The Family on Trial in Revolutionary FranceIn a groundbreaking book that challenges many assumptions about gender and politics in the French Revolution, Suzanne Desan offers an insightful analysis of the ways the Revolution radically redefined the family and its internal dynamics. She shows how revolutionary politics and laws brought about a social revolution within households and created space for thousands of French women and men to reimagine their most intimate relationships. Families negotiated new social practices, including divorce, the reduction of paternal authority, egalitarian inheritance for sons and daughters alike, and the granting of civil rights to illegitimate children. Contrary to arguments that claim the Revolution bound women within a domestic sphere, The Family on Trial maintains that the new civil laws and gender politics offered many women unexpected opportunities to gain power, property, or independence. The family became a political arena, a practical terrain for creating the Republic in day-to-day life. From 1789, citizens across France—sons and daughters, unhappily married spouses and illegitimate children, pamphleteers and moralists, deputies and judges—all disputed how the family should be reformed to remake the new France. They debated how revolutionary ideals and institutions should transform the emotional bonds, gender dynamics, legal customs, and economic arrangements that structured the family. They asked how to bring the principles of liberty, equality, and regeneration into the home. And as French citizens confronted each other in the home, in court, and in print, they gradually negotiated new domestic practices that balanced Old Regime customs with revolutionary innovations in law and culture. In a narrative that combines national-level analysis with a case study of family contestation in Normandy, Desan explores these struggles to bring politics into households and to envision and put into practice a new set of familial relationships. |
Contents
MARRIAGE | 15 |
FIGURES | 24 |
MARRIAGE REGENERATION | 47 |
Civil marriage before the Supreme Being 1792 | 59 |
Family at the festival of the Supreme Being June 1794 | 76 |
Wedding announcement of a civil marriage 1797 | 77 |
A bourgeoise from Paris instills her children with military spirit c 178992 72 | 79 |
To Virility from the Manuel des autorités constituées de la République française 1797 | 81 |
Good laws create the happiness of peoples between 1793 | 149 |
NATURAL CHILDREN ABANDONED MOTHERS | 178 |
Courtship scene late Old Regime | 189 |
To Maternal Tenderness from the Manuel des autorités constituées de la République française 1797 | 211 |
Ah But the times are hard c 1789 | 213 |
My good friend we had only seven children this one will make the eighth one 1789 | 215 |
WHAT MAKES A FATHER? ILLEGITIMACY AND PATERNITY | 220 |
THE GENESIS OF THE CIVIL CODE | 283 |
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12 brumaire law ADC 3L anonymous arbiters argued authority Berlier bonds Caen Calvados Cambacérès chap child citizens citizenship Civil Code Code civil Comité de législation conjugal contract contre Convention nationale couples culture daughters debate deputies DIII divorce droit DXXXIX Early Modern France egalitarian inheritance enfants equality état civil family courts family tribunals fatherhood fathers female femmes Fenet floréal France French Revolution frimaire fructidor gender Halpérin husband illegitimacy illegitimate children individual Jacques Jacques Dupâquier jurists l'Assemblée nationale la citoyenne le divorce Lettre liberty Lisieux male marital property marriage married mères messidor Moniteur moral Napoleonic nation natural children naturel Normandy Old Regime Olympe de Gouges Oudot pamphlets parents Paris paternity suits percent Pétition du citoyen petitions pluviôse political Pont-l'Evêque prairial reform republican Révolution française revolutionary riage sexual siècle social spouses thermidor Thermidorian tion unwed mothers vendémiaire ventôse vorce wife wives woman women