Abstract
The Third Republic, during which France at last plunged into the capitalistic age, was as well a turning point for morals and attitudes.1 Even though the institutional and legal framework remained remarkably stable and the regime was the longest lasting since 1789 factors that help diachronic studies by eliminating these variables there was a deep transformation in society. The influence of the peasant population, never below 40 percent, certainly remained considerable. But rural exodus, continued urbanization, elimination of illiteracy, a gradual shift from cottage to big industry and the growth of service industries had, since the Belle Epoque, put traditional formulas into question. The silk weaver from Lyon might become a chemist in Saint<Fons, the village bronze worker a factory worker at Renault. Private life and the conditions of women suffered the consequences of these changes, which led me to try to study the role of women in private life, as the seventy years of the Third Republic are a long enough period in which to discem lasting changes. Apart from the printed documents and the archives of the Assistance Publique, I have used mostly judicial archives, particularly departmental series (series U). I have selected files from the criminal courts and the assizes concerning private life: adultery, ill treatment of children, divorces, family desertion, abortions and infanticides, physical mistreatment of the spouse or the concubine, and crimes of passion. I have made a study at ten percent sampling, that is, a study of five years for slightly over half of the departments during the 70-year span of the Third Republic (46). I selected more than seven thousand files of which 6,250 were entered on a computer program, each case carrying seventy-four variables.2 It is paradoxical that in France changes in family life and in relations between the sexes took place within a quasi-immutable legal framework that lasted until the 1970s. The articles dealing with private life in the civil code of 1804 and the penal code of 1810 remained almost unchanged, apart from minor rectifications. The law established a discriminatory statute for women and more specifically for married women, who upon their marriage became legal minors. Ancient modelshristian, patriarchal, and Mediterranean-inspired Bonaparte when he wrote the code, its philosophy can be summarized in articles 213 and 214 that establish the rights and duties of couples: the husband owed support and protection to his wife who in return owed him obedience. The husband was the head of the family, had sole paternal authority, and managed the property of the community as he did the property of his wife without, however, being able to appropriate or mortgage it without her approval. Consequently, he was the one who decided on the marital home, where the wife was obliged to live. She had to ask his permission for the most ordinary acts and rights: to enter into a contract, to choose an occupation and earn a salary, to study, to open a shop, to have a passport.3 Also, logically, women were excluded from many
Published Version
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