England divorce was available until 1858 only by private Act of Parliament. The expense o
this method, calculated at 800 pounds in the nineteenth century. made it a privilege of the wealthy
while discriminatory grounds for divorce (men could obtain a divorce for reason of adultery,
women could divorce only for reason of their husbands' aggravated adultery) meant that of 184
divorces decreed in England between 1715 and 1852, only four were obtained by women. O.R.
McGregor. Divorce in England (London, 1957), 11. In pre-Revolutionary France civil law permitt-
ed only women to obtain judicial separations (separations de corps et d'habitation). See Roderic
Phillips, "Women and family breakdown in eighteenth-century France: Rouen 1780-1800." Socia
Histor' 2 (1976), 198-200. Other forms of separation in eighteenth-century Europe and the
American colonies were also discriminatory, though less so: see, for example, Nancy F. Cott
"Eighteenth-Century Family and Social Life Revealed in Massachusetts Divorce Records," Journa
of Social History 10 (1976), 20-43, and "Divorce and the Changing Status of Women in Eight-
eenth-Century Massachusetts," WI illiam and Mary Quarterly 3rd ser., XXXIII (1976), 586-614.

8. G. Thibault-Laurent, La premiere introduction du divorce en France sous la Re"volution e

l'Empire (these de droit, Montpellier, 1938), 156-7.

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WOMEN'S EMANCIPATION 565

9. Archives departementales de la Seine-Maritime (hereafter A.D. Seine-Maritime), Etat-civil

Rouen, 1792 - An XI. Divorces were recorded in the marriage registers of the e'tat-civil.

10. Simone Maraval, L'Introduction du divorce en Haute-Garonne (1792-1816): e'tude de

moeurs revolutionnaires (Me'moire de D.E.S., Toulouse, 1951), 70.

11. Jean Lhote, "Le Divorce I' Metz sous la Revolution et l'Empire," Annales de l'Est 5e seie, III
(1952), 175. The breakdown of divorce statistics for Metz and Toulouse given in Olwen Hufton,
"Women in Revolution 1789-1796," Past and Present 53 (1971), 93 (citing Lhote and Cruppi, see
n. 20 below), is incorrect.

12. The breakdown of petitions by ground and by sex of petitioner is given in Phillips, "Women
and Family Breakdown," 206 (Table 1), 208 (Table 2).

13. Ibid., esp. 208-216.

14. This is reported in the Journal d'Horcholle (entry for 16 July 1793). Bibliotheque Municipale
de Rouen MS.

15. Maraval, L'Introduction du divorce, 47.

16. Lhote, "Le divorce'a Metz," 181-2.

17. Ibid., 182.

18. For the departement of Seine-Inferieure divorce numbers are derived from the registers of the
etat-civil held in the A.D. Seine-Maritime. Population figures are from A.D. Seine-Maritime L367,
Population.

19. A.D. Seine-Maritime L367 Population, Tableau ge"neral des naissances, manages, divorces et
deces. This table is not dated, but the number of divorces given for Rouen corresponds to the
number for the Year IV.

20. "Fickleness" is invoked by Maurice d'Auteville, "Le divorce pendant la Revolution," Revue de
la Revolution II (1883), 475, while the "oppression" explanation is to be found in a contemporary
source: E.G. Lenglet, Essai sur la legislation du mariage, suivi d'observations sur les dernieres
discussions du conseil des Cinq Cents concernant le Divorce (Paris, An V. 1979), 60. The
association of urban divorce and political "passions" is made in works such as Delacroix,
Statistique du departement de la DrSme (Valence, Paris, 1835), 276. This association is partly
understandable: when divorce was legalized in 1792 there was a surge of divorces in cities all over
France as people obtained divorces they had until then been denied. In Rouen the first three years
of the divorce law saw 105, 185 and 191 divorces respectively, but after that the number declined to
an average 67 annually between 1795 and 1803. Because the initial surge of divorces coincided with
the Jacobin period, the Jacobins have frequently been blamed for attempting to destroy the family.
The fact that the high point of divorces extended over the Thermidorian period as well is generally
overlooked. See for example Marcel Cruppi, Le divorce pendant la Revolution (1792-1804) (These
de droit), Paris, (1909), 66, 75. But see note 4 above for a qualification.

21. Olwen Hufton points to the various elements of the normal routine of the farmer's wife in
"Women and the Family Economy in Eighteenth-Century France," French Historical Studies IX
(1975), 13. The family economy is also discussed in Hans Medick, "The proto-industrial family
economy: the structural function of household and family during the transition from peasant
society to industrial capitalism." Social History, 3 (1976), 291-315.

22. Jean-Marie Gouesse, "Parente' famille et mariage en Normandie aux XVIIe et XVIII' siecles,"
Annales E.S.C. XXVIII (1972), 1139-1154, esp. 1147-8.

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566 journal of social historv
23. Hufton, "Women and the Family Economy," 17.

24. Ibid.. 17-18.

25. Etienne Gautier and Louis Henry, La Population de crulai, paroisse normande: etude
historique (Paris, 1958), 89.

26. Marc Bouloiseau, Cahiers de doleances du Tiers Etat du Bailliage de Rouen (2 vols, Paris.
n.d.), I, xlvii.

27. Fernand Evrard, "Les ouvriers de textile dans la region rouennaise (1789-1802), Annales
historiques de la Re4olution franjaise XIX (1947), 341. The separation of work from dwelling is
not at issue in the debate on women's work. Tilly, Scott and Cohen write that from the mid-
eighteenth century "the location of women's work did change - more young women worked
outside the home and in large cities than ever before." "' omen's Work," 457.

28. William M. Reddy, "The Textile Trade and the Language of the Crowd at Rouen. 1752-1871.
Past and Present 74 (1977), 74.

29. A.I). Seine-Maritime L,P 7098. Tribunaux de jamnille, minutes de jugemetlls (13 Februarx
1793).

30. The textile industry in Rouen also supported an unregulated (and illegal) trade in fibre and
thread which employed hundreds of women. See Reddy. "Textile Trade." 63-64.

31. A.D. Seine-Maritime LP7096, Tribunaux de famille, minutes de jugements (7 September

1791). (This was a petition for a separation, converted to a divorce after the 1792 law was passed.)

32. Here it is significant that a high 64%
of their divorce. Although there are no
Rouen, it may be noted that only 29% of
were childless. See Jean-Claude Perrot,
Paris, 1975), II, 866.
of divorced couples in Rouen had no children at the time
comparative figures available for non-divorced couples in
the completed families in the parish of St. Gilles in Caen
Genese d'une ville moderne. Caen au XVIIe siecle (2 vols,

33. This was contributed to by the 13 women - all with private means - who divorced their
e'migre'husbands.

34. Perrot, Genkse d'une ville moderne, II, 822. Perrot poses the question: "Is this yet another trait
peculiar to Caen, or a characteristic of urban demography?" (Ibid.). If the argument of the present
article is sustained, the latter option would be correct.

35. Data from A.D. Seine-Maritime, Etat-civil (divers). Registres des actes preliminaires de
divorces (1792-1802).

36. Ibid.

37. A.D. Seine-Maritime LP7103, Tribunaux de famille, minutes de jugements (18 Floreal Year
11/7 May 1795).

38. A.D. Seine-Maritime (unclassified), Tribunal de premiere instance (11 Messidor Year XII/30
June 1804).

39. Data from the (tat-civil of the various communes, held in the A.D. Seine-Maritime.

40. Evidence of abandoned divorces comes from the registres des actes pre'liminaires de divorces
(A.D. Seine-Maritime, Etat-civil (divers)). Divorces are abandoned if the petitioner went through
preliminary procedures but failed to have the divorce decreed and entered in the 6tat-civil.

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 WOMEN'S EMANCIPATION 567

41. On the criteria for spouse selection

sanctions used against children who sought
see Perrot, Cenbse d'une ville moderne, II, 8

42. David Houard, Dictionnaire analytique,

la Coutume de Normandie (4 vols., Rouen,
more fully in Phillips, "Women and Famil

43. Houard, Dictionnaire, II, 276.

44. Ibid.

45. A.D. Seine-Maritime LP7716, Tribunal de police correctionnelle (29 Brumaire An V/19
November 1796).

46. In the debate for and against divorce in eighteenth-century France, it was frequently argued
that divorce was a weapon which ought to be given to women to compensate them for their lack of
domestic power. See, for example, Montesquieu, De l'Espirit des lois, Book XVI, Chapter 15.

47. A general association of individualistic behaviour by women and the urban environment is
proposed by such works as J.M. Beattie, "The Criminality of Women in Eighteenth-Century
England," Journal of Social History 8 (1975), 98; and Jacques Depauw, "Illicit Sexual Activity and
Society in Eighteenth-Century Nantes," in Robert Forster and Orest Ranum (eds), Family and
Society (Baltimore, 1976), 145-191.

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