Family, gender, and law in early modern France

Author(s)

Bibliographic Information

Family, gender, and law in early modern France

edited by Suzanne Desan and Jeffrey Merrick

Pennsylvania State University Press, c2009

  • : cloth
  • : pbk

Available at  / 5 libraries

Search this Book/Journal

Note

Includes bibliographical references (p. [265]-267) and index

Description and Table of Contents

Description

The essays in Family, Gender, and Law in Early Modern France explore how ordinary men and women negotiated power within early modern French households and continually reinvented their families in response to external forces. Larger processes, such as state building, religious reform, changing understandings of gender roles, and economic developments, influenced family practices in the areas of marriage, separation, guardianship, and illegitimacy. Relatives, gender, community, and the law imposed limits upon families but also provided opportunities for agency. Contributors investigate patterns of courtship and decisions about marriage; the financial power exercised by wives; marital conflict and related controversies about gender, sexuality, and social order; death and guardianship; and the legitimization of children born out of wedlock. While addressing a variety of topics, this volume focuses on family members as individuals with complicated agendas and strategies of their own.

Table of Contents

Contents Acknowledgments Introduction 1. Making and Breaking Marriage: An Overview of Old Regime Marriage as a Social Practice Suzanne Desan 2. Marriage Choice and Marital Success: Reasoning About Marriage, Love, and Happiness Dena Goodman 3. Family Affairs: Wives, Credit, Consumption, and the Law in Old Regime France Clare Crowston 4. Between State and Street: Witnesses and the Family Politics of Litigation in Early Modern France Julie Hardwick 5. Marital Conflict in Political Context: Langeac vs. Chambonas, 1775 Jeffrey Merrick 6. Gender, Kin, and Guardianship in Early Modern Burgundy Christopher Corley 7. On the Contested Margins of the Family: Bastardy and Legitimation by Royal Rescript in Eighteenth-Century France Matthew Gerber Suggested Readings Contributors Index

by "Nielsen BookData"

Details

Page Top