Daily Life During the French Revolution (21 page)

Royal decrees and local laws and customs strengthened
paternal control over marriage, defended its indissolubility, criminalized
female adultery, and fostered the exclusion of illegitimate children from
inheritance and civil status. An infamous weapon in the hands of the master of
the household was access to
lettres de cachet
that facilitated the
imprisonment of rebellious children or wives, or anyone else who crossed a
superior by word, pen, or deed.

The ideals of an aristocratic woman were similar to those
of her husband: while some women had personal ambitions such as writing,
charity work, or creative art, the primary goal of most was to defend the honor
of her family and to look after the interests of her husband and children. Such
a woman often married early, sometimes as young as age 13, and she understood
that her duty was to create the best social affiliations possible for her new
family. She did not personally raise the children; a wealthy house might have
as many as 40 servants—the more the better for prestigious enhancement.

Maintaining the right kind of friends was also expected of
the wife, and this could be accomplished through establishing a salon or
finding a high-placed position in the royal palace. Parents inculcated their
children with their values of honor, duty, and opulence as a sign of
distinction. Conspicuous consumption was the mark of a nobleman, although any
overt reference to money was considered bourgeois.

BOURGEOIS FAMILIES

Unlike the nobility, the bourgeoisie was without political
power and was often considered grasping and greedy. The bourgeoisie was not a
homogeneous group but existed on many levels: lawyers, physicians, surgeons,
licensed dentists, architects, students from good families, engineers, writers,
administrators, clerks, and teachers were distinguished by their education and
training. Here, too, however, there were differences. Physicians, for example,
looked down on surgeons, lawyers scorned clerks, and, indeed, most
professionals felt superior to someone below them.

The commercial bourgeoisie included merchants and master
artisans of many kinds (e.g., wigmakers, jewelers, furniture makers), heads of
trade corporations, and industrialists and manufacturers.

They invested in real estate, from which they derived
rental income, and those who owned their own homes usually passed them along to
the next generation, but all were distinguished from their employees by station
and income. Part of their daily lives was taken up by attending council
meetings, organizing annual fairs, helping to provide relief for the poor, and
other community projects. Unlike the aristocrats, they placed emphasis on
thrift and hard work; retirement was practically unknown. Children were
educated in the parish clergy schools or by private tutors. Male offspring of
such families generally followed the occupation of the father, while girls were
taught the social graces and how to run a household.

In a big city such as Paris, intermarriage was common among
people in the same business or profession. Families established solid networks
in the district where they lived and worked. Through such connections, their
children found employment.

WAGE EARNERS AND PEASANTS

Among the lower echelons of society, which generally lived
in the poorer quarters of the cities or in country hamlets, laborers and poor
peasants found it difficult to raise a family to the standards anywhere near
the level of the bourgeoisie, but family connections were also important. In
the city, a tanner might take on his nephews as apprentices, the shoemaker or
mason his sons, son-in-law, or grandchildren. Booksellers or printers hired
their relatives, and even the women of the markets had family members who lived
nearby and worked shining shoes, cleaning sewers, or carrying coal or water.
Parts of the city with close ties of kinship and occupation were not unlike
villages in which one could find family support in rough times. Those in the
low-income brackets often lacked the means to supply the essentials for a wife
and children, and some children never saw the inside of a school. Country life
often demanded the services of children on the farm, and education came second.

In all cases, noble, bourgeois, or worker, paternal
absolutism ruled the family. The hierarchy of both state and household was
thought to be ordained by nature and by God. Church sermons depicting women as
seducers, beginning with Eve, emphasized the intrinsic superiority of man over
woman, parent over child, and these assumptions formed the cultural framework
of everyday life within the family.

MARRIAGE

Marriage fell under the legal jurisdiction of the church,
and divorce was prohibited. When a wedding took place, the local church was
decorated, bells tolled, and everyone attended the festivities. The bride wore
a white dress and a wreath of orange blossoms and brought a dowry that might
consist of money or a piece of land if her family was well off; for a peasant
girl it might just be some bed sheets, towels, perhaps some furniture or
cooking utensils. The dowry she brought to the marriage was controlled by the
husband.

While the aristocracy could marry off their children at a
tender age, or at least promise them to a suitable partner, the children of the
commoner or peasant married relatively late in life—men when they were about
28, women at about 25. Peasants and the poor working class had to wait until
the man had established himself in some manner so that he could support a wife
and family. A peasant couple might have to wait for a death in the village to
marry, since good land was limited.

The father exercised full authority in the home, and the
wife was expected to be docile and submissive. She was not allowed to own
property in her own right unless so defined in the marriage agreement or to
enter into private contracts without her husband’s consent. He could discipline
her by corporal punishment or verbal abuse without fear of rebuke from the
authorities or the church. Children who remained under their father’s roof
could be forbidden to marry and forced to work. Some observers compared them to
slaves.

A republican marriage, after the
enactment of the law of September 20, 1792.

WIDOWS AND DEATH

If young men or women managed to remain in good health
until about age 25, they had a good chance of living on into old age, or about
60. Accidents on the job and fatal epidemic illnesses were frequent enough, but
the greatest killer of men of all classes was war. As a result, widows were
common and represented about 1 person in 10 of the population. About all a poor
widow could count on was the return of her dowry (if it had not been
squandered), and a roof over her head. Some widows had small children, which
made their lives a constant struggle. Their options might come down to
accepting charity from the parish church or from neighbors. If they had adult
children, help might come from them. In the country, they could supplement
their meals by collecting scraps missed in the harvest or by gathering wild
fruit and berries. A last resort for the aged country widow was to move to a
large city and live and beg on the streets; such a woman would probably soon
die in a charity hospital. If she was lucky and owned a piece of property or
something else of value, she might exchange it, when she was too old to work,
for a room in a nunnery where she could live out her remaining years.

Class and family lineage were clearly visible at funerals
and at burial sites. Commoners were interred in the churchyard, for a price, or
else in the communal cemetery in or near the city, with neither a coffin nor a
monument. Those people with noble status or wealth were interred in stone
coffins within a niche in the wall or the floor of the church itself.

REVOLUTIONARY CHANGES IN THE FAMILY

Household politics and the broader political system of
absolutism were mutually reinforcing. Critics of the old regime, such as
litigating wives, philosophers of the Enlightenment, reform-minded lawyers, and
bourgeois feminist novelists, condemned both domestic and state despotism.

Since the principles of justice and equality applied to the
state after 1789, many believed that the same precepts should apply to the
family. The revolutionaries recognized the central position of the family as the
elemental building block, the basis for social order, and argued that children
raised with republican ideals were likely to become good patriots.

The Constituent and Legislative Assemblies often
deliberated the nature of marriage and the secularization of civil
recordkeeping. A law passed on September 20, 1792, replaced the sacrament of
marriage with a civil contract that dispensed with the services of a priest and
the church. It was necessary only to post an announcement outside the Town
Hall, and the marriage could take place. The couple then appeared before a
functionary in a tricolor sash who muttered a few legal words, finishing with
“You are married.” Unlike earlier wedded couples, the newlyweds were told that
if things did not work out, they had the alternative of divorce. Within the
space of a few weeks, the representatives had moved swiftly to curtail arranged
marriages, reduce parental authority, and legalize divorce. In large cities, 20
or 30 marriages would often take place at one time in a group ceremony.

Under the old regime, marriage as an indissoluble union had
not been questioned. The abrupt change in custom demonstrated the antireligious
nature of the revolutionary movement and its belief in personal freedom.
Married couples who desired to break their marriage bonds for any reason could
do so and just as easily remarry. Causes for divorce usually revolved around
incompatibility, abandonment, and cruelty, and more women than men seem to have
initiated the process. Citizenness Van Houten, anxious to extricate herself
from an unhappy situation, decried her arranged marriage to a “quick-tempered,
vexatious, stupid, dirty, and lazy husband . . . with the most absolute
inability in business matters.” Large notices in the rooms where the vows of
fidelity were exchanged bore the title “Laws of Marriage and Divorce.” Both the
poison and the antidote were clearly stated and dispensed by the same office.

Primogeniture (the right of the eldest son to inherit all
land and titles) prevailed under the old regime, but this was abolished early
in 1790 so that all children should inherit equally. In November 1793,
illegitimate children were granted the same rights of inheritance if they could
provide proof of their father’s identity. The law was made retroactive to July
1789, but by 1796 the retroactive condition was removed, although the principle
of equality for all children regardless of sex, legitimacy, or age was kept
intact.

For those offspring who, for lack of money were not able to
marry and begin a family until parents were too old and feeble to continue
working, parents could sign over their property to the heir with the written
stipulation that the parents would be taken care of for the rest of their lives.
If a woman inherited the property and then married, her husband was expected to
take her family name, and she retained legal rights over the inheritance.

In 1790, the National Assembly established a new
institution to deal with family disputes, setting up temporary, local
arbitration courts known as family tribunals
(tribunaux de famille).
Family
members in conflict each chose two arbitrators (often other members of the
family or friends) to adjudicate their disagreements and make rulings on
matters such as divorce, division of inheritance, and parent-child disputes.
Appointed by the litigants themselves, these temporary family courts made
justice accessible, affordable, and intimate. In 1796, these councils were
suppressed, however. Further edicts lowered the age of adulthood to 21,
established the principle of compulsory education throughout the country, and
abolished
lettres de cachet.

The laws on divorce, egalitarian inheritance, and parental
authority also raised questions about the subordination of wives and daughters.
It was difficult for the revolutionaries to rid themselves of long-held views
that women belonged at home, and they continued to maintain that women could
best show their republicanism by being good mothers. They should strive to please
their men and introduce republican morality in their children, while husbands
displayed their patriotism as soldiers and public citizens. Almost everyone
envisioned distinct but complementary roles for men and women in the new state.
This view was not without its detractors, however. Long-established ideas on
docile republican mothers and wives were opposed by advocates for equality
between married couples, who supported greater independence, power, and control
over property for women.