From Wives to Widows in Early Modern Paris (Women and Gender in the Early Modern World)

FROM WIVES TO WIDOWS IN EARLY MODERN PARIS

Women and Gender in the Early Modern World Series Editors: Allyson Poska and Abby Zanger In the past decade, the study of women and gender has offered some of the most vital and innovative challenges to scholarship on the early modern period. Ashgate’s new series of interdisciplinary and comparative studies, ‘Women and Gender in the Early Modern World’, takes up this challenge, reaching beyond geographical limitations to explore the experiences of early modern women and the nature of gender in Europe, the Americas, Asia, and Africa. Submissions of single-author studies and edited collections will be considered. Titles in this series include: Salons, History, and the Creation of Seventeenth-Century France Mastering Memory Faith E. Beasley Hermaphrodites in Renaissance Europe Kathleen P. Long Women and Poor Relief in Seventeenth-Century France The Early History of the Daughters of Charity Susan E. Dinan Widowhood and Visual Culture in Early Modern Europe Edited by Allison Levy Childbirth and the Display of Authority in Early Modern France Lianne McTavish The Power and Patronage of Marguerite de Navarre Barbara Stephenson

From Wives to Widows in Early Modern Paris Gender, Economy, and Law

JANINE M. LANZA

Wayne State University, USA

© Janine M. Lanza 2007 All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission of the publisher. Janine M. Lanza has asserted her moral right under the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988, to be identified as the author of this work. Published by Ashgate Publishing Limited Gower House Croft Road Aldershot Hants GU11 3HR England

Ashgate Publishing Company Suite 420 101 Cherry Street Burlington, VT 05401-4405 USA

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British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Lanza, Janine Marie From wives to widows in early modern Paris : gender, economy and law. – (Women and gender in the early modern world) 1. Widows – France – Paris – Social conditions – 16th century 2. Widows – France – Paris – Economic conditions – 16th century 3. Widows – France – Paris – Social conditions – 17th century 4. Widows – France – Paris – Economic conditions – 17th century I.Title 306.8'83'0944361 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Lanza, Janine Marie. From wives to widows in early modern Paris : gender, economy & law / by Janine M. Lanza. p. cm. — (Women and gender in the early modern world) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7546-5643-2 (alk. paper) 1. Widows—France—Paris—Social conditions. 2. Widows—Legal status, laws, etc.— France—Paris. 3. Women—France—Paris—Social conditions. 4. Women—Legal status, laws, etc.—France—Paris. I. Title. HQ1058.5.F7L36 2007 306.88'30944361—dc22 2007033679 ISBN: 978-0-7546-5643-2 Printed and bound in Great Britain by MPG Books Ltd, Bodmin, Cornwall.

For Aeneas Brendan Neligan

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Table of Contents

Acknowledgements List of Abbreviations Introduction

viii x 1

1

Law in Early Modern France

21

2

Women and Religious Institutions

51

3

Women’s Place in Guilds

83

4

Widows in the Workshop

121

5

The Calculus of Remarriage

153

6

The Trap of Poverty

183

Conclusion

221

Bibliography Index

231 249

Acknowledgements I am delighted, and relieved, to be able to thank the many people who have helped me write this book. The history departments at Appalachian State University and at Wayne State University have provided me with support and assistance in the process of turning a dissertation into a book. A fellowship from the Einaudi Foundation and a Bourse Chateaubriand allowed me to spend two years researching this book. A Bernadotte E. Schmidt Research Fellowship from the American Historical Association funded a summer of further research in France. A Mellon Postdoctoral Fellowship at the Newberry Library gave me the opportunity to spend a year revising the manuscript. While researching I benefited from the expert guidance of staff of the Archives Nationales, especially Mme Bimbinet who answered numerous questions about navigating the Y series. I am also grateful to the library staffs at Cornell University, Appalachian State University, and Wayne State University for helping me locate and borrow crucial texts through interlibrary loan. My graduate advisor, Steven L. Kaplan, has provided me with guidance and encouragement throughout this process. He is a model of intellectual rigor and curiosity who continues to inspire me. I am deeply grateful for his support and friendship. I thank Isabel V. Hull for her advice and interest in this project. David Sabean’s comments on my work have been very helpful. Many friends and colleagues have provided me with helpful criticism and advice on this project. I would like to thank Larry Bond, Jeffrey Bortz, Michael Moore, Neva Specht, and James Winders at Appalachian State University who read and listened to many parts of this project. The Newberry Library Fellows of 1999–2000 helped create an invigorating and fruitful environment for revising, especially Fran Dolan, Martha Few, Anne Cruz, Amy Froide, Jim Grossman, Kate Rousmaniere, and Carla Zecher. My colleagues at Wayne State University have helped me push through the final stages of this process. Sandra Van Burkleo and Chris Johnson read all of the chapters with great patience and enthusiasm. My chair, Marc Kruman, has been unstinting in his encouragement. Many colleagues have generously read and commented on my work. Suzanne Desan and James Farr read early versions of chapters and helped me chart my revisions. Joan Scott read my entire manuscript and provided me with excellent and probing advice. Gilles Postel-Vinay provided me with crucial data from the 1761 Minutier Central records. André Burguière offered me assistance with

Acknowledgements

ix

interpreting Officialité records as well as data from those court records. Martha Howell, Jeffrey Merrick, Sarah Hanley, Sara Chapman, Philippe Minard, Simona Cerutti, Gail Bossenga, Greg Brown, Jeff Horne, Dan Ringrose, Michael Kwass, Laura Mason, Martin Bruegel, Daryl Hafter, Julie Hardwick, and Rene Marion have all given me useful ideas and comments. Michael Wilson, Cynthia Koepp, Sydney Watts, Susan Matt, Sandie Gravett, Stella Anderson, Greg and Tamara Swedberg, Elizabeth Faue, Renee Bricker, Betsy Lublin, Eric Ash, Catherine Ash, and Daniella Kostroun have each provided a sympathetic ear and constant friendship. Clare Crowston has been a dear friend and colleague since our years at Cornell. My family has given me the support and love necessary to seeing this project through to its completion. My parents, Dorothy and Gerald Lanza, have provided unfailing encouragement and assistance. I thank my sister Jennifer Williams and my niece Jessica Williams, and my brother Denis Lanza, for giving me support when I needed it. My aunt Mary Neligan asked me if my book was finished, until it was. My in-laws Barbara Cho, and Yanglai Cho and Marion White have also lent a hand in this project. My husband Adrian Cho deserves all the thanks I can give him. He has read this manuscript, lending me his considerable skills as a writer. More importantly, he has given me his love and faith throughout this process. Our children Audrey and Emmett have contributed by making me immensely happy. Finally, my grandfather Aeneas Brendan Neligan deserves my best thanks for his love.

List of Abbreviations AN

Archives Nationales

BN

Bibliothèque Nationale

JF

Joly de Fleury Collection

MC

Minutier Central

AS

Archives de la Seine

Introduction

The status of baker is one of a great many that a solitary woman cannot oversee; she would find herself at the mercy of her workers (garçons), and her shop would degenerate, if she had not given them a master.1

When Grimod de la Reynière, the nineteenth-century gourmand and writer, penned that assessment in the early 1800s, he echoed the sentiments of many of his contemporaries: women could not wield authority or control men, regardless of their abilities, training, intelligence, or experience. Given his assumptions about women, Grimod expresses palpable relief that Madame Poizard, the baker’s widow in question, planned to remarry and re-establish order within her enterprise, and presumably in her private life as well. Not only would that restore Grimod’s confidence in the quality of one of his favorite bakeries, it would also bring this unmarried woman back to her natural place in the social hierarchy—under the authority of a man. Grimod de la Reynière was not alone in believing that widows presented problems for French society. Many early modern French writers feared that widows could disrupt gender roles designed to help maintain a well-ordered hierarchical society. Admonitions to remarry or, alternately, to devote their lives to pious works bespoke an effort to ensure that widows did not use their independence in ways that challenged the patriarchal order. Those widows who moved beyond such prescribed roles provoked misgivings in their contemporaries, a reaction that produced a number of formal mechanisms designed to limit female action. Laws that curtailed female control over property also served to place widowed women under the control of other family members, namely fathers or uncles, after a husband’s death. Independent women could threaten the orderly, patriarchal structure of society, particularly if, like artisanal women, they had access to wealth, expertise, or community ties.2 This book is about widows of master craftsmen in early modern Paris and the ways that their lives changed after their husbands died. Our understanding of widows and widowhood has been shaped more by assumptions about and representations of the era than by sustained consideration of widows’ social roles 1

Grimod de la Reynière, Almanach des Gourmands (8 vols, Paris, 1803–1812), vol. 7, p. 201. 2 Merry E. Wiesner, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 9–34; Judith M. Bennett and Amy M. Froide, ‘A Singular Past,’ in Judith M. Bennett and Amy M. Froide (eds), Singlewomen in the European Past, 1250–1800 (Philadelphia, 1999), pp. 11–21.

From Wives to Widows

2

and their everyday experiences. The poor and humble widow who barely sustained herself, the pious widow who consoled herself with religion, the “merry widow” who used her freedom to lead a scandalous life—all of these stereotypes have figured prominently in discussions of widowed women. But widows’ lives went beyond these characterizations. No close examination exists of either the cultural assumptions and restrictions that shaped notions of widowhood or the everyday practices of these women in early modern France. How, then, did the early modern French view widows? How did widows use their newly acquired legal emancipation? How did they handle their grief? How did their roles in their families and their communities change? How did they remain financially solvent without a man at the head of the household? For the most part, these questions touch upon the experiences of widows and the ways they related to normative structures and ideologies. For the widow, marriage mutated into a new life, one that began with a death and a funeral. At the deathbed, a wife was still concerned with her husband’s worsening physical condition and imminent death. During one of his walks, Restif de la Bretonne described witnessing such a scene. As he passed the house of the recently deceased, he heard that “his wife was there; she is in despair…(entering) I found the young and beautiful widow dissolving in tears, still holding her husband’s corpse.”3 Restif was able to bring the widow back to her senses, although he describes an emotional and despondent woman. But even in her lassitude, a new widow owed her deceased husband certain ministrations before he could finally be laid to rest. The overwhelming obligation in these last moments was to minister to physical and spiritual needs. In almost every instance, a priest was already present as death approached, having been called to administer extreme unction to the dying and religious comfort to everyone in the house. To ensure that all those who died were in a state of spiritual readiness, the royal government demanded that a physician notify the local curé after the second visit to a patient’s home.4 The community 3

Nicolas Restif de la Bretonne, Les nuits de Paris, ou le Spectateur nocturne (7 vols, London, 1788–89), vol. 3, pp. 568–9. 4 A Royal Declaration of 1712, reiterated in 1724, promulgated these regulations so that family shock and delicacy might not unwittingly serve to deny a dying penitent the crucial last rites, final confession and extreme unction. This law also coincided with the height of concern over the influence of Jansenism, another factor in its passage. If the physician did not comply with this declaration, he was fined 300 livres for the first infringement, and was suspended from practicing medicine for three months after the second time. These rigid regulations seemed to be effective, since according to John McManners, “(e)xcept in Protestant areas, or in cases of sudden death, there were few who died without the ministrations of the Church.” François André Isambert, Recueil general des anciennes lois françaises, depuis l’an 420 jusqu’à la révolution de1789 (29 vols, Paris, 1821–33), vol. 20, p. 574. John McManners, Death and the Enlightenment: Changing Attitudes to Death among Christians and Unbelievers in Eighteenth-Century France (Oxford, 1981), p. 244.

Introduction

3

also participated in the rituals of death. Neighbors began to prepare themselves when they saw the curé bringing the sacrament to a private home, and when they heard the church bells ring they knew that a soul had just gone to its final reckoning.5 At that point, friends and relatives gathered to pay their last respects, and the body remained in the house overnight while the closest family and friends kept a prayerful vigil.6 The vigil completed, neighbors and friends would join family members in escorting the body to the church and its final resting place.7 After a service over the body, during which it was typically surrounded by candles and sprinkled with holy water, the deceased’s loved ones bid final farewell at the burial.8 For the widow of a master artisan, there was an additional layer of funerary rites that accompanied her husband’s death. To mark the passing of one of their brethren, the guild and its confraternity participated in the rituals of a master’s death. A portion of yearly confraternal dues paid for masses to be said for the souls of deceased members, as well as candles for funerals. Statutes of the carpenters’ confraternity explain in detail the functions of that group and its administrators. The administrators notified fellow masters if one of their peers was mortally ill so that they could all begin saying prayers for his recovery. Members were also obliged to bring communion to an ailing master to speed along his recuperation. At a master’s death, the confraternity paid for a mass to be said for the soul of the deceased, attended by all fellow confraternity members. Each year, on the feast day of the guild’s patron saint, the confraternity also sponsored a mass for the souls of deceased members.9 Once a woman had fulfilled her spiritual duty and ensured her husband a Christian burial, her other vital concern was the safeguarding of the family’s assets. At his death she became the guardian of the family’s resources, and by extension of its future. If the family had any possessions of note, she needed to arrange for a police commissioner to come and seal the house so that heirs would 5

McManners, p. 271. While the vigil had a primarily religious purpose, to send the deceased to his final reward accompanied by the prayers of his loved ones, it also could have a practical purpose. In the eighteenth century, there was some fear of being buried alive; a watchful companion could lay such apprehensions to rest. See Jean-Louis Bourgeon, “La peur d’être enterré vivant au XVIIIe siècle. Mythe et réalité,” Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 30/1 (1983): 144–8. 7 Vanessa Harding, “Whose Body? A Study of Attitudes toward the Dead Body in Early Modern Paris,” in Bruce Gordon and Peter Marshal (eds), The Place of the Dead: Death and Remembrance in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2000), pp. 180–81. 8 Pierre Chaunu, La mort à Paris: XVIe, XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris, 1977), pp. 359– 60. 9 René de Lespinasse, Les métiers et corporations de Paris XIVe-XVIIIe siècle (3 vols, Paris, 1886–97), vol. 2, p. 658. 6

From Wives to Widows

4

be assured they would receive their due from the deceased’s estate. When the commissioner came to shut the house, he also made an initial account of everything in it.10 The seals he left behind and the record he made ensured that no servant or disgruntled relative could pilfer items from the home before property was rightfully distributed. The police commissioner’s list was later affirmed and expanded by a pair of notaries who made a careful and legally binding account of the deceased’s estate.11 A notary arrived later to make a formal reckoning in an inventaire après décès, a probate inventory. At that point, any wills or contracts pertaining to the distribution of the estate could take effect. After the death of her husband, religious custom urged the widow to retire from society for a period of mourning, in order to reflect on her changed situation and in order not to thrust a reminder of death before others’ eyes. The widow, because she had just witnessed her husband’s death, reminded those around her of their inevitable fate. In order to dissipate some of the widow’s energy due to her association with death, she undertook a period of mourning.12 This time served as a transition from wife to widow, and allowed her and those around her to adjust to the new situation. Often the widow remarried after spending some time in seclusion, and thus readopted a role appropriate for a woman. But if the widow did not remarry, she embodied contradictory qualities; she shared roles with men and women, and yet differed from both. While we know that the scenes evoked above happened to women more than to men, we do not know precisely how death rearranged relationships and individual roles. Death and its disruptions formed a regular part of married life. In early modern France, approximately 25 per cent of the population lost at least one spouse prematurely, and often more than one, over the course of a lifetime.13 But while we know that such ruptures frequently formed part of individual experience, the meaning for those involved, and for the society as a whole, eludes us. In many 10

For the pre-Revolutionary period, these preliminary inventories are in the Y series of the Archives Nationales. 11 Due to their cost, probate inventories were not universal. A poor family with few assets was not likely to spend the money on a notary’s services. However, the families of most master artisans did invest in these services in order to safeguard their sometimes substantial assets. See Adeline Daumard and François Furet, Structures et relations sociales à Paris au milieu du XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1961), pp. 23–4 and Daniel Roche, The People of Paris: An Essay in Popular Culture in the Eighteenth Century, trans. Marie Evans and Gwynne Lewis (Berkeley, 1987). 12 Nancy C. Lutkehaus, “Feminist Anthropology and Female Initiation in Melanesia,” in Nancy C. Lutkehaus and Paul B. Roscoe (eds), Gender Rituals: Female Initiation in Melanesia (New York, 1995), p. 17; Jean Comaroff, Body of Power, Spirit of Resistance: The Culture and History of a South African People (Chicago, 1985), pp. 85–6; LouisSébastien Mercier, Tableau de Paris (12 vols, Geneva, 1979), vol. 5, pp. 133–8. 13 Jacques Dupâquier, La population rurale du Bassin parisien à l’époque de Louis XIV (Paris, 1979), pp. 112–14.

Introduction

5

ways, widows were troubling to their society. They represented a point of instability and anxiety in a culture that was organized around the ideology of patriarchy.14 They behaved in many respects as men did. Widows held a place of authority in their families and communities; they managed wealth; they possessed legal personhood. And yet, at the same time, widows were represented as encompassing all of the worst aspects of the female sex. Writers stereotyped them as avaricious, promiscuous, and vain. One cultural manifestation of this ambiguity toward widows can be found in contes de fée, or fairy tales. In these stories, widows often appear as less than admirable figures. In contrast to the pious widows of religious tracts who immersed themselves in prayer to surmount their losses, widows in fairy tales lived more pragmatic, and less exemplary, lives. They eked out an existence and raised their children, usually with bad humor. One of the ways widows distinguished themselves from other women in these fictional tales was by their aggression and by the nature of their speech. In the story entitled La Fée Conte, for example, a widow with two daughters raises the elder to be greedy and obnoxious and the younger, who resembles her father, to be honest and sweet.15 The good-natured daughter gives a drink to an old crone she encounters at the well while fetching water for the household. The generosity and kindness of her gestures lead the crone to reveal herself as a fairy. She then confers a gift on the girl. Each word the good daughter utters results in a precious gem falling from her mouth.16 When the girl returns home her mother scolds her for tarrying at the fountain. As the girl explains what has happened, her mother is astounded to see gemstones form from the words. In response, the widow sends her other, disagreeable daughter to the well so she too might benefit from such a gift. When the elder daughter encounters the same fairy, her evident greed and ill-will result in excrement forming each time she spoke a word. The widow rails against her elder daughter’s fate and chases the younger from her home. The younger daughter subsequently marries a prince and lives happily ever after.17

14 A large body of work exists that discusses the patriarchal basis of French social structure. See, among other works, Julie Hardwick, The Practice of Patriarchy: Gender and the Politics of Household Authority in Early Modern France (University Park, 1998); Sarah Hanley, “Social Sites of Political Practice in France: Lawsuits, Civil Rights and the Separation of Powers in Domestic and State Government, 1500–1800,” American Historical Review, 102/1 (1997): 27–52; James R. Farr, Authority and Sexuality in Early Modern Burgundy (1550–1730) (Oxford, 1994); Jeffrey Merrick, “Fathers and Kings: Patriarchalism and Absolutism in Eighteenth-Century French Politics,” Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century, 308(1993). 15 Charles Perrault, Histoire du temps passé, ou les contes de ma Mere l’Oye avec les moralités (London & Brussels, 1786), p. 8. 16 Ibid., p. 9. 17 Ibid., pp. 10, 12.

From Wives to Widows

6

In this tale, the widow’s disagreeable nature, as reflected in her daughter, prompted punishment without appeal. The search for wealth by the widow and her daughter, even when undertaken to support a fatherless family, met with a reproof created not only to thwart the attempt to accumulate material goods but also to humiliate an avaricious woman. The child who might have supported this family fled, leaving her mother and sister to eke out a meager existence in the forest. This tale, and others like it, reveal a number of ambiguities about widows. The widow failed to raise her children well; one child was greedy, mean, and grasping. And in the end the child’s failings, which were by extension her mother’s, came to be punished by a supernatural entity. From this, the reader might draw the lesson that a widow could not raise her children properly without a man in the house. Scholars of fairy tales have found a pattern in the treatment of willful women in all such tales. Women who wished to exercise their will over external circumstances, rather than react to the consequences of others’ actions, found themselves chastened in some way for acting beyond the bounds of their sex. A women seeking to support herself acted toward a commendable end, “yet within the general pattern of punishing any sort of female agency, it seems fair to suggest that they are punished as much for their excessive agency as for its moral content.”18 We will find in particular that women who spoke their minds, sought success, and wielded authority sometimes found themselves mocked, shunned, or disparaged by their contemporaries. The strategies widows used to navigate, and at times redefine, the roles dictated to them by their gender as well as those dictated by desire or necessity are at the heart of this book. The reactions of others, both individuals and institutions, form the backdrop to understanding the meaning of the lives of these sometimes problematic women. Various cultural sources reveal the ways in which French society mistrusted the independence of widows. Most troubling were acts and behavior that endangered family wealth and honor.19 In many eighteenth-century literary representations, widows appear as sexual wantons and greedy wastrels. The widowed Marquise de Merteuil from Les Liaisons Dangereuses, one of the most infamous protagonists of eighteenth-century literature, displays the range of decadent behavior.20 She uses her inherited wealth, and especially her freedom from male authority, to indulge in numerous sexual adventures. Such conduct presents a particular danger to the family as it could produce an illegitimate child who might try to make a claim on the family’s patrimoine. In great measure, the Marquise de Merteuil and her fellow libertine the Vicomte de Valmont are able to cause so much turmoil precisely 18

Sherri Ortner, Making Gender: The Politics and Erotics of Culture (Boston, 1996),

p. 10. 19

On the connection between sexual comportment and ideas of honor, see Farr, Authority and Sexuality. 20 Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, trans. Douglas Parmée (Oxford, 1995).

Introduction

7

because there are no virtuous male figures in this novel to protect the helpless female victims, or to guide them through the challenges presented by dissolute society. In the absence of such men, families fall apart. Cécile de Volanges, the fifteen-year-old girl ruined by Valmont, has only a widowed mother. Had Cécile a father to defend her virtue, would Valmont reconsider his project? Madame de Tourval, “a grass widow” because of her husband’s perpetual absence, is lured into adultery and eventually a guilt-ridden and self-induced death because she lacks her husband’s supervision. In his work “Le Chevalier à la mode,” Florent Dancourt, a seventeenth-century playwright, introduces his reader to Madame Pantin, the wealthy widow of a royal tax-collector.21 After her husband’s death, she comes into possession of millions of livres and, in order to ensure the future existence of this fortune, her brother-inlaw, Serrefort, betroths her to the financier Migaud. But Madame Pantin rejects her brother-in-law’s attempt to chart her future, spurning the spouse he chooses for her. Instead, she sets out to find a younger, noble husband who can provide both a step up in society and satisfaction in the bedroom. Serrefort and Migaud scheme to keep Madame Pantin from ruining herself by taking a worthless husband, although Serrefort does not have any formal leverage over his sister-in-law’s behavior. Madame Pantin has reached the age of legal majority, and she has no children whose interests Serrefort needed to protect. Serrefort and Migaud continue to reason with the silly widow Pantin, and finally convince her that she should follow their advice. Until the end of the play, when Madame Pantin meekly submits to the planned marriage, she conforms to the stereotype of the irresponsible and frivolous widow who desperately needs her male kin to guide her actions and correct her unsound judgment. In terms of their representation in literary sources, writers used many of the same tropes to describe widows as were used to describe women in general. Widows were unstable, irrational, incapable of controlling their sexual urges, and ultimately untrustworthy. In reality, however, widows enjoyed the property rights accorded men, as well as the role of head-of-household. In some ways, with respect to the practical problems that emerged after a husband’s death, early modern French society was ready to treat the widow as an ‘honorary man’ in order to ensure the smooth devolution of property and the continued integrity of the family.22 However, writers depicted widows as unworthy of such a status due to 21

Florent Carton Dancourt, Le Chevalier à la mode, ed. Robert H. Crawshaw (Exeter, 1980). Two recent dissertations have examined the role of widows in early modern French literary works. Kathleen Marie Llewellyn, “The Widow in Early Modern French Literature,” (Ph.D. dissertation, Washington University, 2000) and Deborah Hahn, “The School for Widows: Gender, (Re) Marriage, and Comedy on the Absolutist Stage,” (Ph.D. dissertation, Brown University, 1999). 22 The notion of the “honorary man” comes from Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s Good Wives: Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650–1750 (New York, 1982).

From Wives to Widows

8

their myriad shortcomings. The dissonance between what widows could do, indeed what they were compelled to do for their own well-being and that of their families, and how they were imagined in cultural sources demonstrates that conceptually, widows could be understood neither as women nor, certainly, as men. They stood as a group apart, one that their society allowed to act in ways that benefited them and their families, but also one that was barely tolerated and misunderstood. By examining practice along with representation, we can see that, in many respects, widows occupied the interstices of this culture, particularly with regard to gender ideals. My study of widows—the ways they were represented and how they experienced widowhood—challenges many scholarly assumptions about women and their roles with respect to law, the family, and economic activity. Widows were to be found in every social and economic level in Paris. This filthy and violent city crushed its inhabitants, creating widows at a more rapid clip than did the countryside.23 It also enclosed within its figurative walls all kinds of people who came to the capital for myriad reasons. Nobles sought out the latest in culture, as well as the ears of bureaucrats and financiers. Peasants came looking for work they believed would be easier and more plentiful than what they could find on farms. Skilled workers came to the city that set the economic and cultural standards for the kingdom and the continent beyond. Paris’s economic, political and cultural ascendancy, in short, created a city more diverse than any other in France. In order to observe the wide variety of Parisian social and economic experiences, I focused my research on widows of guild masters. Guilds were work-centered institutions that organized skilled trades in early modern Paris and in other French cities. In wealth and social position, master craftsmen in these guilds covered the gamut. Many masters ran extremely successful businesses and earned fortunes that rivaled those of the nobility; others barely eked out a living, skating at the edge of poverty. While master craftsmen shared a title, then, they did not share a social or economic class. Yet all masters were unified in the theoretical social taxonomy that ordered this society by virtue of their status in guilds.24 The widows of master craftsmen, in turn, represented a wide range of social and economic levels who nonetheless shared a set of privileges and a status unavailable to other members of Parisian society. What is already known about widows and guilds is that these women did have a claim on their husbands’ mastership after death. Many historians of guilds have not explored the meaning of

23

Arlette Farge, “Les artisans malades de leur travail,” Annales: Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations, 32/5 (1977): 993–1006. 24 On the issue of social taxonomy and guilds, see Steven Laurence Kaplan, “Social Classification and Representation in the Corporate World of Eighteenth-Century France: Turgot’s Carnival,” in Steven Laurence Kaplan and Cynthia J. Koepp (eds), Work in France: Representations, Meaning, Organization and Practice (Ithaca, 1986).

Introduction

9

the widow’s privilege, and have assumed that she was not capable of taking advantage of the mastership she inherited.25 But widows were often very active and successful businesswomen. The title ‘maîtresse,’ or mistress, encapsulated their newfound authority in the shop as well as in the community. Given the advantages accorded widows of master craftsmen, they were arguably the most privileged women in French society. Because they did not belong to an elite social status, these widows were not subject to family pressures to remarry and establish new ties of patronage for their kin group, nor were they constrained by elite rejection of labor that kept wealthy and noble women from working. Guild widows also had the potential to escape some of the problems of poorer and less skilled people. They possessed capital and hands-on training in trades that gave them the possibility to avoid poverty or menial work. They had a socially acceptable and practical way to carve out an independent, respectable and prosperous situation for themselves at a time and in a place where this achievement was unlikely. My study of widows challenges assumptions in three broad theoretical areas of French history. First, understanding widows dramatically alters our understanding of gender, both in terms of how it was lived in this period and also how historians can use this construct to advance analysis. Prescriptive and literary writings of the period portrayed widows as women in need of some source of control due to the lack of male authority in their lives. Whether it be through religion or a male relative, the most desirable course of action for the widow was to quickly insert herself into some sort of stable patriarchal relationship, lest she wreak havoc by behaving foolishly, ruining her reputation and squandering her family’s wealth and good name. These religious and literary works sought to reimpose the constraints of femaleness, and female gender roles, on women who had the momentary opportunity to exercise independence. But widows did not follow the advice provided for them in prescriptive texts. Instead, they disrupted gender norms, occupying a liminal space, by acting as men could in some situations, but constrained as women were in other instances. Because they enjoyed legal rights denied to other women, widows acted out ambiguous roles in their daily lives, by coping with singleness, responsibility, and social expectations. They held social positions that women normally did not occupy—for example, as heads of households or owners of businesses, and as authority figures in their homes and communities. By their practices, they devised a new set of gender norms that served their needs and departed from the roles they had filled as daughter and wife. While undeniably living within a patriarchal system, widows, in their actions, nonetheless broke away from a conception of

25

See for example William Sewell, Work and Revolution in France: The Language of Labor from the Old Regime to 1848 (Cambridge, 1980) and Michael Sonenscher, Work and Wages: Natural Law, Politics, and Eighteenth-Century French Trades (Cambridge, 1989), neither of whom discuss any roles for women in the trades.

10

From Wives to Widows

gender as binary opposition and were able to occupy a spectrum of acceptable gendered roles. Second, my work engages the historiographical issue of business and entrepreneurship, particularly women’s participation in the world of work. The notion of the “family economy” assumes a family unit in which men orchestrated labor, reinforced in these efforts by wives and children. “Family economy,” while asserting the importance of women’s work, reinscribes the model of the patriarchal household. As conceived by historians, the family economy demanded that all members of the household contribute their labor, and the wages generated thereby, in order to maintain the family’s solvency. Such economic logic would seem to dictate the impoverishment of the household after the father’s death since the loss of his labor, most valuable in terms of wage compensation, left the family with a gaping economic hole.26 My evidence shows otherwise and argues for a reconception of the idea of the “family economy.” Women ran large, successful businesses on their own in a sphere where nominally women were not welcomed. Furthermore, widows, despite the limitations of their gender, shared in a trade identity based on their membership in guilds. A chapter about remarriage patterns, based on the little-used records of the Parisian ecclesiastical court, shows widows overwhelmingly remarrying within their trade. These marriages, coupled with the daily business transactions between widows, the guild and other masters, solidified the trade ties and identities that widows created after their husbands’ deaths. In looking at the ways widows interacted in the marketplace, we see that the crucial family resources at work here were monetary assets and social privilege, another powerful form of capital in this context. A widow could do without her husband’s labor if she had control over the capital of their joint business. The key was not labor so much as a thriving shop which served to anchor the family’s survival. In light of these findings, historians must rethink both the nature of the guild as an institution and, more broadly, the ways that women participated in economic activity in early modern French society. These findings challenge a notion that all women enjoyed more or less the same relationship to power, and, with it, the historian’s single model of female exclusion from the skilled sectors of the economy. Third, my study explicitly examines the place of the law in lived experiences of the early modern period. The use of the law as an analytical category for understanding the past has generally been left to historians of early modern England and America, especially those who study political and legal institutions. Such works generally have taken the law to be a static body of knowledge, imposed by the State on its subjects with little consideration for the ways in which the law penetrated the fabric of daily life. In terms of gender issues, historians of 26 Joan W. Scott and Louise Tilly, Women, Work, and Family (New York, 1978); Olwen Hufton, “Women and the Family Economy in Eighteenth-Century France,” French Historical Studies, 9/1(1975): 1–22.

Introduction

11

the law in early modern Europe traditionally offer a past where men used the rigidity and coercive power of the law to control women. Sarah Hanley depicts a royal government scheming with fathers to assert dominance over women, married and single, through law. She pessimistically sees few ways that women could use law to argue for their own subject position in their families or communities. Martha Howell focuses on shifts in the form of marriage contracts and posits a loss in status for women through legal changes in inheritance practices. In this case, too, Howell shows women trapped in a trajectory of legal change that diminished their opportunities without providing them with tools to resist such changes.27 These interpretations, however, fall short. The law was not monolithic, nor was it employed solely by a certain segment of society. While sixteenth- and seventeenth-century widows faced limitations when they entered a second marriage, many other aspects of civil law privileged them. For example, a Parisian widow was entitled to the lifetime use of half of her late husband’s property, a proviso that deprived his heirs of the full use of their inheritance, often for many years, in order to ensure the widow’s continued financial independence. Notarial contracts show how, in the face of resistance by heirs, widows used their understanding of civil law and contract to maintain control over family property. Furthermore, civil law provisions that limited the ways property could be distributed constrained men’s behavior as well as women’s, a fact that casts doubt on its purely patriarchal operation. The law, then, was a far more supple and complex field of activity than many historians have suggested. The law was a strategic field, tied up with practice as well as with explicit norms, mutating to conform to the needs of those who interacted with it. Here I follow the work of the anthropologist Louis AssierAndrieu and the sociologist Pierre Bourdieu who both stress the malleable and social elements of law, not its purely formal qualities.28 They see the law as something that has a dual purpose. In strategic terms, the law serves social actors in ways that go beyond its foundational, or original, meaning. Families and their individual members understood and manipulated provisions of civil law in order to facilitate their particular goals—a change in status or wealth, for example, or a redistribution of patrimony to new heirs. However, while the law certainly lent itself to certain kinds of strategic uses, it was also a constitutive language that forcefully brought into being what it declared through courts and the State. While 27

Sarah Hanley, “The Jurisprudence of the Arrêts: Marital Union, Civil Society, and State Formation in France, 1550–1650,” Law and History Review, 21/1 (2003): 1–40 and “Social Sites of Political Practice in France: Lawsuits, Civil Rights, and the Separation of Powers in Domestic and State Government, 1500–1800,” American Historical Review, 102/1 (1997): 27–52; Martha Howell, The Marriage Exchange: Property, Social Place, and Gender in Cities of the Low Countries, 1300–1550 (Chicago, 1998). 28 Louis Assier-Andrieu, Le droit dans les sociétés humaines (Paris, 1996); Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power, ed. John B. Thompson (Cambridge, 1991).

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acknowledging the malleable aspects of the law, in other words, it is also necessary to recognize this constructive element of legal language. Notarial contracts governing marriages, divisions of family property, and financial agreements show how widows used their knowledge of the law in strategic ways when they conducted their personal and professional business. Law did constrain behavior and did encapsulate the power of the State to enforce conduct, but it was also an instrument to be manipulated in order to achieve certain limited goals. Law cannot be understood merely as an ideological mechanism for imposing the will of the King on his subjects and, analogously, the will of the father on his family. The status and experiences of widows cast doubt on other scholarly assumptions about women, law, family and entrepreneurship. In this period, for example, widows did not lose their rights to take over the role as head of household, to direct their family or business, or to manage property. In the legal sphere, while the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries witnessed the royal government attempting to rationalize the diverse law codes of France, the rights of widows as independent legal agents largely continued to be upheld. For example, the codification and revisions of French common law maintained widows’ broad discretion over family property. While prescriptive literature may have expressed increased ambivalence about widows, they did not experience a diminution of their legal rights. The experience of widowed women remaps our understanding of gender, revealing a middle, ambivalent, ground between male and female spheres. Widows, then, were subject to a range of constraints and choices that accompanied their new status as stewards of households without male heads. They moved on unfamiliar terrain, either because they had made certain choices themselves or because circumstances constrained them. In working out how these women navigated the choices they faced and in addressing the historical issues discussed above, I rely upon two conceptual languages—gender and practice. The concept of gender refers to the ways in which societies interpret the meanings and implications of biological difference; in turn, cultural understandings of biological difference structured access to resources, power, and position. As historians of women have observed, exploration of gender practices changes the basic structure of history.29 Periodization, class structures, and ideas about power in the state and the family all change when we consider gender.30 The notion of 29

Joan Scott emphasizes the need to look at gender as a dynamic category, grounded in particular social configurations and changing with social shifts. In order to endow the concept of gender with analytic power, she stresses the need to examine “why these relationships are constructed as they are, how they work, (and) how they change.” “Gender: A Useful Category of Historical Analysis,” in Joan Scott, Gender and the Politics of History (New York, 1988), p. 32. 30 The literature encompassing gender is vast. The following works have been particularly useful to my work. Joan Kelly, Women, History and Theory (Chicago, 1984);

Introduction

13

gender is particularly salient for understanding the structure of the world of work and labor, since “the attempt to find a place for gender and women in this model disarranges teleologies, blurs boundaries between levels, or breaks the model apart altogether.”31 For the study of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, understanding the meaning of gender roles reveals the limits of the workings of the family economy and family strategies, as well as the ways in which traditional ideas about gender obfuscate many dimensions of female experience. Understanding widows inflects the broader limits of male and female behavior. Women cannot be examined as a block, defined solely by their biological sex. Indeed, widows could behave in ways forbidden to other women, leading us to see that gender roles were relatively porous and diverse. This book is organized thematically rather than around the female life-cycle. Shaping a study of female experience around life-changes seems to ground them in their biology, a seemingly timeless and universal set of constraints, rather than in the social structures, discursive constraints, and individual choices that shaped women’s lives. Focusing on thematic issues allows us to examine the ways in which external boundaries structured widows’ lives, and the experiences resulting from such constraints and private choices. In this endeavor, the insights of practice theorists also serve as a guide. When examining those who did not explain their acts and their behavior, we are left with a study of what they did rather than what Natalie Zemon Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford, 1975); Scott, Gender and the Politics of History; Scott and Tilly, Women, Work and Family; Joan Landes, Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution (Ithaca, 1988); Lynn A. Hunt (ed.), Eroticism and the Body Politic (Baltimore, 1990); Ortner, Making Gender; Michelle Perrot (ed.), Writing Women’s History (Oxford, 1992); Nancy Lutkehaus and Paul Roscoe (eds), Gender Rituals: Female Initiation in Melanesia (New York, 1995); Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, Women, Family, and Ritual in Renaissance Italy (Chicago, 1985); Thomas Kuehn, Law, Family and Women: Toward a Legal Anthropology of Renaissance Italy (Chicago, 1991); Howell, The Marriage Exchange. More broadly, several works on women’s position under the American legal system have also provided a valuable comparative point of view. See Norma Basch, In the Eyes of the Law: Women, Marriage, and Property in Nineteenth-Century New York (Ithaca, 1982); Mary Lynn Salmon, Women and the Law of Property in Early America (Chapel Hill, 1986); Karin Wulf, Not Only Wives: Women of Colonial Philadelphia (Ithaca, 2000); Cornelia Dayton, Women Before the Bar: Gender, Law, and Society in Connecticut, 1639–1789 (Chapel Hill, 1995). 31 Kathleen Canning, Languages of Labor and Gender: Female Factory Work in Germany, 1850–1914 (Ithaca, 1996), p. 5. See also for the impact of gender on the examination of labor Martha Howell, Women, Production and Patriarchy in Late Medieval Cities (Chicago, 1986); Merry Wiesner, Working Women in Renaissance Germany (New Brunswick, 1986); Tessie Liu, The Weaver’s Knot: the Contradictions of Class Struggle and Family Solidarity in Western France, 1750–1914 (Ithaca, 1994); Laura Frader and Sonya Rose (eds), Gender and Class in Modern Europe (Ithaca, 1996); Daryl Hafter (ed.), European Women and Preindustrial Craft (Bloomington, 1995); Clare Haru Crowston, Fabricating Women: The Seamstresses of Old Regime France, 1675–1791 (Durham, 2001).

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they said, with the “‘tactics’ articulated in the details of everyday life.”32 In the search for an understanding of how individuals and groups navigated, altered, and bowed to norms, moreover, practice theory allows historians to reach an understanding that “human action is made by ‘structure,’ and at the same time always makes and potentially unmakes it.”33 Practice theory both acknowledges the power of social constraint and allows for a certain amount of agency in those who lived within a given set of social norms. This aspect of practice theory has grown in great measure out of concern over the emphasis on binary opposition to be found in the work of structuralist social theorists. In particular, Pierre Bourdieu’s writings seek a balance between objectivist understandings of social action, which see actors as subordinate, and even oblivious, to social structures, and subjectivist understandings which posit independent, empowered, all-knowing agents who freely exercise their will.34 In order to navigate this theoretical divide, Bourdieu uses the concept of habitus to describe the nature of objective forms. Habitus consists of “systems of durable, transposable dispositions, structured structures predisposed to function as structuring structures, that is, as principles which generate and organize practices.”35 In addition, Bourdieu notes that “the responses of the habitus may be accompanied by a strategic calculation tending to perform in a conscious mode the operation that the habitus performs quite differently… But these responses are first defined, without any calculation, in relation to objective potentialities.”36 As such, agents are both constrained by and make choices within the structures around them. They work on both sides of a binary opposition. The process is not necessarily conscious, although social actors can be aware of their strategic calculations. It is a formulation of comportment that encompasses the objective and subjective, the strategic and the involuntary, and provides ways to bridge the gap between these seemingly irreconcilable values. Such bridging of opposing categories is crucial for the study of gender. Early works in feminist anthropology noted the power of “sexual asymmetry” to define women as the eternal Other, to use Simone de Beauvoir’s characterization of her sex.37 Such a typology of men and women argued for separate hierarchical 32

Michel de Certeau, The Practice of Everyday Life, trans. Steven Rendall (Berkeley, 1984), p. xiv. 33 Ortner, Making Gender, p. 2. However, as a cautionary note on the issue of agency, I add Ortner’s caveat: “it must be emphasized that the practice-theoretical perspective on agency is in no way a form of voluntarism, does not presume that agents are free individuals, does not construct the agent as a bourgeois subject, and so forth,” p. 7. 34 For an interpretation of Bourdieu’s social theory as a way to navigate between subjective and objective views of society see “Introduction” in Craig Calhoun, Edward LiPuma, and Moishe Postone (eds), Bourdieu: Critical Perspectives (Chicago, 1993). 35 Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Stanford, 1990), p. 53. 36 Ibid. 37 Michelle Zimbalist Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere, “Introduction,” in Michelle

Introduction

15

domains for the two sexes, with corresponding social roles. Breaking down the association of women with nature, which implied as well an association with the biological and the irrational, became part of the project of reconceptualizing the meaning of gender.38 Practice theory, with its emphasis on the problems inherent in binary oppositions, gives historians of gender a way to understand how women and men have been, and remain, confined and constrained by patriarchal social structures while still finding space to move beyond obstructions. Thus we can conceptualize ways women could avoid being determined by patriarchy while still acknowledging its considerable power. Key to this endeavor are law and legal institutions which strongly shaped, and were shaped by, the experience of widowhood. As we have seen, the law upholds a normatively patriarchal system of social organization. This image of the law as ideologically driven by the demands of patriarchy dovetails with the misogyny of many Church teachings that trace the origins of sin to Eve, the mother of all temptresses.39 However, if we examine the system of patriarchy more critically, we see that such a univocal understanding of the law’s meaning does not take sufficient note of the press of circumstances. When a man died, his family needed to have an individual empowered to make legally binding decisions on its behalf. Some families chose to appoint a male relative of the deceased to manage their affairs. However, such an arrangement often proved to be impractical for day-today business. As a result, that option surfaced mainly among social elites.40 Here we see one of the limitations of patriarchy in practice. At certain moments men who refuse to empower women risk serious consequences.41 We cannot hope to understand civil law, the law of private life and the family, without exploring the legal status of the widow. The laws that determined women’s legal status, married Zimbalist Rosaldo and Louise Lamphere (eds), Women, Culture, and Society (Stanford, 1974), pp. 1 and 8–9. 38 This question surfaces in several of the essays that make up the collection Women, Culture, and Society. See “Introduction;” Michelle Z. Rosaldo, “Woman, Culture, and Society: A Theoretical Overview;” Nancy Chodorow, “Family Structure and Feminine Personality;” Sherri B. Ortner, “Is Female to Male as Nature Is to Culture?” 39 Cullen Murphy, The Word According to Eve: Women and the Bible in Ancient Times and Our Own (Boston, 1999), p. 54; James Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago, 1987), pp. 85–6. 40 Barbara Diefendorf, Paris City Councillors in the Sixteenth Century: The Politics of Patrimony (Princeton, 1983). I did not find a single artisanal family that chose to empower a male relative over a widowed wife. 41 Sarah Hanley in her pioneering work on the French legal system is quite right to point out the gendered nature of its purpose. However, in practice her findings are more appropriate to elite sectors of society rather than other ranks. On this weakness inherent to patriarchy, see Frances E. Dolan, “Household Chastisements: Gender, Authority, and Domestic Violence,” in Patricia Fumerton and Simon Hunt (eds), Renaissance Culture and the Everyday (Philadelphia, 1999), p. 205.

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and single, as well as the statutes regulating marriage, become intelligible only when they are placed in the context of what happened to a woman when her husband died. While at their heart laws appeared to be designed to uphold a patriarchal system, in practice it was not possible entirely to strip women of any rights over property and maintain the family’s prosperity in all circumstances. On the one hand, the legal changes put into effect by the royal government between 1556 and 1639 limiting the amount of wealth a widow could share upon remarriage responded in part to anxieties about women who were not under the direct control of men.42 In keeping with the ways women were typically represented, many noble families, as well as the royal government, believed that women freed from male authority would behave irrationally and prove incapable of managing the wealth they had inherited. On the other hand, the provisions of these laws were also shaped by the experiences of widows. Although this was a society that was ideologically committed to placing women under the control of men, practical issues like maintaining the integrity of family property and providing means of support to widows mandated compromise. For example, common law responded to notions about widowhood when it demanded that the widow have the right to the usufruct of one-half of her deceased husband’s real property, lest she should fall into poverty without a man’s care and support. On the surface these two stipulations appear to pertain specifically to the problem of widows without touching upon broader issues of property law. A closer analysis, however, shows that the principles at stake shaped the entire configuration of the marital estate. The prospect of widowhood determined the disposition of property within both the newly created family and the natal family. The question of what properties should be handed over to children, and how much should devolve upon a widow, undergirded the negotiations families undertook when creating new kinship alliances. Concern over widowhood and widowerhood permeated the civil legal system, even where those concerns were not explicitly voiced. Likewise, we cannot understand the family in the early modern period without considering the widow in two important respects. First, relationships within the family were strongly shaped by the tenets of written and customary law. Marriage contracts and marital alliances explicitly considered how the family would function after the death of its male head. Even if this scenario never materialized, relationships within the family were structured by awareness of the future legal status of the widow. Second, the widow’s experience impinged upon the emotional dimension of family life and is crucial for understanding relations between mothers and children. Since mortality rates were high, children frequently lived with only one parent, sometimes starting at a very young age. Studies of the history of childhood delve into the child’s relationship to both mother and father, but none 42

See Chapter one for further discussion of marital law.

Introduction

17

seem to consider the child of the eighteenth-century version of the broken home.43 Public approbation of a woman acting on her children’s behalf powerfully redirected relationships and behavior within the family. Finally, gender conditioned work itself. The widow of the master craftsman commanded greater privileges than did other widows. She was entitled, and often compelled, to take over the family business at his death, and even took the title of maîtresse, the feminine form of the title master. In her capacity as a maîtresse, the widow enjoyed broad authority over her family and its assets, including the laborers obliged to work in her shop.44 This position not only empowered the widow beyond what other women in her society could hope for, but also placed her in a superior position to the male workers who never managed to achieve mastership. While mastership offered the widow a great deal of possible benefit, it also demanded energy, stamina, cunning, and hard work in return. Guild members pitched in to assist the family through the master’s last illness and funeral, but solicitude did not extend to the business their brother and rival had left behind. An active business usually demanded all, and the widow of a baker or a tavern-keeper could not spend time mourning while she tried to sort through her feelings. Not opening the shop for even one day presented the risk of losing valuable customers, as well as reliable journeymen and workers who might leave an imperiled enterprise. If the widow faltered, those who had mourned at her husband’s funeral might gleefully lure his customers and laborers away from the shop, placing her livelihood in grave jeopardy. But we know that many widows took that chance and bet that they could succeed in the male world of the guilds. Widows thus constituted an important part of guild life in early modern Paris.45 While women generally had very limited 43

See David Hunt, Parents and Children in History: The Psychology of Family Life in Early Modern France (New York, 1970); David Garrioch, Neighborhood and Community in Paris, 1740–1790 (Cambridge, 1986); Tamara K. Hareven, “The History of the Family and the Complexity of Social Change,” American Historical Review, 96/1 (1991). For views of family relations that take gender more explicitly into account, see Kristen Gager, Blood Ties and Fictive Ties: Adoption and Family Life in Early Modern France (Princeton, 1996); Frances E. Dolan, Dangerous Familiars: Representations of Domestic Crime in England, 1550–1700 (Ithaca, 1994). 44 Chapter three discusses at length the guild privileges a widow could access. 45 To jump ahead somewhat, I have found widows working in some capacity in nearly every incorporated guild in early modern Paris. Chapter four examines the experiences of working widows at length. While works on the guilds often include a mention of the presence of widows in the ranks of masters, their place in those bodies has not been much explored. Steven L. Kaplan, Le meilleur pain du monde. Les boulangers de Paris au XVIIIe siécle (Paris, 1996) incorporates an extended discussion of family life in his work, and addresses the role of women and widows particularly in chapters eleven and twelve. His La fin des corporations (Paris: Fayard, 2001) also discusses wives and widows explicitly in his

18

From Wives to Widows

access to the corporate trades, the fact that guilds regularly included widows among the ranks of masters must lead historians to rethink women’s roles in the trades.46 Mastership constituted a valuable commodity in the eighteenth-century, particularly in Paris, but without family connections to the guild, it was often difficult to become a master. Marriage to a widow offered a sure path to the higher ranks of the guilds, something not otherwise easily found. While the husband of a widow did have to be qualified in the trade, and paid an entry fee, her status vis à vis the guild gave him access to the mastership. In addition, many widows possessed valuable capital such as inventory, tools, raw material, and an established clientele. Moreover, the widow herself, after years of working at her husband’s, and often parents’, sides, counted as a valuable resource for the newly forged mastership. She served as a conduit for transferring capital and skills from one master to another, thereby contributing to the social reproduction of the guild structure and commercial knowledge. She could, of course, choose to use that knowledge for her and her family’s enrichment alone. But whatever path she chose after her husband’s death, the widow maintained a presence in guild life, and shared in its benefits and demands. The insights of practice theory strongly influenced the two-part structure of this book. The first section, reflecting the constraints widows faced, explores the social conventions and norms that created barriers in widows’ lives. These chapters examine expectations of female comportment and how they shaped widows’ behavior and actions after their husbands died. They also look at how certain representations of widows influenced the ways these women interacted with their families and communities. The first chapter explores the ways that the French legal system under the Old Regime dealt with family life and women. In examining the body of legal texts that touch upon marriage and remarriage, inheritance, and women’s legal status, the chapter lays out the way legal texts envisioned female behavior as well as information about how women functioned under this body of legislation. As a result we see how women worked around the constraints written into law in order to achieve their goals. Widows were able to manage family assets and enter into remarriages on their own terms, despite some of the misogynistic language of early modern French law. Chapter two examines the ways that the Catholic Church in France sought to curtail widows’ behavior. By reading church tracts, sermons, and policies, we see

analysis of the recreation of the guilds as both economic and social bodies. In contrast, another important work on French guilds, Michael Sonenscher’s Work and Wages in France, says little about widows’ importance to these institutions. 46 Of course, a number of female guilds existed in this period. These included most notably seamstresses and linen drapers. See Hafter, European Women; Natalie Zemon Davis, “Women in the Crafts in Sixteenth-Century Lyon,” in Barbara A. Hanawalt (ed.), Women and Work in Preindustrial Europe (Bloomington, 1986); Crowston, Fabricating Women.

Introduction

19

that Catholic teaching advocated a secluded life centered around religious devotion. While pious women were praised, most women could not live up to such expectations. Instead, women incorporated religious practices into their lives while also engaging in behavior not sanctioned by the Church. In this way, women created a way to embrace religious consolation without giving up their public activities. The third chapter moves into the world of the guilds, and the lives of widows of master craftsmen. While these women faced the same challenges and constraints as did other widows in early modern French society, they also navigated the choppy waters of guild life. Using guild statutes, business almanacs, and records of business disputes, I argue that despite being largely ignored in official guild documents, widows of master craftsmen nonetheless played an important role in how guilds defined the tasks of masters and the ways families participated in work life. As in other areas of life, widows found ways to function within the masculine structures of guilds. The second section of the book explores choices that widows could make—that is, the question of lived experience. Probate inventories, notarial documents, police records, and other business documents reveal how widows lived under changed circumstances, in households without husbands. They also show how these women managed to navigate and act within the boundaries society laid out for them. Chapter four continues our investigation of the place of widows in the workshop but emphasizes what widows did in the businesses they inherited from their husbands. Using notarial contracts, police records, and records of business failures, it emphasizes the conditions under which widows were able to succeed or fail in business. The decisive factor seems to have been not the widow’s level of engagement or her expertise, but the health of the business that her husband left her. If a woman had ample assets and a healthy customer base, she was likely to flourish in her commercial enterprise. If her husband had suffered from a lengthy illness and left large debts, no amount of work or talent could save a widow from failure. In other words, what was crucial for business success was not necessarily a man’s labor at the head of an enterprise, but a healthy and vibrant workshop. Chapters five and six explore other possibilities for women who had lost their husbands. Chapter five looks at the question of remarriage and the circumstances under which a widow might decide to take another husband. Using marriage contracts and dispensations to remarry granted by the Archbishop of Paris, we see that widows differed significantly from first time brides in matters such as what wealth they contributed to the new household and how they drew up their marriage contracts. This evidence suggests that part of what made widows into fully constituted adults was not simply their legal emancipation but also their experience as married women. When they entered subsequent marriages, they entered on comparatively independent terms which reflected the changes widowhood had wrought. Furthermore, widows tended to enter marriages based on their own needs and interests rather than those of their families.

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From Wives to Widows

Chapter six documents one possibility that all widows feared: poverty. Records of parish poor relief, as well as religious tracts and evidence from probate inventories, document the relationship of widows to poor relief. For most widows, the descent into poverty reflected the failure of work. If a widow was aged or infirm, she was likely to turn to relief to keep herself from abject poverty. If her business was in poor shape, poverty was also a distinct possibility. The evidence suggests that poverty did not stalk widows because of any inherent inability to support themselves. To the contrary, this book provides numerous examples of successful and prosperous widows. For those who failed, physical or material conditions had fallen short. These two sections work together to show, from several different vantage points, how women and their contemporaries experienced and understood life in female-headed households. Each chapter sketches out a distinct element of the experience of widows in Old Regime France as well as the normative frame that shaped these women’s choices and actions. Bringing this material together helps us to see that widows, while subject to many challenges and constraints, nonetheless succeeded in creating functional lives for themselves and their families.

Chapter 1

Law in Early Modern France Introduction In early modern France, the law provided a foundation for some of the most important acts individuals and families undertook. Most prominent among them were decisions about inheritance, marriage, and remarriage. When families decided how much and what kinds of property to include in a marriage settlement or an inheritance clause, they harkened to the provisions of civil law in making their decisions. Even determining the suitability of a prospective marriage partner could include consideration of aspects of civil law. The choice of a partner determined to a great extent a family’s ambitions for social and economic mobility. This process also served to establish a family’s financial and inheritance strategies, and the ways they would enrich the next generation in advance of an elder’s death. In all of these kinds of decisions, civil law provisions played a role. Before examining these legally charged moments, we need to consider what law means as an analytic category. In its most basic guise, the law is an instrument that creates social structure; a body of provisions, understood as the legitimate voice of the state, that aspires to regulate and circumscribe behavior. As Pierre Bourdieu explains, “(l)aw consecrates the established order by consecrating the vision of that order which is held by the State. It grants to its actors a secure identity, a status, and above all a body of powers (or competences) that are socially recognized.”1 Legal activity recognizes, and even creates, the social body, and hierarchy and authority within that social body. Law defines what is permissible and what is not permissible in a certain temporal and geographical context. The law also reflects power relations within a given social structure, expressing the wishes and aspirations of varied groups.2 In keeping with this function, 1

Pierre Bourdieu, “The Force of Law: Toward a Sociology of the Juridical Field,” trans. Richard Terdiman, The Hastings Law Journal, 38/5 (1987): 838. 2 On the power of law as a language that calls into being the social relations and behavior it names see Bourdieu, “The Force of Law,” p. 838. He notes here that “In contrast, the judgment of a court, which decides conflicts or negotiations concerning persons or things by publicly proclaiming the truth about them, belongs in the final analysis to the class of acts of naming or of insulting. The judgment represents the quintessential form of authorized, public, official speech which is spoken in the name of and to everyone.” Emphasis in original.

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women’s position under early modern French law was marked by ambiguity. Much of the language of the law was marked by a distrust of women. They were considered unreliable and thus did not enjoy the independence and authority granted to men, particularly married men. But in order to assess the impact of legislation on women, we must note that different women fell into different legal categories. Marital status and attainment of adulthood were key to knowing the limits of female legal agency. A wife could not sign contracts without her husband’s permission nor could she manage her money independently. A daughter was also beholden to her father, not having the ability to marry without parental permission until the age of 25, risking poverty if she did so. Widows escaped a number of the restraints imposed on other women and legal minors for reasons that this study will explore. They could grant their children permission to marry without input from other family members. They were the preferred legal guardians for their children, and in that capacity managed all of the household’s wealth. Such freedom of behavior, while practical in some ways, also produced concerns which manifested themselves in a number of ways which this chapter will examine. The independence a widow had in managing her own household and raising her children often troubled her family and her contemporaries. But they could not rein in these prerogatives without obliging themselves to financially supporting the widow and her children. A family, and society as a whole, needed either to allow widows broad enough freedom of conduct that they could act as heads of household or they had to pledge long-term financial support to them and their families. But even given the decision to grant widows some independence, widows’ families wished to have legal mechanisms to remind them that widows’ independence had limits. In many ways, the widow’s position demonstrates the limits of the law’s control over women and the clear distinction this society drew among single, married, and widowed women.3 Understanding the various law systems that existed in France at this time requires a balancing of the words of legal codes themselves with the ways they were employed. The interpretation of law through the mechanisms of strategy and lived practice, and the place of ambiguity in creating legal categories, formed part of what French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu terms the habitus of this culture. Habitus is a way to join an objective to a subjective perception of the world, but in a way that rejects this binary opposition by using a theory of practice to understand how both kinds of knowledge allow the individual to navigate society. It recognizes that “responses are first defined, without any calculation, in relation to objective potentialities.”4 But rather than simply conditioning the behavior of 3

In her study of noble widows Gayle Brunelle also examines the dissonance between the laws on women and the strategies widowed women used to maintain their independence of action. See her “Dangerous Liaisons: Mésalliance and Early Modern French Noblewomen,” French Historical Studies, 19/2 (1995): 75–103. 4 Pierre Bourdieu, The Logic of Practice, trans. Richard Nice (Stanford, 1990), p. 53.

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individuals, objective structures also yield to the goals and wishes of the individual. Habitus, then, “is a set of dispositions which incline agents to act and react in certain ways…(and to) generate practice, perceptions and attitudes which are ‘regular’ without being consciously co-ordinated or governed by any rule.”5 Such an understanding of the way objective structures shape individual reactions without clearly determining either their choices or the outcome of the process is particularly apt for the field of law. As an area of knowledge that expressed the coercive power of the state, as well as the power relations within the household, law was (and is) a structure that strongly marks transactions. Yet, as we shall see, individuals had strategies to impose their wishes on the contracts they signed, even when those contracts were strongly shaped by the demands of legal necessity. This chapter examines the ways various elements of the law shaped people’s lives and the choices they made, as well as the ways individuals used the law to achieve their own ends. By placing legal codes beside contracts, we can question the ways early modern French experienced and used law in this period. More broadly, this juxtaposition enters into the question of the relationship between theoretical norms and lived experience within the boundaries created by those norms. Did the terms of legal edicts change the ways Parisians formalized marriage? Did they shape inheritance strategies? Did they make an impact on relations within the family? How was law involved in creating ideas about gender and gender relations?

The Contours of the Law The civil and criminal legal structure of early modern France was the product of centuries of accretion. Based in the far past on the laws of the Roman Empire, over the centuries that classical legacy had melded with Germanic legal custom, the Church’s canon law, and various local laws governing areas that came under the control of French kings. By the eighteenth-century, France enjoyed the dubious distinction of harboring more than 200 autonomous legal systems within its borders. While regions remained distinct in certain ways, these legal systems were grouped into several families.6 In the north, civil law was organized into regional customs (coutumes), bodies of law that had developed over time from the precedents set in legal cases as well as on communal understanding. The south of

5

John B. Thompson, “Introduction,” in Pierre Bourdieu, Language and Symbolic Power (Cambridge, 1991), p. 12. Emphasis in original. 6 Jean Yver, Egalité entre héritiers et exclusion des enfants dotés. Essai de géographie coutumière (Paris, 1966). See in particular the map showing the largest legal groups.

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France, known as the region of written law (pays de droit écrit), used written law codes based loosely on the Justinian Code and Roman law.7 In addition to the plethora of legal customs, written law, the canon law of the Catholic Church, royal legislation, parliamentary decisions, and even discrete urban and corporate regulation played distinct roles in creating a regulatory structure.8 In theory, each of these systems had a sphere of jurisdiction although there was certainly overlap and contestation over issues of precedence. Local customary law regulated most matters of civil and criminal law. However, the body of royal legislation, which was becoming more ambitious in scope and better systematized during the early modern period, modified the provisions of regional custom. When there was a difference of opinion, royal word was supposed to prevail. But given the fluid nature of customary law, based as it was on interpretation of precedent, and the differences in ways of deciding cases that prevailed across the kingdom, there was not a clear theory of judicial precedence.9 Canon law enjoyed jurisdiction over matters deemed religious, a category that became narrower as French kings strengthened and centralized their domain. By the seventeenth century the Catholic Church’s sphere was reduced to authority over matters of faith, religious persons (priests, nuns, and monks), and decisions over what constituted a valid marriage. Even the Church’s jurisdiction over marriage had shrunk. Canon law laid out what constituted free consent to marriage by both partners, and Church courts could grant dispensations if spouses were related within the forbidden degrees of closeness (consanguinité).10 However, all issues of property and inheritance pertaining to the couple and their families, the meat of any marital arrangement, fell under the jurisdiction of civil law. In this arena, too, royal legislation aspired to alter the provisions of the local custom and to shape the ways property could be granted from generation to generation. However, in practice the weight of royal law was minimized in most marriage 7

Emile Chénon, Histoire générale du droit français public et privé des origines à 1815 (2 vols, Paris, 1926), vol. 2, p. 317. 8 Sally Falk-Moore, in Law as Process: An Anthropological Approach (London, 1978), discusses the difference between law and reglementary systems (what I have called here regulatory systems). She draws a distinction between sets of rules that are governmental as opposed to non-governmental: “It is inclusive enough to encompass government law and non-governmental site of rule-making and/or rule-enforcing. In complex societies ‘law’ can then be reserved for the government-enforceable” (p. 18). In early modern France, such codes that sought to regulate behavior were recognized and accepted by the royal authority. However, not all such systems were governmental in nature (e.g., canon law). The term “regulatory system” acknowledges both the varied origins and roles of these overlapping rules as well as their ability to shape, and even determine, behavior. 9 Adhémar Esmein, Cours élémentaire d’histoire du droit français (Paris, 1898), pp. 719 and 749. 10 For a fuller discussion of Church law see chapter two.

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contracts and the main determinant of property agreements remained the provisions of customary law. In this Byzantine thicket of competing laws, individuals needed some means of access. Mediation was particularly necessary given the myriad legislation that issued from the Crown, the Church, and custom, much of which offered conflicting regulations concerning the same problem.11 For those not in possession of a formal legal education, the notary, with his specialized training, offered assistance in translating the wishes for a settlement into a valid legal contract.12 The contracts themselves show that notaries used the works of commentators as well as their own knowledge to shape their interpretation of laws that often left ambiguities as to how they were to be applied. As we shall see, a contract could create nearly any kind of property arrangement, even when laws seemed to provide clear cut guidance on the matter. In Old Regime France, the law made incursions into people’s lives at two main junctures: marriage and death. Nonetheless, while law may have been visible most clearly at those two moments, it consistently structured relations within families. It was the marriage contract itself that declared the existence of a new family. This contract did so on a basic level when it assumed that the two parties signing together would mutually abide by its terms in creating their new household. Further, it determined how wealth and property would function to enrich and support the next generation. Survivor’s benefits and children’s stakes were broadly sketched out in the marriage contract, although there was no way of foreseeing the future value of assets. The greater the amount of the widow’s dower and survivor’s allowance, the less firm hold children and other lineage members would have on the deceased’s wealth. The contract balanced all of these conflicting interests and produced a result marked by compromise. Thus the marriage contract laid out property relations not simply for the couple signing the paper but also for their future offspring and their kin. The testament acted as a corollary to this document, determining the disposition of a certain amount of property not already claimed in the marriage contract. But ultimately it played a minor role in the disposition of wealth as the will was fundamentally an

11

This complexity prompted David Bell, in his book on Old Regime lawyers, to note that “(m)anuals for aspiring barristers routinely warned that a basic mastery of French jurisprudence took decades of applied study.” Lawyers into Citizens: The Making of a Political Elite in Old Regime France (New York, 1996), p. 23. 12 Julie Hardwick, The Practice of Patriarchy: Gender and the Politics of Household Authority in Early Modern France (University Park, 1998), p. 2. Hardwick points out the critical role of the notary in mediating relations between subjects and the early modern state. Barbara Diefendorf cites one probate inventory that includes a legal tome, although her subjects too rely heavily on notaries for making contracts. Paris City Councillors in the Sixteenth Century: The Politics of Patrimony (Princeton, 1983), p. 178.

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individual contract rather than a family one. In the end, these two types of legal documents served as a base and structure for the household unit.13 The process of creating legal documents was fairly well established. Notaries resided in cities of all sizes and constituted a well-trained corps of professionals trained to draw up contracts, frequently based on certain established formulas, that would have the force of a binding agreement.14 Members of many strata of French society, from the wealthiest to the more modest, used the services of a notary to ensure the validity of their contractual agreements. In addition, by the seventeenthcentury, French civil law was established in written codes, even if the legal system of the kingdom as a whole was not regularized. Merchants in Paris who signed contracts could have faith that the system was stable enough to ensure that their agreements were legally binding.15 In addition, legal specialists themselves were becoming more aware of their professional identity and imposing stricter standards of conduct and training on themselves.16 Finally, the genre of the legal commentary, works where prominent legal scholars clarified and glossed elements of civil and criminal law, became increasingly popular in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Although there were competing realms of legal regulation, the royal government aspired to present the law, a reflection of the King’s power, as the sole source of justice, and by bringing more and more local jurisdiction under central control to minimize and eventually eradicate local nodes of legal power. While the Ordinances of 1539, and particularly of 1670, did move toward the goal of placing the dispensation of all criminal justice in royal courts, these projects still fell short of the total regularization of the justice system that each of these monarchs had envisioned.17 In each of these reforms Francis I and Louis XIV and the Parlement of Paris hoped to carve out a more substantial and stable role in the juridical process for the central government. For example, the Ordinance of 1539 made the King’s procurator the focal point for all information pertaining to a criminal case and left the final decision about a case in his hands.18 In contrast, the Parlements envisioned using changes in the law to create a political system where the power of the monarch was constrained by a strong Parlement. And in the mid-eighteenth century a number of philosophes called for the reform of the criminal legal system, most notably the elimination of torture as 13

Jean-Paul Poisson, “Histoire et actes notariés: problematique et methodologie,” in Bernard Vogler (ed.), Les actes notariés. Source de l’histoire sociale XVIe-XIXe siècles (Strasbourg, 1979), p. 21. 14 For notarial practice, see Jean-Paul Poisson, Notaires et société: travaux d’histoire et de sociologie notariale (Paris, 1985), pp. 106–8. 15 Hardwick, Practice of Patriarchy, p. 18. 16 Bell, Lawyers and Citizens. 17 Adhémar Esmein, A History of Continental Criminal Procedure, trans. John Simpson (London, 1914), pp. 148–50; 183–6. 18 Ibid., p. 156.

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an interrogation method, in hopes of shaping a more rational and humane criminal justice system and society. Each of these projects saw in the law a way to create a better, more harmonious and prosperous society. In these instances the law was not a means of coercion but a means of realizing ideals and creating a certain kind of society. And, in the domain of civil law, one of the most common ways that the law functioned to create that society was through the construction of marriage.

The Legal Conception of Marriage While it was local custom, here the Coutume de Paris, that offered guidance for settling property issues within a marriage contract, it was royal law that defined more broadly what constituted a marriage and how a valid marriage could be created. In creating a definition of marriage, royal edicts worked in relation to, and at times in opposition to, canon law. Traditionally, canon law pronounced upon what constituted a valid marriage. Because marriage was a sacrament in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, rather than a civil contract, the Church claimed primary jurisdiction in this domain. The Church asserted that it had the exclusive right to decide who could marry and in what fashion. But distribution of property to the new couple was not part of the sacramental union and thus was not regulated by Church law. According to the doctrine of the Roman Catholic Church it was simple to effect a marriage. Two individuals, one male and one female, needed to consent to their union to create a valid marriage. Even the promise of a marriage in the future became as binding as a complete nuptial vow and prevented either engaged party from marrying another. Obviously there was no possibility for divorce in Catholic Europe, so a marriage once recognized as valid in the eyes of the Church, sole arbiter of marital status, could be dissolved only by the death of one of the partners or an expensive and politically charged annulment by the Pope. This religious conception of marriage privileged individual choice over any other consideration. In defining marriage as a relationship entered freely by both parties, and requiring nothing else, the Catholic Church was resisting the growing trend of considering marriage as an economic and social transaction. By granting individuals the ability to contract a marriage privately and without familial consent the Church was providing children with a means of escaping what it considered degrading “commercial” marriages. This conception of the meaning of marriage clashed strongly with the concerns of many French elite. Those families with property, offices, and influence planned marital alliances to enhance their prestige, wealth, and political connections. The clan’s desire for upward mobility trumped a child’s emotional wishes. French monarchs of the early modern period showed by the edicts they drafted that their sympathies rested with the wishes of families. Beginning with the passage of the Edict against Clandestine Marriages in 1557, continuing in the Edict on Second Marriage in 1560, and culminating in the Edict

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regulating the Formalities of Marriage in 1687, royal regulations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, while narrowly avoiding a definitive break with the Roman Church, made it progressively more difficult for children to contract unsanctioned unions.19 In order to understand why the royal government was becoming increasingly concerned with regulating marriage, to the point of provoking the Church, we need to consider a number of contexts. Two situations, one broad and long-term and the other acute, influenced Henry II’s passage of the Edict against Clandestine Marriages. The Council of Trent convened itself periodically from 1545 to 1563, with deliberations on the definition of marriage finally formalized in 1563. The French bishops who attended the council pushed for the adoption of parental consent as a condition for contracting a valid marriage. The Tridentine pronouncement on marriage, called Tametsi, repudiated this demand. Partly as a reaction to this repudiation, the French clergy and the Crown did not accept the decisions of Trent until 1614.20 The council did put new requirements into place for contracting a marriage, but in the end they maintained that if the two partners had freely consented to the marriage then it could not be dissolved.21 Henry II opposed this decision and proceeded to use royal law to compel prior parental consent for all unions. This bitter disagreement between the French monarch and the Pontiff foregrounded subsequent legislation on marriage. A 1556 incident involving marital strategy in the royal house demonstrated the possible repercussions of allowing marriage to be determined by individual promises. However, what was important about this particular incident was the way it reflected the great anxiety about marriage that French families, particularly elite ones, were experiencing at this moment.22 Henry II planned to marry his widowed illegitimate daughter, Diane de France, to François de Montmorency, the son of his Constable. Such an alliance, ardently desired by both Henry and the Montmorency family, would help cement the Constable’s loyalty to his king and bind one of the most powerful noble houses to the royal family. However, the match was endangered when it came out that the prospective bridegroom had made a promise of marriage before witnesses to one of the Queen’s maids of honor. To make the situation even more difficult, the couple 19 François André Isambert, Recueil des anciennes lois françaises depuis l’an 420 jusqu’à la Révolution de 1789 (29 vols, Paris: Imprimerie nationale, 1821–33), vol. 13, p. 469; vol. 14, p. 36; vol. 16, p. 520. 20 Gabriel LeBras, “Note sur le droit et les institutions de l’église de France au XVIIe siècle,” Dix-septième siècle, (1963): 74. Even then acceptance was conditional. 21 Jean Bernhard, “Le mariage,” in Jean Bernhard, Charles Lefebvre, and Francis Rapp (eds), L’époque de la réforme et du Concile de Trente (Paris, 1990), pp. 245, 264–5. 22 A number of works address the problem of parental consent and mésalliance. A selection of such works include: Diefendorf, Paris City Councillors; James Farr, Authority and Sexuality in Early Modern Burgundy (New York, 1995); Brunelle, “Dangerous Liaisons.”

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acted as though they were married, publicizing their promises and engaging in sexual relations.23 Under canon law, the simple mutual promise of marriage resulted in the presumption of a lawful union. Even before the alliance was made public and approved by the families of the couple, it was irrevocable. Legally François de Montmorency could not wed Diane de France as he was already married in the eyes of the Catholic Church. However, royal politics demanded that the match be made, so the couple released each other from their promises and Montmorency asked Pope Paul IV for a dispensation, essentially a dissolution of the earlier marital promise he had made, so he could marry Diane de France. The Pope refused on the grounds that the Church continued to recognize marriage contracted by simple mutual promise. Most likely the Pope’s obstreperousness stemmed in part from the French delegation’s attitude in the meetings of the Tridentine council. At the moment when this crisis was taking place, bishops were meeting to decide what in fact constituted a valid marriage for the Roman Church. The French prelates insisted that parental consent be made mandatory, a position the Church was loathe to endorse. Thus the Pope and his supporters were contending with the French bishopric’s opposition when this request for a dispensation came to the papal court. Without the Church’s dispensation, the hoped for marriage could not legitimately take place, a set-back Henri II and Montmorency père refused to accept. The King issued a royal decree stating that any marriage contracted without parental consent was invalid. Diane de France married François de Montmorency. This incident is significant not in its details but in the new era of conflict it ushered in between the French crown and the Roman church. It also marks a fundamental change in the conception of marriage and the family as reflected in royal legislation. Keeping in mind the personal, political, and ecclesiastical background of the Council of Trent and Diane’s marriage, we can now turn to the series of laws this context influenced, and analyze how it shaped the new conception of the family. While Henri II may have issued the Edict against Clandestine Marriages specifically in response to the debates taking place at Trent and his daughter’s marriage, the ideas about marriage that this edict revealed grew out of widely held opinions. In particular, elite families clamored for a means to maintain control over their children’s marital alliances. Without this control established, marriages might be considered mésalliances, and thereby thwart a lineage’s hopes for social prestige and advancement.24 In fact, legislation in the areas of written law, influenced by precepts of Roman law, did require parental consent to marriage

23 Frederic J. Baumgartner, Henry II, King of France, 1547–1559 (Durham, 1988), pp. 161–2. Also private communication, Anne Lefèbvre-Teillard. 24 Diefendorf, Paris City Councillors, p. 157.

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even though such a provision was technically at odds with canon law.25 Thus Henri’s extension of such a requirement to his entire kingdom was not simply an act of defiance against a pope who was opposing him. It was also an affirmation of southern French practice and northern French wishes. The edict begins with a sense of urgency and moral decline, as well as a tone of outrage. It claimed that due to daily complaints about marriages contracted by children out of a carnal, indiscreet, and disorderly desire, in defiance of and against the will and consent of their fathers and mothers, (and) not having before their eyes fear of God, (nor) the honor, reverence and obedience that they owe their parents

the King was forced to act decisively to stem the rising tide of these insidious matches.26 While the King could not move the hearts of such defiant children who “from fear of God, the honor and the paternal and maternal reverence did not turn back from doing ill,” they might nonetheless do so from fear of “temporal pain,” namely, being disinherited.27 Not only would children who were disinherited lose their share of the family’s wealth, they were also barred from challenging this testamental act, and would be obligated to return any gifts (donations et avantages) they had received from their parents. Such disobedient children were also prevented from claiming wealth promised them in their parents’ marriage contract or claiming anything under customary law. In short, all of the possible legal avenues of Old Regime wealth transference were closed off to individuals who entered a marriage without prior parental consent. In addition, anyone who helped children marry without their parents’ consent was subject to punishment. These restrictions legally applied only to men under the age of 30 and women under 25, although the edict urged all children, regardless of age, to ask advice of their fathers and mothers.28 This edict marks a change in the way marriage was treated under the law in France. From this point forward, royal legislation sought to define marriage more narrowly while still formally acknowledging the Church’s primacy in sanctioning marriage. From the sixteenth to the late eighteenth century there were 23 royal pronouncements about what constituted a valid marriage. Of those 23, all but five reiterated in some fashion the need for parental consent to a proposed match. Two of those remaining five dealt with widows’ remarriages. Thus the issue of parental 25

Jules Basdevant, Des rapports de l’église et de l’état dans la législation du mariage du Concile de Trente au Code Civil (Paris, 1900), p. 3. 26 Isambert, Receuil général des anciennes lois, vol. 13, p. 469. 27 Ibid. Note that the ordinance specifically names paternal and maternal obedience so at least linguistically this edict was not written solely to shore up paternal power but rather parental power. 28 Ibid. At the end of the edict it also states that children of remarried widows did not need formal permission but should nonetheless ask for advice.

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consent, a requirement that was asserted repeatedly over these three centuries, was at the heart of the Crown’s conception of the family. In addition, the repetition of these ordinances suggests not only its importance but also suggests that some children continued to flaunt the law and marry partners of their own, rather than their parents’, choice.29 The language of this body of royal legislation reveals more about the Crown’s conception of family structure and gender roles, and the ideology that informed its conception. Each time an edict forbade clandestine marriage it stated that children could not marry without the consent of “their fathers, mothers, tutors or guardians.”30 This requirement reveals both a hierarchical conception of authority over children as well as a leveling of that authority. It privileges paternal power in that fathers are always the first of the people who could sanction children’s marriages. This ordering implies that a father’s blessing would be sought out first and would be most valuable, but this legislation recognizes a mother’s or guardian’s permission to be as valid as a father’s. It does not require that in the absence of a father, a child would need multiple permissions. A child without a father did not need the blessing of his or her mother along with other family members. The mother’s word sufficed on its own. As such, while this law subtly privileges the father’s authority over his child by consistently placing him first in the list of accepted authority figures, it does not weigh his word as legally more valuable than that of the mother’s. Further, the legislation bolsters the ability of the mother to hold the position of guardian over her children, particularly in a society where children and their labor comprised a valuable asset. It helped a widow gain control over a resource with important economic, social, and psychological worth, that was denied to such women in other societies.31 More interesting in this regard is the wording of the Edict on Second Marriages dating from 1560. This legislation limited the amount of property a widow could dispose of if she remarried. The law explained that “not recognizing that they were being sought after more for their property than for themselves, they abandon their wealth to their new husbands…leaving aside the natural duty to their children.”32 29

Danielle Haase-Dubosc examines the problem of clandestine marriage from the point of view of the children involved, who entered such alliances strategically in order to try to thwart parental wishes. Ravie et enlevée: De l’enlèvement des femmes comme stratégie matrimoniale au XVIIe siècle (Paris, 1999). 30 This is quoted from the Edict of Blois, passed by Henry III and the Parlement of Paris in 1579. Isambert, Recueil des anciennes lois, vol. 14, p. 392, although the language is identical in every edict that outlaws secret marriages. 31 See for example the discussions in Frank S. Frick, “Widows in the Hebrew Bible: A Transactional Approach,” in Athalya Brenner (ed.), A Feminist Companion to Exodus to Deuteronomy (Sheffield, 1994), p. 141 and Betty Potash, “Widows in Africa: An Introduction,” in Betty Potash (ed.), Widows in African Societies: Choices and Constraints (Stanford, 1986), p. 4. 32 Isambert, Recueil des anciennes lois, vol. 14, p. 36.

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In order to prevent such a travesty, a widow with children was allowed to grant her new spouse only the amount of property that one of her children could claim. In this way, a stepfather could not dispossess his wife’s children from a previous marriage of their patrimony. However, the law goes on to make a comment about the relationship that should prevail between a widowed mother and her children. It remarks that “seeing themselves (children) deprived of the comfort and assistance of their fathers, widows must use every means to perform the double duty of mother and father: the distress of good families follows from such gifts (at remarriage) besides the quarrels between mothers and their children, and consequently the diminishing of the strength of the public state.”33 What is fascinating about the wording of this law is the emphasis placed on the duties of a widowed mother toward her children, the assumption that a woman could assume a role both paternal and maternal, and the fear that the vigor of the state depended on good relations between a widow and her children. Obviously the importance of the family headed by a father was not at all questioned in this law, and certainly fathers were revered in a way that mothers were not. However, at least as far as this legislation is concerned, the family was at the foundation of the state even if it was headed by a woman. The ambivalence about widows that emerges in this law, which on the one hand describes them as women who could be seduced by a gold-digger unless restrained by law and on the other hand holds them up as part of the foundation of the family, and hence the state, appears in other legislation governing widows. In the Edict of Blois, the problem of widows marrying beneath their estates, and thus endangering the family’s prosperity, resurfaced. At this time the portrayal of widows was less sympathetic than in the earlier edict. Widows were no longer viewed as the bond holding the family together and helping their children get on without fathers. In the Edict of Blois emphasis was placed on mismanagement of family wealth and, again, ill-conceived marriages. To prevent widows from giving away what rightfully belonged to their children, the law forbade them from giving any gifts to their new spouses. Nor could widows sell property in order to contribute more assets to a second marriage. A remarriage, whether inappropriate or desirable, posed a threat to the wealth that had belonged to the first household and its members. In order to protect the family from a widow’s poor judgment or a suitor’s greed, the edict treated all second marriages as suspect and regulated their terms. On the surface this edict appears to pass harsh judgment on widows, suspecting them of being unable to resist the charms of any ne’er-do-well who might cross their paths. However, comparing this edict to the ones banning children from entering clandestine marriages reveals a more nuanced picture. The legislation 33 Ibid., vol. 14, p. 36. “(O)utre les querelles et divisions d’entre les mères et les enfans s’en ensuit la désolation des bonnes familles, et conséquemment diminution de la force de l’estat publique.”

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addressing mésalliances for children meted out the harshest punishments available, namely cutting such children out of the family patrimony and threatening those who entered such marriages with the charge of seduction and the possibility of being sentenced to death.34 Such provisions revealed the power of the family’s head at its broadest. In contrast, the Edict of Blois, while speaking of widows in unflattering terms, did little to constrain the rights of the widow herself. Because a woman who had children from an earlier relationship was expected to place her loyalty to them above any emotional attachment to a new husband, the law required her to make that attachment concrete by preserving her children’s wealth from a new husband. But despite its unflattering language, this law did not take any measures to deprive widows of the rights they had over their own property. Here they were prevented only from granting new husbands property obtained from a deceased husband. But it did not deprive the remarried wife of her survivor’s benefits or her dower. Even a less than desirable remarriage did not strip the widow of the life use of some of her deceased husband’s property. Particularly if she owned the tools of a trade and commanded skills, the new couple could enhance its wealth with riches from the prior marriage. While she could not grant these assets to her new husband, their household could benefit from the goods and income they provided. Indeed, rather than creating a further limitation over the widow’s use of her wealth, this law prevented a new spouse from exercising control over his wife’s property. In a sense, the widow gained greater control over the ultimate fate of her wealth from an earlier marriage by being obliged to maintain control over it herself rather than having to hand its administration over to a man. The law required a widow to conserve her children’s’ inheritance, which did not so much restrict her autonomy as it showed the crown’s interest in shaping what it deemed proper family relations. This apprehension over widows contracting inappropriate marriages, and the laws that expressed that anxiety, stemmed in part from the early modern conception of families. In this period, when spouses created a new household by marrying, they continued to be conceived of as members of their birth families. As we shall see, the way property ownership was understood shows that families and partners signing a marriage contract considered most of the wealth given to the bride and groom to be on loan rather than an outright gift. Of primary importance in drawing up a marriage contract was the maintenance of family control over properties given to children. However, the perception of spouses as remaining members of their birth families went beyond property issues. As David Sabean has remarked in his extensive study of German village life, “(a)ffines are the quintessential enemies because they define the group in which one finds marriage partners, one’s equals, those people whom it is necessary to cooperate with in order

34

The issues of abduction and marriage are central to Farr’s, Authority and Sexuality.

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to survive but with whom one is in the greatest competition.”35 Thus there was always the feeling that despite a marriage, even a long one, the two spouses had conflicting interests in the final reckoning. And a prime moment to act upon those conflicting loyalties, between one’s interests versus the interests of one’s spouse, was at the death of one of the marriage partners. Under Parisian customary law, a woman was legally emancipated by her husband’s death and could make her own decisions, including the decision about whether and whom to marry. As such, neither the widow’s birth family nor that of her deceased husband could dictate the way she used what was now her own wealth. This law on second marriages, subtle in the same way that the law on clandestine marriages was in that it went as far as it could given other legal mandates, constrained what elements of the widow’s property it could. Royal law could limit the ways a widow disposed of her property, but only after her death. Without changing the mechanism of legal emancipation, this royal ordinance could not tell the widow who to marry or how to spend the interest on her property during a remarriage. Interestingly, this law did not demand that guardians be appointed for widows under a certain age, although such a move would have coincided with the spirit of the law on clandestine marriages. So while widows saw their property rights limited in certain royal edicts, they did not see their fundamental legal independence curtailed as children did. The widow’s independence from family control evidenced itself in the latitude she had to manage her children’s wealth. After her husband’s death, a woman with children under the age of majority had the option of maintaining a fictional marital community and using the family’s common resources to support the family. Such an arrangement could be more advantageous to the children, especially if they were very young. They could continue being supported by the community rather than come immediately into their inheritance at an age where they were not capable of managing money on their own or have those assets become the subject of family conflict.36 But recall that children who were grown but not yet 25 were legal minors. One of the purposes of depriving children of emancipation was to give the head of the family the option of maintaining control over property. The widow, head of the family in the husband’s absence, served this function. Only if a woman wished to remarry was she obliged to divide the marital community. Until that moment, when she committed herself to the creation of a new family, she was free to do as she pleased with the family’s fortune.

35

David W. Sabean, Power in the Blood. Popular Culture and Village Discourse in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge, 1984), p. 32. 36 Micheline Baulant, “The Scattered Family: Another Aspect of Seventeenth-Century Demography,” in, Robert Forster and Orest Ranum (eds), Family and Society: Selections from the Annales, Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations, trans. Elborg Forster and Patricia Ranum (Baltimore, 1976), p. 109.

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Widows could use this prerogative strategically. Geneviève Tixerand and Madeleine Rousseau, widows of artisans, maintained the community of property long after the death of their husband. Each woman was obliged to commission an inventory only before she remarried, in order to ensure that the children of her first marriage, and any other heirs, received their share of the first husband’s assets.37 Tixerand drew up a probate inventory three days before her remarriage; Rousseau just one day ahead. Those inventories only briefly enumerated their scant belongings; they were official but desultory accounts that allowed the first marriage to close and a new one to begin. The contracts for the subsequent marriages made use of these inventories though. In each marriage contract, the bride contributed her portion of the first marriage’s estate to the new household. While neither woman could endow her new husband with a substantial gift or inheritance, each woman used what she claimed from her first marriage to enrich her new household. These examples illustrate the latitude women enjoyed in managing their households and wealth in widowhood. Neither Tixerand nor Rousseau accounted for how they had managed their household funds, a demand the law did not include. Any mismanagement that had happened did not surface in the inventory that closed the earlier marriage community, and there were no repercussions for the widow. A widow simply needed to provide a formal description of the estate before moving herself and her property into a new marital community. The purpose of the Edict on Second Marriages was purportedly to safeguard the welfare of children, but without diminishing or questioning their mothers’ legal autonomy as the head of the household. Here we see the edict in use but it appears that its fiery rhetoric did not reflect the way the edict was applied. First, the edict, while supplying some measure of protection for children, did little to shape daily use of wealth. Second, various legal commentators that explain this law on second marriages applied equally to men and women.38 Legal manuals that explained how to apply legislation in particular contexts highlight the role of legal scholars in mediating between the text of the law and its use in practice. True, the language of the Edict on Second Marriages was unambiguously gendered, not only in its singling out of widows as the object of its provisions, but also in its description of women as untrustworthy. According

37

AN, MC, étude XI/574, 27 January 1751 and 17 April 1751. Pierre Néron and Etienne Girard, Recueil d’édits et d’ordonnances royaux, sur le fait de la justice et autres matières (2 vols, Paris, 1720) vol. 1, p. 366. See also Isambert’s commentary on this law in Recueil des anciennes lois, vol. 14, p. 38, as well as Charles Dumoulin, Coustumes de la prevosté et vicomté de Paris (Paris, 1678), p. 417. Jean Baptiste Denisart, in his Collection de décisions nouvelles et de notions relatives à la jurisprudence actuelle (4 vols, Paris, 1771) also notes in discussing this edict that “the same prohibition applies for gifts and donations that men make to their second or third wives, because we find the same objections with regard to them,” vol. 3, p. 424. 38

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to the description offered in this body of law, widows’ lust and romantic sensibilities would override their natural attachment to their children and thus render them unable to protect their patrimony. Yet despite its emphasis on women’s shortcomings, the Edict on Second Marriages applied as much to men as to women. Any man who remarried could not grant his new wife survivor’s benefits that exceeded the portion of one of his children. Men were expected to have an attachment to their children, and an interest in maintaining their inheritance, just as women were.39 Apart from recognizing the emotional bonds that tied a family together, this edict also showed the logic that was meant to underpin a successful family unit. Wealth was intended to enrich the mother’s and father’s biological heirs, and was not to enrich new families created by subsequent marriages. Men were as hampered by these imperatives as women were. Although the law singled out women in its rhetoric, its practical application applied to anyone contracting a remarriage. These two marital laws marked the beginning of the Crown’s engagement in matters of marriage and the attendant property issues. They reveal a trend in attitudes toward marriage that would continue through the eighteenth century. The royal government’s idealized family, as reflected in the laws it wrote from the sixteenth century onwards, was one with a single person authorized to make decisions for all members and with an interest in maintaining wealth for the lineage’s advancement rather than allowing it to be used for the personal gratification of an individual. However, within these parameters there was some room for variation. As all of the laws forbidding clandestine marriage state, the person in the family expected to decide upon marital strategies was the father, given that he was always named first in marriage legislation. But it was clearly acceptable for the mother or a guardian to make such a decision in the absence of the father. In fact, apart from the positioning of the father as first in the list of acceptable legal agents, the language of the law makes no gender distinctions and does not even explicitly express a preference for a paternal head of the family.40 Widowed mothers certainly arranged marriages for their children, and authorized those marriages in contracts by themselves. In practice there seems to have been little resistance to a widow taking on this position as leader of the family. And this law did not offer any obstacles to the widow’s assumption of the role of head of household. It simply indicated that minors needed authorization from an officially sanctioned elder to enter into an engagement. This interpretation of royal law as privileging a family headed by a single individual, regardless of sex, is at odds with recent historiography of legal change 39

David Hunt, Parents and Children in History: The Psychology of Family Life in Early Modern France (New York, 1970), p. 112. 40 Those who could consent to a marriage on behalf of minors were “their fathers, mother, tutors, or guardians.” Isambert, Recueil des anciennes lois, vol. 14, p. 392.

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in this period. Sarah Hanley, most notably, has examined the laws of the household for this period and has seen in them a means for the French Crown to enhance the power of the father at the expense of both his wife and children. She has termed this move toward more consolidated and authoritarian paternal rule the French Law Canon, “a marital-regime system of male governance, domestic and political, along parallel lines.”41 This male system of governance held that subordination in the home was critical to subordination in the political sphere; that it was, in fact, a precursor to women’s disenfranchisement from political action. At its most extreme, Hanley asserts that “women were responsible for offenses that laws must address, accused them of fraud in obtaining marital separations, or openly charged women with potential wreckage of the family and, by analogy, the state, through adultery (an act of treason).”42 Given this complicity between fathers and the State, women were hedged into a role from which it was nearly impossible to emerge as legal actors. Hanley argues that despite the material claims a woman and widow could make on her husband’s property, she remained locked into a position of weakness in this society. At first glance it appears to be difficult to refute Hanley’s observations. There is no question that women had problematic access to public power and authority. As noted earlier, even those laws that pertained to both men and women, like the Edict on Second Marriages, used misogynistic language to justify their provisions. The need for this law was couched in terms of women’s weaknesses, not in terms of the conflict of interest that might emerge when a widow or widower remarried. And a statute regarding the inheritance of offices sneeringly refers to women who had fraudulently obtained separations from their husbands, presumably to have the freedom to squander their financial resources.43 Such insults were stock in trade when many writers discussed women in the early modern period. But such an analysis privileges the language of a few pieces of legislation over both the overall choice of discourse of royal edicts from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries, and, more importantly, practice within families that faced the very situations described by these laws. When placed in this far broader context, the linguistic implications of the Edict on Second Marriages, and the outcomes of 41 Sarah Hanley, “Social Sites of Political Practice in France: Lawsuits, Civil Rights, and the Separation of Powers in Domestic and State Government, 1500–1800,” American Historical Review, 102/1 (1997): 29. In Hanley’s earlier works she used the term “FamilyState Compact” to describe the relationship among women, authority, politics, and the household as it was described in royal legislation. “Family and State in Early Modern France: The Marriage Pact,” in Marilyn Boxer and Jean Quataert (eds.), Connecting Spheres: Women in the Western World (Oxford, 1987) and “Engendering the State: Family Formation and State Building in Early Modern France,” French Historical Studies, 16/2 (1989): 4–27. 42 Hanley, “Social Sites,” p. 32. 43 Isambert, Recueil des anciennes lois, vol. 18, p. 329.

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the separation cases that Hanley uses to describe the application of the French Law Canon, appear more anomalous than descriptive of an entire system. Furthermore, if we look at widows as a group separate from women, married or single, a more nuanced picture of the status of women under the law surfaces. For example, in a 1606 declaration the King forbid notaries from allowing women to forfeit their survivors’ benefits in their marriage contracts or any other agreements they might draw up with their husbands or families.44 Any such agreements were declared void and notaries would be punished for their transgression. The purpose of such a declaration was to ensure that women could not be defrauded of their legal rights, and that they would have a means of support in the event that their husbands died. But the language used did not rehash women’s weakness or susceptibility to being fooled. It instead treated the issue as a problem for notaries who needed to look out for women’s interests in the contracts they drafted. To turn to a related example of the use of contracts to assert women’s needs, a separation decree of 1787 describes the process a woman, married to her second husband, used to assert control over her own wealth. A wife could seek a property separation (separation de biens) if she believed her husband was managing her assets irresponsibly. If a judge agreed, he could order the husband to account for his wife’s property and then force him to return all that money to her.45 After that point the couple would continue to live together but would keep their finances separated. In this instance, a woman’s husband was ordered to return 31,500 livres to his wife. She had acquired most of that wealth from her first husband’s sizeable estate, and thus she had a stronger argument for taking its management away from her second husband.46 In order to meet this obligation the husband eventually needed to sell some of his personal affects, including his watch and clothing. But the apparent hardship this man experienced did not prevent his wife and the courts from pressing ahead with her petition. In this case, and other separation cases, the wife was allowed some independence from her husband, and there was even a tacit implication that she would manage her money better than her husband had done. Despite the male-encoded norms regarding the use of family property, we see that in practice the legal terrain was more than simply a place where women were subjugated to male right. The situation was more complicated. What stands out in 44

Ibid., vol.15, pp. 302–3. In addition to a financial separation (called a séparation des biens), a woman could also request a physical separation (séparation de corps). In the latter case a judge decided that a woman was being so badly abused that she could no longer safely live with her husband. In some sense, this served as an alternative to divorce. On separations see Hanley, “Social Sites of Political Practice”; Nadine Bérenguier, “Victorious Victims: Women and Publicity in Mémoires Judiciaires,” in Elizabeth Goldsmith and Dena Goodman (eds), Going Public: Women and Publishing in Early Modern France (Ithaca, 1995); James Traer, Marriage and the Family in Eighteenth-Century France (Ithaca, 1980). 46 AN, MC, étude XXIV/959. 2 August 1787. 45

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this legislation on marriage and the family is that women, and particularly widows, form a separate legal category, but not one that was coterminous with that of legal minor. It is certainly true that several laws draw upon derogatory language to describe women and their behavior. The legislation on separations speaks of women as liars and manipulators. The Edict on Second Marriages describes women in similar terms. We know that women did not enjoy the same legal rights under the law that men did, although we need to keep in mind the distinctions the law drew among single, married, and widowed women. While the language of the law parroted a patriarchal ideology that excluded women from public roles based on the deficiencies of their sex, it also recognized the practical need to empower certain women. The Old Regime law that excluded women from having full control over their own property when married, allowed single women to support themselves and widowed women to govern their households. Expediency could overcome gender bias, a point that comes through in the ways that families and couples drew up marriage contracts.

Property as the Heart of Marriage The particular points of law at issue in drawing up marriage contracts had little to do with gender relations. Contracts revolved around who received property and under what terms. Parisian property law distributed and classified property according to two criteria. The first consideration was the kind of property. As in most other legal codes, moveable property (meubles) was governed by different principles than immoveable, or real, property (immeubles). Cash money was of course the most obvious form of moveable wealth, but clothing, household goods, and the tools of a trade were also considered moveable goods. Real estate, a venal office, or an annuity were several common forms of immoveable property. Second, the source of the property determined in part how it could be used. Wealth acquired by an individual, called acquêts or conquêts, had a different level of flexibility than inherited wealth, propres. In most instances, inherited property could not be sold or otherwise permanently alienated from the family line. To determine the ways property could move, it was laid against these two axes, its quality was determined, and then it could be used or distributed. In theory, when a couple married all of the spouses’ liquid wealth, either that given to them by their parents or assets they had earned through their labor, entered the marital community of property. The immovable property that remained was attached to each spouse, as it was in the process of being acquired by a new generation, and the new family could spend only the interest on that property. In order to clarify the nature of the property a household possessed, it was the task of the marriage contract to lay out the amount and type of property each partner brought so that there would be no conflict over how the new household’s

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resources could be used.47 Although each spouse contributed to the community of property, according to the Parisian custom the husband was the head of the marital fund.48 As such he had control over the family’s wealth, and his wife had a limited role in the management of their assets. The husband could employ community property as he wished, without consulting his wife or family before doing so. When two families provided funds for the marital community they were giving over control of those assets to the future husband without any means to limit their use. But the management of inheritance property (propres) did entail certain restrictions. A husband could not alienate his wife’s real property without her permission. Furthermore, if a husband alienated his wife’s real property, he would eventually face accountability for that action. Her family could demand its restoration the moment the marriage ended, generally upon a spouse’s death. As we saw earlier, if the husband and wife had respected the property terms of the marriage contract, a surviving spouse could hold on to the family’s assets until remarriage without having to distribute anything to heirs. The prospect of having to raise a large sum of money on extremely short notice served as a brake on men’s uses of their wives’ property, although they still generally made cautious use of these assets over the course of the marriage. In practice, the system rarely functioned so predictably and couples used property as was most useful for them rather than according to legal guidelines. Given the underlying tension each family must have felt at the moment of consummating an alliance, both sides generally negotiated a property classification that benefited their child and their family’s interests without alienating future inlaws. Both families wished to maintain control over their assets, particularly the woman’s which understood that she would have limited control over her own wealth after she married. But they also wanted to provide enough property so their 47

For this paragraph and what follows see the following sources: François OlivierMartin, Histoire de la coûtume de la prévôté et vicomté de Paris (2 vols, Paris, 1972); Ralph Giesey, “Rules of Inheritance and Strategies of Mobility in Prerevolutionary France,” American Historical Review, 82/2 (1977): 271–89; Yver, Egalité entre héritiers; Jacques Lelièvre, La pratique des contrats de marriage chez les notaries au Châtelet de Paris de 1769 à 1804 (Paris, 1959); Paul Ourliac and J. de Malafosse, Histoire du droit privé (3 vols, Paris, 1961). 48 If a woman ran an independent business she could seek the status of femme marchande publique which gave her the right to conduct the affairs of her enterprise without having continually to seek out her husband’s permission. Once he gave his initial approval of this status for his wife, she was free to run her business without his interference. However, this independence did not apply to joint assets. In their household the husband remained in charge of the money. Women holding this status were relatively few in eighteenth-century Paris. Jacques Lelièvre found 35 contracts identifying women as femme marchande publique out of the 3500 marriage contracts he examined. See his La pratique des contrats de marriage.

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children could live in reasonable circumstances. The marriage portion served another end, as it was an advance of the child’s eventual inheritance, and allowed a family to make a gradual transfer of its assets to heirs. The strategy employed in most marriage contracts to broker these conflicting aims was to provide a rather limited sum for the community of property which the new household could use as it wished, and to classify the rest as immoveable property that could generate interest but could not be sold out of the family’s possession. One problem a number of families encountered with this strategy was that they wished to provide their children with moveable property that would help them establish a new household, but at the same time wanted to see their assets given the protection of real property. In the sixteenth century annuities presented a problem in this respect since any such financial instrument established on the basis of a cash payment was treated like moveable property and the annuity was considered to have the quality of the collateral it was based upon. Such a classification entailed certain risks as a bride who brought a hefty annuity based on a cash payment could see her husband squander the entire sum, principal and interest alike. It was the potential financial risk such a situation posed that led to the creation of the category propre fictifs, fictional real property. According to Ralph Giesey, all annuities had been considered moveable property prior to the late Middle Ages, given that interest payments were made in cash. Then rentes foncières, annuities based on the value of land or a house, were classified as real property since they were based on the value of the immoveable property given to set up the annuity in the first place. Once that principle had been established, assets were not always categorized according to the traditional division between moveable and immoveable property. Thus a yearly cash payment that came from such an annuity could be reckoned in the same way as a house; thereafter it became possible to manipulate property categories even further. So rentes constituées, based not on a piece of property but as interest on the payment of a lump sum of money, came to be considered not as moveable property but as real property and thereby subject to certain legal strictures. As Giesey explains, rentes foncières earlier had been deemed immovables by fiction because of their contractual relationship with immovables by nature, now rentes constituées were called immovables by fiction… In effect, the first immoveable by fiction bred its own kind.49

Once this intellectual boundary had been breached, couples drawing up a marriage contract attempted to classify their property as they wished, without reference to any fixed categories. In order to try to stem the tide of infinite manipulation of property categories, rendering them meaningless, certain legal commentators began obsessively to 49

Giesey, “Rules of Inheritance,” p. 273.

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classify kinds of property in treatises meant as blueprints for drawing up marriage contracts. For example, in Pothier’s Traité du douaire, he explains that if a house has a pond on its property, the pond is real lineage property while any fish in that pond would be moveable property.50 While this is obviously a situation that few families had to consider, it does demonstrate the desire of a number of legal commentators to define property classification rather than allowing families to do it on an ad hoc basis when they drew up contracts. But as we shall see, the property provisions of marriage contracts were very often at odds with how the law technically should have classified them. Barbara Diefendorf records manipulation of property in many marriage contracts of Parisian elites, showing that this was a practice that spanned various social groups and existed from as early as the sixteenth century.51 Similarly, venal offices were classified as real property and treated like annuities in marriage contracts and successions. Venal offices were government positions that had been purchased by their holders. Some of these offices were primarily honorific, but most required a high level of education and expertise. For example, all of the members of the Parlements were venal office holders, as were the holders of most municipal posts.52 Venal offices originated in 1467 with the monarch’s need for revenue. Originally conceived of as a temporary measure, venal offices reverted to the Crown at the holder’s death so that the King could maintain some control over who exercised them and so they could produce additional income. Office holders balked at this system and in 1604 the Crown granted them the right of ownership over their offices and the right to pass them down as a form of property. In exchange for this privilege, officers paid a yearly tax to the King, called the paulette, and paid an additional fee when the office was handed from one family member to another.53 As a result of this reform, a venal office became the permanent property of a certain family and would always be exercised by a male member of the kin group. Another implication of creating this tax was the transformation of venal offices into fictive real property. As an asset that could not be sold or otherwise alienated, that was repeatedly handed from one generation to another, venal offices immobilized a portion of family wealth. Another aspect of venal offices that influenced their place in the family’s portfolio was the stricture that women, single, married, or widowed, could not occupy these offices. If a daughter were her 50

Robert-Joseph Pothier, Traité du Douaire (Paris: chez Debure père and Orléans: Veuve Rouzeau-Montaut, 1770), pp. 24–5. 51 Diefendorf, Paris City Councillors, pp. 242–3. 52 J.H.M. Salmon, “Venality of Office and Popular Sedition in Seventeenth-Century France. A Review of a Controversy,” Past and Present, 37/3 (1967): 21–43; James Collins, The State in Early Modern France (Cambridge, 1995). 53 Salmon, “Venality of Office,” p. 22 and Marcel Marion, Dictionnaire des institutions de la France aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris, 1989), p. 404.

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father’s sole heir, by law she had to hand the use of a venal office to a male relative who then benefited from the position. That restriction on venal offices made them even less flexible than other kinds of real property. Most families did not possess such offices so these issues were not common. But the change in treatment of venal offices and annuities shows how conceptions of property changed over time to serve the needs of families who wished to exert control over the disposition of wealth. The most common kinds of property for master artisans were moveable goods—cash, household goods, tools and materials for a business, with some annuities, real estate, and land. While few families at the artisanal level of society owned a venal office, they did possess a distinct asset that resembled it: the mastership. It is difficult to understand the legal nature of the mastership as a piece of property. It was not discussed in these terms in either customary or royal law, or in guild statutes. Only one guild explicitly discussing mastership as property. In 1777, in the aftermath of the short-lived abolition of the guilds and their reconstitution, the printers’ guild responded to two royal edicts governing the basis for restructuring their corporate body. In response to an edict that hoped to limit the time a master could maintain his guild privileges, the printers responded that such limits would violate their “right in property, the most sacred of all and the dearest to His Majesty.”54 In couching their argument against further royal encroachment upon guild privilege, the printers invoked their property rights several times, going beyond the language of status to articulate an investment and property interest in masterships. Other guilds did not use the term “property” to characterize their interests in masterships, as the printers had, but by observing how individuals used masterships we can draw certain analogies. When a master artisan died his widow had the right to take over his position and his shop, taking for herself the title of mistress, maîtresse. From this point the widow had the right to run her late husband’s shop and enjoy most of the privileges of other masters. However, if the widow remarried she lost her late husband’s mastership, which reverted to the guild to be assigned to a new member. Furthermore, a master’s son could not inherit his father’s position in the guild. Given these characteristics, the mastership, in a number of important ways, resembles a piece of real property that was lent to a master from its true owner, the guild. In the sense that a master could not sell, rent, or otherwise alienate his title, nor could he pass it down to his heirs, the mastership functioned as real property. The master could use the interest of the mastership, in this case the ability to work in a certain trade for his and his family’s enrichment. But he could never assert ownership and inheritance rights over his title, both of which remained in the hands of the guild. In that respect, while masterships shared some commonalities 54

Requête au Roi, et consultations des anciens avocats aux conseils du Roi & au Parlement de Paris, pour le corps de la librairie et imprimerie de Paris, (np, nd.), p. 3.

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with venal offices in that they were both valuable family assets, masterships never appeared in contracts governing the handing over of wealth from one generation to the next. Rather it was the accoutrements of mastership, tools, goods, and raw materials, that preoccupied artisanal families, whatever their economic status. As marriage contracts reveal, most couples classified the bulk of their assets as real property, regardless of the nature of those assets, which immobilized much of their wealth. That real property provided the household with some income but could not be deployed freely to enhance a couple’s economic standing. This system ensured stability and accountability to parents with respect to family assets; children were blocked from squandering their parents’ money. But it also helped to reproduce social and economic standing. Family members could not use money in unsanctioned ways to try to change their social position. Just as birth strongly influenced social standing, so too did the legal property system and the ways individuals made us of it.

The Practice of Marriage While not mandatory, many couples wishing to formalize their engagement went to a notary to draw up a contract. They were generally accompanied by family and friends, but the process was heavily influenced by the notary, not surprising given the complexity of property settlements that appear in many marriage contracts. Of all the contracts a notary drew up, the marriage contract was one of the most uniform. In comparison with a loan agreement, for example, the marriage contract varied little from couple to couple, while a loan agreement was tailored more closely to the individual situation. As such, the notary acted as a strong mediator between the partners’ wishes for their new household and the written, legal, expression of the household. There are several reasons why the notary’s hand lay so heavy on the marriage process. Certainly the notary’s role was couched as one of legal advisor, and couples wishing to draw up a contract that would meet their needs did well to take advantage of the notary’s expertise.55 With the complexity of property requirements, and the high stakes, the notary’s expertise served to hedge against imprudent financial decisions. The ubiquity of the marriage contract surely contributed to the notary’s prominent role. A study of Parisian social structure in the eighteenth century has suggested that approximately 75 per cent of couples drew up a contract before marrying.56 Even partners with less than 100 livres in assets sometimes went to the trouble of drawing up a contract specifying how that wealth would be used by the 55

M.-H. Renaut, “Les contrats de mariage à Saint-Omer et à Aire-sur-la-Lys au XVIIIe siècle,” Revue historique, 589/1 (1994): 132. 56 Adeline Daumard and François Furet, Structures et relations sociales à Paris au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1961), p. 9.

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couple and then distributed at death.57 There are a number of reasons that might account for the frequent use of contracts. Perhaps the most attractive aspect of the marriage contract was its ability to revise the requirements of customary law. Only clauses that explicitly flouted established bedrocks of marital custom, such as the requirement that a husband provide his widow with a dower, could not be abridged.58 However, most other elements of customary law could be, and were, altered in contracts. This flexibility allowed families to exert greater control over wealth and to plan explicitly for the eventuality of death rather than allowing the law to determine the distribution of assets. A family concerned with following a strategy of social mobility would be particularly interested in the control a marriage contract provided. Another factor in the large number of marriage contracts may have been the sophistication of the Parisian population. Paris was the legal and administrative center of the kingdom. City dwellers read about court cases in the increasingly popular legal briefs that circulated, and they also saw members of the legal profession living and working in their city.59 This factor is particularly salient for this study as members of guilds were intimately involved in legal matters as a result of their corporate membership. Guilds were constantly involved in lawsuits with each other over perceived encroachments on rights, and masters themselves understood the legal nature of their status.60 Given this context, it is not surprising the members of this social strata availed themselves of notaries’ services. The marriage contract itself had three distinct sections. The first section provided information about the bride and groom and their witnesses. The second part summarily explained the main provisions of Paris customary law that pertained to marriage. The third part specified the property arrangements of the two parties. Each of these sections incorporated certain required elements. According to the edicts on marriage, certain individuals needed permission to marry which would be noted, when necessary, at the head of the contract. When explaining the structure of Parisian customary law, the contract always specified whether a couple intended to set up a community of property or if their goods would remain separated. The latter scenario was rare; the great majority of couples set up a common fund to support the household. A notary also made clear that the 57 Ibid., pp. 18–19. To put this amount into perspective, a manual laborer would earn on average 55 livres per year. Micheline Baulant, “Le salaire des ouvriers du bâtiment à Paris de 1400 à 1726,” Annales: Economie, Société, Civilization, 26/2 (1971): 482. 58 Lelièvre, La pratique des contrats du mariage, p. 164. 59 Sarah Maza, Private Lives and Public Affairs: The Causes Célèbres of PreRevolutionary France (Berkeley, 1995); Bell, Lawyers and Citizens; Richard M. Andrews, Law, Magistracy, and Crime in Old Regime Paris, 1735–1789 (Cambridge, 1994). 60 Steven L. Kaplan, “La lutte pour le contrôle du marché du travail à Paris au XVIIIe siècle,” Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 36/3 (1989): 361–412. Michael Sonenscher, Work and Wages: Natural Law, Politics and the Eighteenth-Century French Trades (Cambridge, 1989).

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spouses would not be responsible for debts contracted before the marriage took place and spelled out the ability of widows and children to opt out of the estate’s debts and declare themselves creditors. The contract also stipulated that any property the couple acquired during their marriage, regardless of its source or nature, would be governed by Parisian customary law. This was an important clause as different legal customs could have widely varying property regulations. For example, if a wife inherited a parcel of land in Normandy, rather than being governed by the Norman dower regime which would require that she subtract the value of that property from her dowry, it would be governed by the Parisian inheritance regime that mandated equal inheritance for all children. The third section of the marriage contract incorporated the fewest required elements. Couples and their families had few restraints on they how they could apportion their property. The one necessary element was the widow’s dower. Parisian customary law demanded that a widow be provided with some means to support herself after her husband’s death. Under custom, the widow was entitled to the usufruct of one-half of all of her husband’s assets. However, such a scenario was hardly attractive to the husband’s heirs who would consequently see a great deal of their inheritance tied up for what could be an extended period of time. Instead a contract could alter the terms of the dower, replacing the customary usufruct rights with other financial support. As long as the husband provided his widow with survivor’s benefits, and she agreed by signing the contract, he could minimize his estate’s obligations to his widow. The contracts themselves demonstrate the ways Parisians interpreted and employed the laws pertaining to marriage. Overall they followed the broad outlines of these legal requirements. But in a number of key areas marriage contracts ignored the provisions of customary law. Perhaps the most surprising anomaly was the lack of concern over certain parts of the laws on abduction. As discussed earlier, the law urged widows and minors to obtain consent before they married in order to avoid a charge of abduction against a spouse. According to the statutes, however, widows, “even over the age of 25” needed to get advice and council from their parents.61 But in practice this requirement was seldom followed, at least with respect to widows. In a sample of 46 marriage contracts involving widows, only three of the widows were accompanied by a parent or guardian who avowed their consent. These three women were all under the age of 25 and were thus under the age of legal majority for a never-married woman. It is very likely that these widows’ ages contributed to the perception that they needed to have a guardian present. All of the other widows, as emancipated adults, simply spoke for themselves in this process. Not every marriage contract lists witnesses, but in those that do family members were usually present at the ceremony. However, the

61

Isambert, Recueil des anciennes lois, vol. 20, p. 290.

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widow did not need to have a family member grant her formal permission to marry. In contrast, all of the men and women who were marrying for the first time and were not yet over the age of consent had a parent or guardian present. This segment of the law was clearly enforced in practice. Occasionally men who were over the age of 25 had their parents stand with them as they signed the contract. Strictly speaking, this was not required by the edicts on marriages. However, in practice it appears that parents kept a close eye on their children’s alliances when they married for the first time even if they did not intervene in subsequent marriages, although they had the right to do so under the law. Several examples will serve to make this point clearer. Louis Buisson, called a bourgeois de Paris, married Anne Dory, the widow of a Parisian wine merchant. There is no indication of the partners’ ages although Dory had two young children from her first marriage. Buisson haled originally from Savigny sur Orge, about 30 miles from Paris, but had by this point established a residence in Paris. His residence in the capital and the amount of money he contributed to the marital community suggested that Buisson was not a youngster, although there is no way to know his age. Despite his independence, his mother had traveled from her village to attend her son’s wedding in Paris, and also to give her consent to this match. The contract thus stated that she “attended and authorized to what followed for him and in his name as the first party.” Dory spoke “for herself and in her name as the other party.”62 Both partners had other witnesses present. In addition to his mother, Buisson had a friend sign his marriage contract on his behalf. On Dory’s side were two brothers and a cousin. But none of these three men offered formal consent to the match. It is perhaps more surprising in this case because Dory had two young daughters, ages 12 and 7, whose paternal, or maternal, relations might have been uneasy about their welfare in the new household. But despite possible concerns about the interests of these two children, Dory’s family did not insist that she seek permission to remarry; they believed that Dory would not neglect her children’s’ interests in favor of her new husband. Although the law did provide a mechanism of oversight, Dory’s family, and many other widows’ families, did not employ it. We see a similar disparity in the marriage of Pierre Lespiau and Jacqueline Loulliart, the widowed mother of six children. Lespiau was a garçon tailleur and Loulliart’s deceased husband was a master tailor. Both partners derived obvious advantages from the match. After the marriage Lespiau could get his mastership by taking over Loulliart’s title. Loulliart procured a father for her children and help in the shop and at home. Loulliart spoke for herself in this contract, but Lespiau had a guardian appointed for him by his father who lived in the city of Condon and did not make the trip to the capital for his son’s wedding. Nonetheless, Lespiau was

62

AN, MC, étude XVII/517. 4 February 1709.

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called a fils majeur, meaning that he was a legal adult.63 In this instance, the law was turned on its head. The widow, legally enjoined to have a guardian stand up with her at remarriage, negotiated her marriage by herself, despite the fact that she had six young children. The adult male had a guardian speak for him although he was legally capable of marrying without parental consent.64 While these two contracts do not speak for all Parisians who married, it does suggest that couples and their families chose to follow the legal provisions that worked toward their interests and disregarded others that did not seem to have much importance for the situation at hand. This assertion is backed up by the treatment of community of property and propres in marriage contracts. As we have seen, the question of what constituted lineage property was a complex one and legal commentators wrote extensively about how to distinguish different types of property for inheritance purposes. However, the process was vastly streamlined in contracts themselves. One way in which contracts were simplified was by omitting detailed accounts of the property each spouse brought to the new household unit. In fact, in the majority of contracts the groom’s wealth was never assigned a specific value, whereas the amount of the bride’s dowry was always specified. When a woman spelled out her monetary contribution, she simply stated how much of it she would enter into the community of property and how much would remain her lineage property. When the man’s wealth was declared, he too simply verbally distinguished these two types of property. Never did the partners list the composition of their wealth, be it cash, land, or goods, in order to justify what should be common property and what should remain separate. Those decisions appeared to be the result of previous negotiations between the two families. Naturally land and houses, if they were part of the marriage settlement, were classified as real property and did not become part of the communal fund. However, for most of the couples here, their contributions consisted of purely moveable wealth—cash, tools, household goods. Under the logic of the customary classification system there was no reason to consider such assets as real property. However such a decision would have forced all non-elite couples to surrender the bulk of their wealth to the ephemeral communal fund. These circumstances posed an important problem as many brides and grooms had considerable wealth composed of just such items. A great deal was at stake in the process of classification. In order to prevent all the couples’ assets from falling into the community, and to allow couples who owned only moveable goods to maintain a more stable hold on them, the category of propres fictifs expanded. The process became purely voluntary, a matter of endowing property with its character simply by the process of naming. Types of wealth were created verbally without explicit 63

AN, MC, étude VII/309. 7 August 1757. Barbara Diefendorf also notes that in the marriage contracts she examined men who had already reached legal majority often had parents who formally consented for them. See Paris City Councillors, p. 187. 64

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reference to the origin or nature of the property. The words of the contract, and consent by signature, endowed property with its legal nature. When Augustin Bernard, a master smelter, married Catherine Lefort, the widow of another master smelter, each partner specified how much money they would bring upon marriage. Each partner brought 1500 livres total wealth in a combination of cash, household goods, work tools, commercial inventory, and raw materials. Each partner also stated in the marriage contract that 500 livres of this total would go into the community of property and 1000 livres would remain lineage property.65 In the marriage of Philippe Paris, who called himself a bourgeois de Paris, and Louise Riverand, the widow of a master upholsterer, there was also parity in the amounts the two spouses entered into the community of property. Both Paris and Riverand contributed 3000 livres into the marital fund and kept the rest of their wealth for themselves. Riverand’s wealth consisted of her share of her husband’s substantial estate, valued at 5600 livres, and 100 livres of rent per year on a house she owned. Paris brought 2900 livres in cash and household goods and 2215 livres in various investments and annuities.66 In both of these cases, and many others, there were no attempts to justify the amount of each spouse’s propres by somehow connecting those assets to lineage properties. Families or partners simply decided how much wealth they wished to put into the community of property and held back the rest for themselves and their heirs. What was important in writing these contracts was the basic framework of the law that said an individual could distinguish between lineage and personal property in finalizing a marriage agreement. Legal guidelines for classifying different types of property seemed to be irrelevant to the process, except perhaps in lawsuits disputing contracts and inheritances. The ability to endow children with property but at the same time protect it from the strangers who would soon be in-laws resolved an important tension in the process of making marriages. Yet the legal guidelines meant to structure that process of preservation were ignored. The general principle was embraced by the two contracting families but they wished to determine the classification of their property themselves. In practice families and notaries used the law in ways that do not come through in legal commentaries. Lawyers and legal scholars understood the law in a way that was too recondite or complex for the needs of these Parisians. This evidence from marriage contracts allows us to buttress an important argument about how the law functioned and was understood in this period. Clearly the law was not an abstract concept for Parisians who married in the early modern period. These people used contracts and notaries to ensure that their property settlements were clearly established at the beginning of this new partnership. Thus the provisions of the law shaped practice. Law also influenced gender norms and representations both in the language it used to describe men and women and in the 65 66

AN, MC, étude LXXXV/528. 4 April 1751. AN, MC, étude XCII/571. 15 June 1751.

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differences it laid out in the ways men and women could act. Even if those norms were rejected, the gendered construction of legal language influenced attitudes about men’s and women’s natures and capabilities. But while law may have been a part of Parisian life, people altered its terms to suit their situations. Law served as an element of habitus, as Pierre Bourdieu might describe it. It structured relations between individuals and institutions but not in a deterministic or formulaic way. The interpretation and use of the law mediated the individual’s relationship between the objective structures of the state and his or her subjective goals and concerns. It served as a backdrop, as a group of assumptions that members of this society could draw upon as a resource in creating their life strategies. It introduced both constraint and strategy.

Chapter 2

Widows and Religious Institutions Introduction The teachings and traditions of the Catholic Church constituted another structural frame within which widows found their ambitions both constrained and broadened. In its teachings and rhetoric, the Catholic Church sought to limit the autonomy and public presence of widows, often teaching that a woman who had lost her husband should move to a new, contemplative phase of life and devote herself to prayer and pious works. While this was only a model that Church leaders presented to women who might be searching for direction after the death of a mate, and had little power to force women into religious service, it nonetheless had a certain amount of influence. For the widow, looking to refocus her daily life and deal with her loss, the words of a priest or other religious leader carried weight. This model was hardly a practical one for women who needed to work to support themselves and their families. But it did create a confining notion of how a widow should behave, particularly given the Catholic Church’s stature in this society. But in another way, the Church opened up certain widows’ lives, sometimes by offering them the opportunity for a new kind of public life in charitable works or by providing the less fortunate with assistance that helped to keep them out of destitution. It also provided widows with a means to address their feelings of loss within a culturally sanctioned mechanism. Prayers, masses, reminders that the afterlife would reunite them with a loved one, all presumably helped to diminish the pain of losing a spouse. But, with respect to artisanal women, the Church’s teachings had a far smaller structural impact on their actions than either the civil law or guild statutes. I argue that the reason for the weakness of the Church’s influence in this area was twofold. By the end of the seventeenth century, the political standing of the Crown and its campaign to erode the power of the Roman church, particularly with respect to shaping the norms of family life, meant that, in practical terms, religion had a rather weak influence on widows’ decisions. The other, more important reason, for the weakness of the Church’s influence on widows was its attempt to neutralize the ability of the widow to take on male roles, ones that were necessary if the widow were to maintain her family’s prosperity and status after the loss of the patriarch. The Church was concerned about the widow’s situation and wanted to neutralize her newfound legal and cultural power by pushing her back into the gender role

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occupied by other women, a move not even the law, with its practical and ideological ambitions, managed to do. In order to assess the extent of the Catholic Church’s influence over widowed women, we must look first to religious teachings and doctrine associated with widowhood and remarriage, and then the ways that the Church as an institution, and religion as an ideological structure, shaped a widow’s experience of religiosity and the religious institution of the Church in their lives. Many of the influences for Church ideas went back for centuries: scriptural teachings and canon law decisions, while perhaps not actively invoked in determining how to treat or think about widows, formed part of the religious tradition and framework that informed these ideas. In this chapter I will begin by discussing the ways widowhood was addressed in Church teachings and how it was ideally conceived. Next, I will examine the ways that widowed women experienced religion in their lives and how they interacted with the institution of the Church.

Scriptural Teachings The distinct status of the widow attracted the attention of the Christian Church from its earliest days, and the basis for this concern was grounded in the writings of the Old and New Testaments. For the most part, Scriptural pronouncements concerning widows couched them as passive unfortunates in need of assistance from the community in order to survive, and stressed the community’s obligation to provide assistance to poor widows. In the books of both the Old and New Testament, widows as a group were regarded as highly vulnerable, financially and emotionally, and thus in need of protection and assistance. Concern for the wellbeing of widows arose even when Jehovah was laying out his law for the Israelites, demonstrating the great importance of this social duty. While laying out the religious duties of the Israelites, Jehovah explained that he also “executes justice for the fatherless and the widow,” an exhortation rendered particularly compelling by its linkage with the reminder of his supreme powers.1 By placing this command after a recitation of divine might, the obligation to aid these unfortunates became even more compelling. Just as widows were singled out for protection here, along with the fatherless, more than half of such references to widows in the Old Testament paired them with orphans, the other category of vulnerable individuals.2 Rhetorically this

1

Deuteronomy 10:18. All citations come from Herbert G. May and Bruce M. Metzger (eds), The New Oxford Annotated Bible with the Apocrypha, Revised Standard Version (Oxford, 1973). 2 Frank S. Frick, “Widows,” in Carol Myers, Toni Craven, and Ross S. Kraemer (eds), Women in Scripture: A Dictionary of Names and Unnamed Women in the Hebrew

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juxtaposition emphasizes the passivity of the widow, equating her in this context not with a grown adult but with an isolated child. It also removes the expectation that a widow could function on her own, given this construction of utter helplessness and need.3 This belief in the widow’s inability to survive on her own helped to shape the communal response to the situation of such women. So that widows would not be left alone in their state of adult female orphanage, so to speak, this society created an institutional mechanism for automatically and quickly replacing the family support widows had enjoyed before their husbands’ deaths, and minimizing the period when she would be alone and vulnerable. When a woman’s husband died, she was expected to marry her deceased husband’s brother in what was called levirate marriage, a practice meant to provide women with security. Because women had no other proper role in ancient Jewish society than unmarried virgin living in her father’s house or married mother living in her husband’s house, this practice ensured that there would not be a population of female social misfits without an honorable place to live. Furthermore, once a woman married she was considered a member of her husband’s family and many of the ties with her family of birth were severed.4 Given this belief, it was unlikely that the widow’s family would welcome her back after they had transferred responsibility for her to others. When she married her brother-in-law, the widow honored her dead husband by seeking to perpetuate his name by bearing more children for his line and ensured herself a proper place in the home of her husband’s family.5 If a widow refused to participate in such a marriage, a grave decision indeed, she was expected to return to the home of her birth, dishonored.6 While this practice neglected the emotional dimension of marriage, it did serve an important social function. It ensured the widow an honorable and productive position in society and provided her with security and protection. The duty of the husband’s family to provide in such a way for his widow also demonstrates the seriousness of the charge to provide for these precariously positioned women. There was a certain level of continuity between the Old and the New Testaments with regard to the treatment of widows. The responsibility to support the poor widow remained paramount to Christians. In particular the Gospels Bible, the Apocryphal/Deuterocanonical Books, and the New Testament (Boston, 2000), p. 198. 3 Frank Frick notes that this emphasis on helplessness, drawn from the Biblical characterization, has come to mark the ways that modern scholars understand widowhood. “Widows in the Hebrew Bible: A Transactional Approach,” in Athalya Brenner (ed.), A Feminist Companion to Exodus to Deuteronomy (Sheffield, 1994), pp. 139–40. 4 Paula S. Hiebert, “Whence Shall Help Come to Me?: The Biblical Widow,” in Peggy Day (ed.), Gender and Difference in Ancient Israel (Minneapolis, 1989), p. 129. 5 Frick, “Widows,” pp. 198–9. 6 Genesis 38:11.

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emphasized the duty Christians had toward unfortunate members of society and Jesus frequently admonished his followers to give their wealth to the poor. But in contrast to the Old Testament, where widows were frequently invoked as the members of society who were most worthy of assistance, in the Gospels Jesus did not similarly single out widows as the most unfortunate, and indeed did not even invoke widows as representing a discrete group with its own particular needs and concerns as did the Old Testament. He mentioned widows specifically only a few times in the books of the Gospel. In one instance, Jesus drew attention to a very poor widow who contributed a very small sum to the temple. He praised her gift, recognizing that she had made a true sacrifice given her extreme poverty.7 In this episode, Jesus reaffirmed the association made in the gospels of widowhood with material need and fragility. In addition, he presented the widow as a particularly just and pious member of the community.8 The other moment when Jesus addressed the person of the widow was when he was asked about the implications of his teachings for the practice of levirate marriage. A group of Sadducees asked Jesus about the fate of a widowed woman who married seven brothers in succession as each one died without having produced a child with her. The priests inquired as to whose wife this woman would be after the resurrection, as “the seven had her as wife.”9 Jesus’ response sidestepped the technical aspects of this question, and instead focused on the spiritual quality of existence after the resurrection. He replied that “those who are accounted worthy to attain to that age and to the resurrection from the dead neither marry nor are given in marriage, for they cannot die any more, because they are equal to angels.”10 This answer asserted that human relations and social organizations did not prevail after death. In itself, this reply had little to say about the position of widows and was more concerned with establishing the radical difference of existence in the afterlife. But, it did implicitly frown upon the practice of levirate marriage by asserting that the real concern was what would happen after the resurrection rather than on earth, and that these two realms were not comparable. It initiated a shift in thinking about widows within the Christian Church from concern for practical survival to concern for spiritual matters.11 7

Mark 12:42–44; Luke 21:2–4. Mary Rose D’Angelo, “(Re)presentations of Women in the Gospel of Matthew and Luke-Acts,” in Ross Shepard Kraemer and Mary Rose D’Angelo (eds), Women and Christian Origins (Oxford, 1999), pp. 185–6. 9 Luke 20:28–33. This story was included in all of the synoptic gospels in similar form. See Mark 12:18–27 and Matthew 22:23–33 in addition to the version in Luke. 10 Luke 20:35–36. 11 In discontinuing the practice of levirate marriages, early Christian society broke with a method employed in many traditional societies for providing for widows’ well being. For one example see M.K. Slater, “Foreword: Sons and Levirs,” in Betty Potash (ed.), Widows in African Society: Choices and Constraints (Stanford, 1986), pp. xv–xxii. 8

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In 1 Corinthians, Paul completed this shift with respect to widows’ situations, strongly emphasizing the need for these solitary women to attend to their salvation rather than the practical concerns of everyday life. Believing that the world was near its end, he exhorted Christians to think of their salvation instead of carnal pleasure.12 Paul’s condemnation of sexual activity tinged his writings with a sense that sex, by its nature, was indecent. He stated very bluntly in this letter that “(t)o the unmarried and the widows I say that it is well for them to remain single as I do. But if they cannot exercise self-control, they should marry. For it is better to marry than to be aflame with passion.”13 As is well established, in this passage Paul did not acknowledge any other reason for marriage than the restraint of sexual desire.14 This position on married versus single life existed because Paul believed that “the unmarried woman or girl is anxious about the affairs of the Lord, how to be holy in body and spirit; but the married woman is anxious about worldly affairs.”15 Thus in preparing for the afterlife, the unmarried person had an advantage over someone who was part of a family, as a wife and mother. Paul reasserted his concern with the suitability of the remarried Christian widow in a later letter. Here Paul made clearer his belief that Christians who had lost a spouse ideally should not remarry.16 For example, he explained that only widowed women over the age of sixty who had been married once could be part of the religious community. With respect to younger widows, he wrote “they grow wanton against Christ (and) they desire to marry…some have already strayed after Satan.”17 Paul thought little of widowed women who sought to reclaim traditional female roles for themselves, as wife and mother, after a husband’s death. He also rebuked widows who hoped to live independently in the world as he explained that “(I)f any believing woman has relatives who are widows, let her assist them; let the church not be burdened, so that it may assist those who are real widows (e.g. those who required material support).”18 In this evocation of “real widows,” Paul denigrated those woman who sought to remain part of a family, either as the wife of another man or as an independent woman, in favor of those women who essentially gave up all they had to serve the church in chastity. 12

Willy Rordorf, “Marriage in the New Testament and in the Early Church,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 20 (1969): 195. 13 1 Corinthians 7:8–9. 14 Yet he did not abolish remarriage, as a number of other early Christian writers wished to do. One possible reason for this accommodation with the material concerns of widows may have been their prominence in the early Church and the great assistance wealthy widows gave to this precarious movement. See Margaret Y. MacDonald, “Reading Real Women through the Undisputed Letters of Paul,” in Ross Shepard Kraemer and Mary Rose D’Angelo (eds), Women and Christian Origins (Oxford, 1999), pp. 200–201. 15 1 Corinthians 7:34. 16 Rordorf, “Marriage in the New Testament,” p. 198. 17 1 Timothy 5:11–15. 18 1 Timothy 5:16.

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Paul’s priorities, as expressed in his epistles, strongly shaped the path future Church teachings would take with respect to marriage, sexuality, remarriage, and widowhood. His primary focus on the ethereal conflicted with concern for material survival after a husband’s death. Paul’s insistence on subordinating material worries to the spiritual ones represented an important shift. Where the Old Testament discussed widows primarily in terms of support and survival, the writings of Paul, building upon Jesus’ message, emphasize spiritual well-being. As far as he was concerned, the widow needed to heed the state of her soul and consider her physical survival as of secondary importance.19 In terms of scriptural precedent, the Church had a choice between the Old Testament, which taught that widows should remain part of society by remarrying, and the New Testament, which told widows to remain chaste and regarded remarriage, and reintegration into a traditionally female role, as suspect. This incongruity became embedded in Catholic attitudes toward women in general, and widows specifically, as priests taught that women were sinful and could only redeem themselves through denial and chastity and yet allowed, and at times condoned, marriage as a necessary part of life.

Early Church Teachings The writings of early Christian thinkers, whose ideas formed the beginnings of the canon law that would be codified later, took Paul’s aversion to sexuality and emphasis on spiritual preparation as fundamental principles to be explored in their own writings. One of the clearest expressions of this position on sexuality was the “conviction of the superiority of virginity over married life (that) became a mark of the whole patristic tradition.”20 The most well known of the early Patristic writers, St. Augustine, Tertullian, and St. Jerome, all expressed deep suspicion of sexuality and sought to curb its practice as much as was realistically possible.21 For example, Augustine believed that individuals married only for carnal reasons, and thus objected to remarriage due to “the sexual opportunities that remarriage furnished.”22 While many leaders of the Church wished to ban the marriages of 19 James Brundage, Law, Sex and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago, 1987), p. 61 20 Rordorf, “Marriage in the New Testament,” p. 203. 21 On the issue of engaging in sex only for procreation see John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance, and Homosexuality: Gay People in Western Europe from the Beginning of the Christian Era to the Fourteenth Century (Chicago, 1980), pp. 148–9 and 164. 22 Brundage, Law, Sex and Christian Society, p. 95. In terms of official Church attitudes toward the place of sex in marriage, Brundage summarizes them neatly: “Much more common was the argument that although sex itself was morally indifferent, the pleasure that accompanied it was wicked. Hence marital sex was free from sin only so long as no one enjoyed it,” p. 429.

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widows and widowers, and the heretical Manicheans did so for their followers, Paul’s grudging acceptance of the practice ensured that it would remain licit. Paul’s position as intellectual founder of the Christian Church ensured adherence to his ideas, even if they at times clashed with the views held by later religious leaders. However, the acceptance of this practice by Paul and later Church leaders did not translate into approbation for remarrying widows and widowers. The rhetoric of early Church writers demonstrated their contempt for widows who took another husband rather than seizing the chance to return to a state of celibacy and devote themselves and their resources to religious endeavors. Widowers who took a wife faced a more concrete expression of this disapproval: they could not hold positions in the Church as remarried men. All Christians who remarried were also required to do extensive penance “for their lascivious conduct.”23 Thus, in contrast to married priests who were forced by reforming Popes to give up their families despite centuries of precedent, remarriages were never outlawed but were always discouraged and considered as suspect and undesirable. This misgiving about remarriage certainly formed part of the Church’s ambivalent attitude toward widows and grounded its position that the best place for a widow was in the home and the best activities were prayer and religious service. The early modern Catholic Church could not easily reconcile itself to the woman who was compelled to take on the role as head of her family for practical reasons.

Canon Law Despite the force of scriptural precedent and patristic writings, this body of doctrine certainly did not dictate marital behavior by the early modern period. But it did strongly shape canon law, a body of strictures that in theory exercised sole authority over issues of marriage and family life after the twelfth century. As we have seen, the way that the Catholic Church regarded the issue of widowhood reflected the tension surrounding these women that arose initially from the different views espoused in the Old versus New Testament, discrepancies that remained part of early church writings on these questions. The debate over whether widowed women ideally should seek to remarry and again enter a traditional female position within the family, as was explicitly advocated in the Old Testament, or if she should remain a chaste and solitary person devoting her life to prayer, as Paul advised, was clearly reflected in the Church’s teachings to and about widows. The inability to resolve this tension resulted in the Church never finding a way to think about the widow as an everyday part of Christian society. Even while allowing the faithful to remarry after a spouse’s death, the Church continued to preach the virtues of celibacy to widowed women. Accordingly, the 23

Brundage, Law, Sex and Christian Society, p. 142.

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Church never showed women a way to both engage with society and live an exemplary holy life. The earliest formulations of canon law concerned themselves with the proper role of widows. The Didascalia Apostolorum, a third century text that represented one of the first explicit formulations of Church law, discussed the community’s responsibility toward widows by making reference to the stereotype of the impoverished and vulnerable solitary woman. However, echoing later religious representations of widows, this text also chastised the bad widow, the woman who did not respect authority, who wished to run her own affairs, in short, who believed she could take on a male role.24 This latter model of widowhood, one that might in fact simply describe a woman who needed to assert herself in order to meet her family’s material needs, is emblematic of the widow who would be castigated for centuries to follow. According to this text, responsibility for providing relief to these vulnerable populations rested with the bishop of each diocese.25 This responsibility was not questioned over the centuries and remained part of the work of the diocese, as later formulations of canon law codes continued to include the instruction to care for widows. It is not at all surprising, considering the ways societies imagined widows as poor, lonely and vulnerable, that the Church continued to teach care and compassion for these unfortunate women. What is striking about this concern for widows is the way that the Church imagined a Christian widow’s existence. Drawing heavily from the letters of Paul for its position, the Catholic Church continued to uphold chastity in widowhood as the ideal. The reason that the community needed to care for the widow was because ideally she would not take another husband to provide for her. Instead, she would rely upon neighbors and family to support her while she devoted herself to prayer and remembrance. This text shows the legalistic basis of the Christian attitude toward widows, one that did not change substantially over the centuries. Subsequent councils whose work was to add to, change, and refine canon law did not consider the place of the widow in their work, even during the course of the most important and contentious Church gatherings. In terms of an official position on widowhood, the point most debated was whether remarriage would remain licit. Widows were never prevented from remarrying if they chose to, but the Church nonetheless continued to show ambivalence about widows who took a husband. One manifestation of the Church’s disapproval of second marriages was ritual in nature. Priests refused to grant a nuptial blessing to remarrying couples. These marriages were legally and 24

Didascalia Apostolorum, trans. R. Hugh Connolly (Oxford, 1929), chapter XV, subsections iii; 5–10. See also Charlotte Methuen, “Widows, Bishops, and the Struggle for Authority in the Didascalia Apostolorum,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 46 (1995): 198. 25 In addition to the citations in the previous footnote, see James Brundage, Medieval Canon Law (New York, 1995), p. 6.

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spiritually binding, but did not merit full approbation. Alexander III instituted this policy in the late twelfth century without giving any reason for changing Church practice.26 It is not clear how the faithful might have perceived the meaning behind this change, particularly in a society where the validity of marriage was not necessarily linked to the presence of a priest or participation in a ceremony, but to the exchange of promises to marry and sexual intercourse. But the lack of the nuptial blessing did convey meaning to theologians who considered unions not so blessed to be lesser than first marriages that enjoyed the full approbation of the Church hierarchy. In fact, some writers asserted that a marriage that did not have the nuptial blessing was not sacramental in nature, and was thus not a fully valid marriage.27 This position did not accord with official teaching, however it did reflect the range of ambivalence about remarriage and the belief that widows and widowers should re-embrace chastity after a spouse’s death. This prohibition on conferring a nuptial blessing lasted through the early modern period, visually and orally demonstrating during the ceremony itself the marginal quality of second marriages. But by later centuries, this restriction seems to have changed somewhat. While Alexander’s decision was meant to apply to both men and women who married after the death of a spouse, over time this censure applied almost exclusively to remarrying widows. Men who took a virgin as a second wife were allowed the nuptial blessing as part of their union.28 This double standard reflected the troubling nature of second marriages when they involved widows. Because the definition of what constituted a valid marriage was unambiguous and stripped of any ritualistic requirements, a priest was not necessary to contract a Christian marriage. But the nature of the priest’s interaction with a couple sent a message about the Church’s assessment of the value of their relationship. Furthermore, since popular opinion about marriage placed great importance on the process of creating a nuptial bond, the absence of this blessing made such a union less than complete in the eyes of the community.29 The source for continued ambivalence on this question is not entirely clear but it appears to stem from two main sources. First, the powerful and long-standing precedent set by Paul’s letters continued to shape Church policy for centuries. Related to this long-standing acceptance of remarriage as constituting a necessity at times was the belief that women were particularly beset by lust and sexual desire and the only means for them to legitimately tame those appetites was by marrying. 26

Brundage, Law, Sex, and Christian Society, p. 343. Seamus P. Heaney, The Development of the Sacramentality of Marriage from Anselm of Laon to Thomas Aquinas (Washington, D.C., 1963), p. 113. 28 Philippe Ariès, “Introduction,” in Jacques Dupâquier (ed.), Marriage and Remarriage in Populations of the Past (London, 1981), p. 29. 29 Jean Bernhard, “Le mariage,” in Jean Bernhard, Charles Lefebvre, and Francis Rapp (eds), L’époque de la réforme et du Concile de Trente (Paris, 1990), p. 212. 27

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Thus the Church’s attitude continued to rely on the argument Paul laid out, and Augustine furthered, that marriage was hopelessly tangled up with lust and was thus somewhat suspect in the eyes of good Christians. A second and more recent development was the decision that marriage was a sacrament, as solemn and important an act for Christians as receiving holy orders or extreme unction. This decision was part of the broader reconfiguring of canon law pertaining to marriage in the late twelfth century and particularly the emphasis on the centrality of consent to constituting a valid marriage. As a consequence the debate about what constituted a valid marriage took on a more serious tenor once it was definitively categorized as a sacramental act. In Christian teaching, a sacrament is a complicated and layered concept. It denotes the ways in which faithful Christians can both experience and participate in the union of Christ and the Church. But there is a distinction between the sacrament as a performative act and the lasting impact of this moment. To express the complex nature of sacraments Church teaching refers to them as having “matter” and “form,” a duality coined and explained by Thomas Aquinas. Consequently sacraments have two effects and functions: “(they) are signs, and they cause grace precisely in accord with their nature. They effect what they signify; they are signs that cause what they signify and cause by signifying.”30 So sacraments change participants both in the moment when they are performed, in accordance with their nature as form, and over time by dint of the bond they call into being between and within the participants, in accordance with their nature as “matter.” The precise goal and effect that the sacrament of marriage had was “to produce a visible manifestation of the union of Christ and His Church,” thus creating a mystical and permanent bond between husband and wife.31 This decision to make marriage a sacrament strengthened the Church’s opposition to dissolving marriages except under the rarest of circumstances and reaffirmed the high value of marriage in Christian society. What is striking about this extended debate over designating marriage a sacrament, which lasted for over a century and resulted in a significant formal change in its definition, is the absence of discussion about the implications for remarriage.32 Clearly Christian thinkers did not consider marriage and remarriage to be exactly equivalent acts, given their diverging attitudes towards these two actions and the differences in the ceremonies. But while the Church shaped and refined its position on marriage to correspond and react to its changing social and economic landscape, canonists did not consider how those changes should influence teaching on remarriage. Instead, the Church continued to rely on the teachings of the early Church to direct their attitude toward unions of widows or widowers. Given that this important redefinition of marriage as a sacrament left 30 31 32

New Catholic Encyclopedia (17 vols, New York, 1967), vol. 12, p. 808. Ibid., vol. 9, p. 472. Heaney, Development of Sacramentality, pp. 43–4.

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remarriages unchanged, it is worth considering what impact this new doctrine might have exerted even if it went unsaid in Church writings. Canon lawyers had been discussing marriage, whether it was a sacramental act and the nature of the grace conferred by this specific act for centuries, debating whether an institution that included such a physical dimension could be considered to confer divine enlightenment. The position that marriage was a sacrament, while not exerting any formal pressure on the Church’s ambivalence concerning remarriage, did seem to play a part in the subtle discouragement of remarriage for widows if we follow the logic demanded in the creation of a valid marriage. On the simplest level, raising marriage to the sacramental level placed greater importance on the free consent of both partners. Any intimation that consent to a marriage had been forced, and that it was at heart an invalid union, had more serious implications if the forced relationship were also a sacramental one. Because Church officials had great concerns over the nature of free consent in second marriages, they continued to have serious misgivings about the desirability of allowing remarriage. Church leaders were particularly concerned about the degree of pressure a family might place on a wealthy widow to remarry, particularly if she were still in her childbearing years.33 The further solemnization of the marital bond as a sacrament relieved a widow from feeling obligated to remarry for the sake of her children or family if she were not inclined to do so. But, paradoxically, while many Church attitudes toward widows had the effect of disempowering these women by counseling them to devote their energies toward spiritual pursuits, the place of consent in marriage authorized the widow alone to make this decision about her future. By definition, it forced her to act, rather than pushing her to rely on others, when faced with the decision to contract a second marriage, and placed all of the responsibility and moral weight of this act squarely on the shoulders of the widow. The other way the refinement of marriage’s spiritual nature may have influenced the continuing disapproval of remarriage lies in the meaning of sacraments. Central to this notion was a sense that performing the sacramental act transformed the participants in a fundamental way. In a marriage, a mystical bond was created that was meant to join the spouses permanently in a divine connection that allowed them to experience in some fashion the relationship between Christ and the Church. Given the transcendent meaning of marriage, as far as Christian teaching was concerned, it was not clear that an individual could enter into such a relationship with more than one person. Technically, marriage was a sacrament

33 Janet S. Loengard, “Of the Gift of Her Husband: English Dower and its Consequences in the Year 1200,” in Suzanne Wemple and Julius Kirshner (eds), Women of the Medieval World: Essays in Honor of John H. Mundy (Oxford, 1985), p. 237.

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like receiving the Eucharist was. An individual could participate in this ritual more than once.34 However, unlike the individual’s participation in the Eucharist, which reenacted the same relationship between the faithful and the transformed host, in remarriage a widowed spouse entered into a sacramental bond with a different partner. While the bond was the same, and what it represented was also stable, the widow or widower performed it with a different partner, in a sense then pledging to be part of a mystical, permanent relationship with another. The Church addressed some of these issues by explaining that marriage created a bond not of souls but of persons; thus the bond that “constitutes this union ceases to exist when one of the parties…ceases to exist.”35 However, Church leaders did not explicitly discuss or connect it to their unease with remarriage. Despite official reckoning with respect to the possibility of sacramental remarriage, it is telling that at nearly the same time that the sacramental nature of marriage was finally solidified in doctrine, the Pope also withdrew the nuptial blessing from remarriage ceremonies. Remarriages were clearly not readily condoned, as first marriages were. And while the misgivings of some theologians about the sacramental status of a union that lacked a nuptial blessing were never officially supported, the Church’s continued ambivalence about remarriages implies that they were not wholly rejected either. Based on the teachings of the Church about marriage, remarriage, and widowhood, and drawing out the logical intersections of these related ideas, it seems that part of the problem stemmed from the ramifications of marriage’s sacramental nature.36 But while this may not be wholly clear, the fact remains that the Church continued to discourage remarriage, even while never explicitly addressing that unease or re-examining that posture in the face of changing social realities and practices.37 34

This was in contrast to the sacraments of baptism, confirmation, and holy orders that were believed to mark an individual permanently, thus eliminating the possibility of receiving them more than once. 35 Heaney, Development of Sacramentality, p. 181. 36 Suggestive in this respect is the discussion that took place during the Council of Trent concerning the sacramentality of clandestine marriages. A number of bishops asserted that secret marriages, contracted without the benefit of priestly rituals, were not fully sacramental. This reasoning supports the related idea that without the nuptial blessing a remarriage was not fully sacramental—both positions see full grace as conferred by the Church’s rituals with these less than ideal marriages that lacked full ceremony also lacking full sanctity. Bernhard, “Le mariage,” p. 247. 37 Partners entered remarriages for many reasons—economic, emotional, familial. Remarriages functioned to achieve certain property goals and to mitigate the impact of high mortality on population levels. Yet the Church never considered demographic or economic changes in its consideration of remarriage. See for example Ståle Dyrvik, “Gagne-pain ou sentiments? Trait du remariage en Norvège au dix-neuvième siècle,” and especially Henri Leridon, “Effets du veuvage et du remariage sur la fécondité. Résultat d’un modèle de

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The Council of Trent The Church’s official position on marriage and remarriage, as well as the preference for widows’ chastity, accounts in part for its absence from the agenda at the most important religious meeting of the early modern period, the Council of Trent. In part due to unrelenting criticism from Protestant reformers about the abuses of clandestine marriage and the need for parental permission for this most important decision, the Council did take up the question of what constituted a valid marriage as one of its major concerns. The question of what constituted a valid marriage was disputed not only by Protestant reformers who wished to criticize the Roman Church in the strongest terms for their position on marriage, but also within the ranks of faithful Catholics who agreed to some extent with these calls for change. While they might not have fully agreed with Martin Luther’s and other reformers’ criticisms of the Catholic conception of marriage, many members of the Roman church nonetheless wished for certain changes in the ways that a couple could contract a valid union.38 The most pressing concern swirled around the role of parental consent. The majority of French bishops, and French laypeople, wished to see parental consent made a required part of entering into a marriage. In fact, the French contingency at Trent went so far as to demand that marriages lacking parental consent and due publicity, in short clandestine marriages, should be declared null, leaving both partners free to marry others. Such changes, advocates argued, would smooth the family and social disorder often occasioned by ill-conceived and hasty unions, as well as lend greater meaning and harmony to what were by force lifetime partnerships. While a great many of the bishops present were sympathetic to this position, two issues doomed these proposed changes. The first, and perhaps more serious problem, was that this change would severely compromise papal teaching on free consent. It is difficult to see how requiring parental consent could mesh with requiring the free consent of the partners at the same time. Sanctioning such a change would overturn centuries of Church teaching about what made a marriage, and particularly what made marriage a sacrament.

simulation,” both in Jacques Dupâquier (ed.), Marriage and Remarriage in Populations of the Past (London, 1981). These authors argue in their essays that the impulse to remarry served certain changing social needs and so responded in part to economic and demographic changes. 38 In his article on the codification of canon law in 1917, René Metz emphasizes that while there was a desire to reshape canon law at the Council of Trent as part of the Catholic response to the Reformers’ criticisms, Trent did not achieve this complete revision of Church law. Instead what resulted from this council were “d’importantes décisions disciplinaires.” René Metz, “Pouvoir, Centralisation, et Droit. La codification du droit de l’église catholique au début du XXe siècle,” Archives de Sciences Sociales des Religion, 51 (1981): 51.

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The second problem was tied up in the polemics of Protestant reformers. They criticized the Roman Church for allowing secret marriages to have validity, charging that such unions undermined the authority of parents and introduced unhappiness and disorder into society. A much more sensible, and realistic, approach to marriage regulation, according to such critics, would require parental consent to marriages and allow marriages to be annulled in certain circumstances.39 Acceding to the requests of Catholic reformers who wished to change the definition of valid marriage thus came to be seen as a capitulation to Protestant reformers and an admission that the Church had been mistaken in this area of doctrine. Given the hostile relations between Rome and its critics, such a position of accommodation was not politically feasible. Thus the bishops at Trent were left to devise a solution that addressed the legitimate concerns of their members, upheld the rightness of papal teaching on marriage, and held firm against the criticisms of Luther and his ilk. In the end, finding a solution that met all of these criteria proved to be impossible. Ultimately the Council tried to accommodate the desire for meaningful reform but without going so far as to negate papal pronouncements about the indissolubility of marriage except in the rarest of circumstances. The decrees on marriage that emerged at Trent were called the Tametsi decrees. After much wrangling, the council declared that while two individuals could contract a valid marriage by the exchange of free consent, and that no other elements were necessary to create such a union, in the future couples were strongly admonished to make their union public before solidifying it.40 In fact, the council went further by declaring that it was illegal to marry without public banns and the presence of a priest, a position that would be reiterated in French royal legislation. Yet they ultimately refused to declare clandestine marriages null and pronounced heretical any attempt to break up such unions by reason of their secrecy.41 This decree thus placed the full moral force of the Church behind supporters of parental consent but balked at modifying the free consent definition of valid marriage, thus eliminating the possibility of annulling marriages that took place without parents’ knowledge. By following this path the Council did not succeed in mollifying any of its critics, and in fact the French contingent was so incensed by the Council’s failure to include parental consent in the definition of a valid

39

Bernhard, “Le mariage,” pp. 216–21; Lyndal Roper, The Holy Household: Women and Morals in Reformation Augsburg (Oxford, 1989), pp. 159–60; Steven Ozment, When Fathers Ruled: Family Life in Reformation Europe (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 28–30. 40 Jean Bernhard gives a thorough description of the long and difficult discussions, spanning from 1547 to 1563, that took place around the issue of marriage. See his “Le mariage.” 41 On the illegality, but validity of clandestine marriages, Bernhard, “Le mariage,” pp. 224, 230–31, 260.

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marriage that they refused to accept the teachings of Trent for nearly three decades.42 One of the most striking aspects of this episode is the failure of the council to take up the issue of remarriage. Bishops spent months debating the definition of marriage, seeking in their response to take into account not only centuries of Church teaching and tradition, but also the needs of contemporary European society. By considering the issue of parental consent, the Council obliquely acknowledged the interests, social, political and economic, that a family had in children’s marriages. Yet even with the extended attention paid to this question, the Council never considered clarifying or altering the Church’s teachings about widows, widowers, and remarriage. In fact, the issue never seems to have come up. It is not clear why the Council neglected to address this important question. As we know, death and remarriage were a regular part of life in early modern Europe, and a large minority of the population contracted marriages after a spouse passed away. This was not by any means a marginal practice that could be safely overlooked by the Church; it affected many of the faithful. The question of what constituted a valid marriage caused a great deal of debate and controversy, and even had political ramifications in France. But even in this charged context, the question of remarriage did not emerge. Several possibilities come to mind. First, the Church’s ambivalence toward remarriage, particularly for women, remained in place and needed no further clarification. If the goal of the Catholic Church was to influence women to remain celibate after the deaths of their husbands, they needed to go no further to make this point clear. Second, unlike with marriage, there were not influential groups or individuals pressing the Catholic Church for change. Neither the nobility nor wealthy commoners showed concern over their children’s remarriages. Without such pressure, the Council did not have any vital reason to open up the issue of remarriage for discussion. Finally, ignoring the question of remarriage tacitly reinforced the notion that widows should dedicate themselves to religion rather than to building a new household.

Polemical Texts The Catholic Church usually dealt with the issue of widows by reverting back to the position articulated in Paul’s letters and ignoring many of the pressing practical concerns that widows faced. In fact, over centuries the Church never fully reexamined Paul’s position on widows and what women should do under such circumstances, preferring instead to adhere to his teachings. Rather than constructing a coherent position on remarriage, the Church waffled on its legitimacy and desirability, never making clear the exact status of remarriage. The place where early modern Catholic attitudes toward widows and remarriage 42

Diefendorf, Paris City Councillors, p. 163.

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emerged far more clearly was in pious pamphlets and tracts. Religious writers explicitly frowned upon remarriage, and explained the reasons behind this disapproval. They discussed far more clearly than did Church doctrine the Christian ideal of widowhood and disapproval of remarriage. Such religious texts help to fill in some of the logic behind canon law and traditional teachings and decisions. Religious texts from several different genres explored what writers considered the problems of widowhood, and how women should address these problems. Perhaps the most vexing issue for religious writers was that of sexuality. The Church exhorted widows to remain chaste in order to live an exemplary life. The priest Gerard de Villethierry, who wrote a widely read tract called La vie des veuves emphasized the difficulties widows would have controlling their sexuality. He reasons that widows would struggle particularly with maintaining their chastity since “having lived a long time in a marriage, they have more difficulties with keeping (sexually) continent than those who have kept their first virginity: their passions are not accustomed to being repressed.”43 The solution for potentially unbridled women was to maintain what Villethierry called a second virginity; in order to do so widows would need to remain unmarried. In making his plea to widows, Villethierry used Paul’s aversion to sexuality to justify his ideas. He tells widows that in chastity “they are keeping their bodies for God alone.” In addition to using their celibacy to honor God, it also served as a kind of penance and widows should “consider their widowhood as a means that God give them to purify the faults they may have committed during their marriages.”44 With her husband’s death, a widow found another opportunity to turn her energies to the Christian life. The distrust of sexuality, the idea that a sexual life was lesser than a celibate one, closely informed religious instruction to widows in how to become better Christian women. A related challenge for widows was how to honor their deceased husbands. Certainly funeral rites and prayers formed one way to mark a passing. But writers urging women to remain unmarried and chaste argued that such a course pleased their deceased husbands as well as God. One potential problem when a widow remarried was that she might forget her first marriage, but those who retain their widowhood, and who keep their resolution to remain (sexually) continent for the rest of their days, are ordinarily full of esteem and respect for the spouses from whom God has separated them, and they (widows) honor them in a special way; because they always carry their (husbands’) names.45

43

Girard de Villethierry, La vie des veuves, ou les devoirs et les obligations des veuves chrétiennes (Paris, 1736), preface. 44 Villethierry, Vie des veuves, pp. 77, 82. 45 Villethierry, Vie des veuves, p. 51.

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While this explanation does not explicitly raise the sacramental nature of marriage, the assertion that a widow maintained a tie with her deceased husband, and owed him loyalty beyond the grave, reminds readers that marriage, as a sacrament, changed participants permanently. An even stronger statement about the lasting connection between spouses asserts that if the respect they hold for (their husbands) is sincere, it does not end with death, and they (widows) will always obey them, they will be eager to follow advice that they (husbands) customarily gave, they will maintain conduct similar to what (their husbands) demanded of them when they were alive.46

A remarrying widow faced serious consequences. Without violating a true sacramental imperative, the widow nonetheless turned her back on both her husband and the spiritually transcendent nature of their connection. Further, the remarrying widow ignored the advice of religious advisors about the best Christian life. The problems of sexuality and marriage were not the only ones that widows faced in seeking to lead an exemplary Christian life. Widows often found themselves seduced by other worldly attractions. Anne de Gonzague, the Princess Palatine, a widow eulogized by no less an orator than Jacques Bossuet, found herself pulled toward material concerns in the months after her husband’s death. She was tempted to stray by “forgetting the eternal mourning and the character of desolation, which serves as the mainstay of the glory of her state, (and) she abandons herself to the enjoyment of the world.”47 She spent the time directly following her husband’s death involved in the affairs of court, a place Bossuet describes in pejorative terms. He cedes that it was a place where people went out of necessity, in order to oversee their affairs and maintain their fortune. But he also condemned much of the activity that went on there as corrupting, explaining that at court “you find everywhere veiled interests, tricky jealousies.”48 While Anne de Gonzague did have legitimate reasons to be at court, she was also in danger of losing her moral footing and forgetting her duties as a true Christian widow. Despite the Princess Palatine’s attempts to maintain her integrity, she did become corrupted by the life of court, and was troubled by this moral decline. Bossuet diagnosed the problem for his readers, “what was lacking in our princess’ happiness? God, whom she had known and all to do with Him.”49 Even a woman of moral character found herself led astray as she attempted to mix with the world.

46 47 48 49

Villethierry, Vie des veuves, p. 53. Jacques Bénigne Bossuet, Œuvres choisies (5 vols, Paris, 1871) vol. 4, p. 378. Bossuet, Œuvres, p. 379. Bossuet, Œuvres, p. 382.

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What remedies to these problems existed according to religious authorities? The most desirable, and at the same time most impractical, course of action was to join a religious order. The short biography of Widow Pollalion, who chose to take religious vows, provides an example of one such worthy widow. Marie Lumague, Widow Pollalion, was experiencing the pain and sadness that all women felt when they lost their husbands. But this admirable woman did not wallow in her emotions or use her misfortune as an excuse for self-pity. Rather, Widow Pollalion decided to take consolation in her faith and “wanting nothing but what was in God’s plan, (she) thus found in Him, and in submission to His will, what could moderate her grief.”50 The ideal widow, Pollalion placed her fate in God’s hands. She did not look to family, friends, work, or other distraction to heal her pain; she passively accepted God’s will and devoted herself to doing his work. The Widow Pollalion quickly realized that God’s work required her to adopt formal adherence to religious life. She chose to become a tertiary member of the Order of Saint Dominique and “she spent the rest of her life in the order’s habits which were always very modest, like those of a Christian widow.”51 This path was ideal for a true Christian woman who found herself without a husband. In some sense, becoming an adherent to a religious order transferred determination of her actions from her husband to her superior. This scenario ensured that the widow would not exercise authority or agency on her own behalf. And the choice to become a tertiary also eased acceptance of this decision by a woman’s family, as these religious were considered secular members of their order which allowed them to own property, thus not disrupting the family’s inheritance strategies.52 Like an ideal Christian woman, Widow Pollalion lived according to an exemplary model of Christian widowhood, institutionalizing her devotion to her faith by joining a religious order. But while the Church certainly rejoiced in such women, Christian writers recognized that they needed to provide widows with other models of comportment as not all such women would embrace the life of a dévote. Religious authorities needed to find other, less dramatic, ways for widows to express their piety and devotion to spiritual ideas. One option was self-defined seclusion and isolation. In order to make the journey back to ideal widowhood, and piety, Anne de Gonzague “withdrew to the country, sequestered from the world, and spent three whole years ordering her conscience and her affairs.”53 But the Princess could not achieve moral redemption alone. Her confessor, a man instrumental in this process, accompanied her to her 50 M. Collin, Vie de la vénérable servante de Dieu Marie Lumague veuve de M. Pollalion, gentil-homme ordinaire du Roy, Institutrice des filles de la Providence (Paris, 1744), p. 27. 51 Collin, Vie de Lumague, p. 29. 52 Elizabeth Rapley, The Dévotes: Women and Church in Seventeenth-Century France (Montreal, 1990), p. 206. 53 Bossuet, Œuvres, p. 382.

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country home, pushing her to recognize how she had succumbed to temptation in the period after her husband’s death and what was needed to achieve true Christian widowhood. The prescription for redemption is a familiar one: Anne de Gonzague needed to withdraw from public life, most especially the court, spend her time in reflection and prayer, and devote the energies she once spent at worldly pursuits to acts of charity and religious devotion. Once Anne de Gonzague renounced the trappings of the court, and even its physical space, she appeared in public only one time, to announce her decision to withdraw from the world. After this defining moment, the Princess hewed to an orthodox path, fulfilling the duties of the Christian widow with little deviation. She kept herself “industriously occupied, exerting herself in works where piety has provided the plan: it was either clothes for the poor or vestments for altars... As it was not necessary to speak, the wise Princess kept silent.”54 Here a silent woman was a pious woman; if she did not speak, she could not assert her own agency or will and act contrary to what her confessor or Heavenly Father might ordain. Without taking religious orders, the Princess Palatine nonetheless created an exemplary Christian life for herself. Of course, even widows who could not achieve such levels of disengagement from the world could find other ways to express their piety and desire to live in accordance with their religious beliefs. One decision a widow could make in order to enhance her moral state was to remain single. As discussed earlier, there were theological and spiritual reasons for women to remain chaste after their husbands died. But one problem with this scenario was that in the absence of a husband, and perhaps of a father and brother as well, a woman answered to no male authority. True, she was expected to follow the guidance of the Church and its male leaders, but such authority figures were rather abstract for most women and certainly could not have the impact of a spouse or father. Thus while the unmarried widow encapsulated ideal womanhood, it also introduced the frightening specter of the independent woman, making decisions on her own behalf. For this reason, an unmarried, spiritually devoted, widow, while she would not disturb her family’s inheritance strategies or succumb to the lures of a physical relationship, was nonetheless a profoundly disturbing figure. Absent the explicit requirement that widows either remarry or rejoin their natal families in some capacity, there was not much society could do to solve this dilemma. While religious polemicists reminded widows that God demanded obedience from them, just as a husband or father did, this abstract authority did not necessarily resonate like the physical presence of a man. Widows living outside an order, or without a confessor, could present the image of living ideal Christian lives but they were also living without male authority. Although it was not an ideal solution to this vexing problem, religious writers urged contemplation and prayer to guide women through the temptations of 54

Bossuet, Œuvres, p. 389.

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widowhood. In order to reinforce all of the spiritual teachings about her state, the widow was to pray often, honoring the memory of her late husband, seclude herself from society, perform good works, and shun luxury and avarice. If a widow fulfilled all of these dicta, she would serve as model to her fellow Christians, employ her time and energy in a worthwhile endeavor, and, most importantly, achieve salvation. A woman who was not able to commit to this kind of existence, who wished to remain part of the world, was in danger of losing her happiness and her soul through these ill-conceived actions. While the demands made on widows were quite heavy, the potential rewards offered by such efforts were considerable. Widows could achieve “eternal salvation…to enjoy the eternal presence of our lord Jesus Christ in heaven.”55 But how reasonable were such demands for women who did not belong to the social elite? It was not coincidental that a common belief about widows was that “widows have almost no other obligations but to preserve their worldly goods, to oversee their lawsuits, to govern their families.”56 Widows who did indeed need to look after such practical matters had to find other strategies for creating respectable, pious, but practical lives for themselves. According to religious teachings and texts, widows were best off when they either withdrew from the world, minimizing the temptation to engage with secular pursuits, or when they devoted themselves publicly to a life filled exclusively with piety and religious service. However this model represents only an ideal and does not take into account the ways widows understood, reacted to, adopted, or resisted such instruction. With respect to some of these concerns, we can know how widows responded. In early modern France remarriages comprised about 25 per cent of all marriages, with widowers taking new spouses more quickly and more often than widows. For all kinds of reasons, economic, emotional, domestic, people who lost spouses found new partners. When assessing their needs and wishes, many widows found a continuation of married life more compelling than a retreat into religious contemplation. Likewise, most widows, particularly those from the more modest levels of society, remained active members of their communities, working to support themselves and their families, making decisions about their children’s careers and marriage partners, engaging in the life of the guild and the neighborhood. Particularly if there were family resources that needed to be husbanded and enlarged, a widow would find it very difficult to turn her back on such concerns, thus endangering her family’s continued well-being. In these terms, widows did not strictly heed priests who told them to devote their lives to piety and prayer. But there were other facets of religious advice that even widows who continued to mix with secular society could follow. They could heed exhortations to pray, 55 56

Villethierry, Vie des veuves, preface. Villethierry, Vie des veuves, p. 2.

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consider mortality, live a moral and pious life even while working or being a wife to a second husband. To assess the impact of religious writings on such subjective activities is far more difficult. The widows under examination here, like the vast majority of women in their society, left virtually no written records of their thoughts, feelings, or ideas. Thus a widow who embraced these kinds of priestly appeals might not often leave traces of such sentiments. But in indirect ways we can glean the impact religion made on the lives of widows. By examining their testamentary behavior, their relationship to their parish, and their material possessions, we can gain a notion of how widows understood and practiced religion, and the role it played in their lives.

Death and Life Thereafter Instructions to a widow began at the very moment when she became a different kind of woman, at the death of her husband. This event changed her relationship to many of the people around her. She no longer performed only wifely tasks; she became a stand-in for her husband. That moment was solemnized by the rituals of death, mediated by the Catholic Church. After the completion of those rites, the widow became a different person. While her husband experienced socialization in the form of apprenticeship, we can imagine the rituals surrounding death as a kind of socialization for the widow. It was an experience that fundamentally changed her relation to her family, the law, the state, the guild. She took on a new status and a new place in society as a result of her husband’s death. The events surrounding death in eighteenth-century France were clearly prescribed, both by law and by custom. At the moment when it became clear that someone was on the verge of death, a train of pre-set events went into effect. The curé came to the house bearing the sacrament, a signal to the neighborhood that a member of their community would soon die. A priest was indispensable for the seriously ill, and the government demanded that a physician notify a priest after the second visit to a patient’s home. A Royal Declaration of 1712, reiterated in 1724, promulgated these regulations so that family shock and delicacy might not unwittingly serve to deny a dying penitent the crucial last rites, final confession and extreme unction. If the physician did not comply with this declaration, he was fined 300 livres for the first infringement, and was suspended from practicing medicine for three months after the second time.57 These rigid regulations seemed to be effective, as it seemed to be the case that “(e)xcept in Protestant areas, or in cases of sudden death, there were few who died without the ministrations of the Church.”58 57

Isambert, Recueil des lois, vol. 20, p. 574. John McManners, Death and the Enlightenment: Changing Attitudes to Death among Christians and Unbelievers in Eighteenth-century France (Oxford, 1981), p. 244. 58

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The rituals of death involved not only religious rites, but secular ones as well. The other official an urban family would frequently send for was the neighborhood commissioner of police. As soon as possible after the death of the head of the household its members would ask the police commissioner to seal up the house and make a preliminary inventory, to be formalized once a notary arrived to make a proper probate inventory (inventaire après décès). This step sought to head off arguments between heirs and creditors, and to prevent the property of the deceased from being removed from the house. In villages, the parish bell-ringer would inform the community of a death; in the cities there were criers to perform that function, or for the more fashionable printed death notices informed intimates of the bad news.59 While friends and relatives gathered to pay their last respects, the body would remain in the house overnight while someone nominally kept prayerful vigil. Once the moment came for the body to leave the house, Church ritual dictated precisely how the rite should proceed. The Catholic ritual used for lay funerals, unchanged until the reforms of Vatican II, was set out in 1614 by Pope Paul V as the last of the major changes of the Council of Trent. The official Roman Ritual, as it was called, provided for “procession from the house of the departed to the church; the office of the dead; the funeral mass followed by the absolution; and a procession to the place of burial followed by the burial proper.”60 At each point, the celebrant recited a series of prayers and psalms set down in the Roman Ritual as appropriate to meditation on the theme of mortality and eternal life. For guild masters, members of their confraternity also provided some of the ritual structure of the funeral procession. The deceased master’s companions accompanied his bier to the church where the funeral mass was to be held, lending brotherly support to his family and a formal marking of the loss the community had experienced.61 When a master stone cutter died, his fellow masters carried candles, paid for out of the communal purse, as they marched to the church. The community also paid for the funerals of destitute masters and widows, thus ensuring that these unfortunate brothers and sisters would have a service appropriate to their standing as part of an incorporated community.62

59

Ibid., p. 271. Geoffrey Rowell, The Liturgy of Christian Burial (London, 1977), p. 71. 61 While all of the classic works on the guilds mention confraternities, little work has been done on them as independent entities. See Gabriel LeBras, “Les Confréries chrétiennes, problèmes et propositions,” Revue historique de droit français et étranger, (1940–41). For comparative insights see Maureen Flynn, Sacred Charity: Confraternities and Social Welfare in Spain, 1400–1700 (Ithaca, 1988). On the place of the procession in the funeral rite, Vanessa Harding, “Whose Body? A Study of Attitudes towards the Dead Body in Early Modern Paris,” in Bruce Gordon and Peter Marshall (eds), The Place of the Dead: Death and Remembrance in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2000). 62 Lespinasse, Les corporations, p. 2. 60

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Once the procession arrived at the church, the priest or curé in charge would take over the rest of the ritual. The order of the mass chosen reflected “the note of judgment and the terror of death (which) came to replace the earlier emphasis on entry into the joy of paradise.”63 The priest used the opportunity to teach the congregation how to prepare for judgment upon death, and emphasized not the release death provided from earthly toil, but the danger an unprepared soul faced in the afterlife.64 Such teachings were meant not only to inspire mindfulness and piety in the hearts of listeners, but more specifically to instruct widows on their new roles.

Devotional Practices The funeral, the first event that followed a death, was meant to put religious matters in mind. The events at the church and burial ground were meant to remind widows of their heightened religious obligations. There were a number of ways women could express their devotion to religious concerns. Widows were seen as being particularly drawn to the Church, in part because of the emptiness that accompanied their loss, and in part because they now could set aside their secular concerns, cares for their families, and focus on their spiritual well-being. Certainly experiencing death at such close quarters must have made them consider their mortality and the state of their soul. This reminder of mortality may have had the effect of urging widows to become more devoted to their Church. But given that women have traditionally been more committed to religious beliefs and practices than men, widows were probably already more predisposed toward religious devotion than widowers.65 For widows, then, the expectations placed on them after their husbands’ death were not wholly new but rather required a change in degree of commitment to a pious life. 63

Rowell, Liturgy, p. 72. This change in emphasis seems to be connected in part to the shift in emphasis in sermons and burial practices that occurred during the Wars of Religion. On this see Larissa Juliet Taylor, “Funeral Sermons and Orations as Religious Propaganda in Sixteenth-century France,” in Bruce Gordon and Peter Marshall (eds), The Place of the Dead: Death and Remembrance in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 2000), p. 227. 65 There are numerous historical works that point out the connection between gender and piety. Of particular note on this point are Rapley, The Dévotes; Suzanne Desan, Reclaiming the Sacred: Lay Religion and Popular Politics in Revolutionary France (Ithaca, 1990); Sara Nalle, God in LaMancha: Religious Reform and the People of Cuenca, 1500– 1650 (Baltimore, 1992). Annick Pardailhé-Galabrun makes this connection more concrete in her examination of ownership of religious objects. La naissance de l’intime. 3000 foyers parisiens XVIIe–XVIIIe siècles (Paris, 1988), chapter 11. Pierre Chaunu also discusses what he calls the “feminization” of the Church in his L’église, culture et société: Essais sur réforme et contre-réforme (Paris, 1984). 64

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The ways widows expressed religious sentiments could signify a range of attachment to spiritual pursuits. Obviously the decision to join a religious order signaled the highest level of commitment and the most radical response to the changes wrought by widowhood. Certain structural changes that accompanied the Counter-Reformation meant that women could join non-cloistered religious communities in what were known as tertiary orders. Women’s embrace of such religious roles accelerated rapidly in the seventeenth and, especially, eighteenth centuries as many of them saw a formal position in a tertiary as a means to live a licit and secure single life.66 For the most part the women most involved in this migration came from the noble and wealthier segments of society.67 In the secular world, women could not marry without dowries and familial permission, whether taking a spouse for the first or second time. Unlike women who might work to support themselves, those more privileged members of society found their actions hemmed in by familial constraints and saw very limited opportunities to live independent lives. A life devoted to serving the Church within a religious order opened up the possibility of living beyond the demands of family strategies. Such generalizations about the impact social and economic status had on godly vocations are borne out in the records of entries to active religious orders. While there were certainly women with vocations from the ranks of working people, they were a distinct minority. Further, most women who took religious vows were quite young. Not infrequently, girls who had just finished their educations entered the religious order where they had been schooled. The average age of women entering religious institutions was quite young in the early modern period, under twenty years of age.68 Given this preponderance of young entrants, we must recognize that the notion that widows, like Madame Pollalion whose life we examined above, would embrace a formal religious life was based in wishful thinking and not social practice. The other way that women sometimes integrated themselves into the fabric of a religious house, without taking vows, was by becoming boarders of the nuns there. Renting out lodging was one of the primary ways that impoverished convents supported themselves. But, again, the vast majority of women who rented such accommodations were young women, usually women being educated within the walls of the convent where they lived. A handful of widows might take up

66

Rapley, The Dévotes, pp. 5–7. Rapley, The Dévotes, p. 17. Barbara Diefendorf also addresses the preponderance of higher status individuals among those who joined religious communities in her article “Give Us Back Our Children: Patriarchal Authority and Parental Consent to Religious Vocations in Early Counter-Reformation France,” Journal of Modern History, 68/2 (1996): 267. 68 Rapley, The Dévotes, p. 187, 200, appendix, graph 5. Marie-Andrée Jégou, Les Ursulines du faubourg Saint-Jacques (Paris, 1981). 67

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residence within a community of nuns, but they too were in the minority.69 The evidence from religious houses suggests that widows, despite their level of piety or their attraction to a religious life, did not find immersion in the life of a religious order an appealing or viable option. But this avoidance of a formal religious life by no means reflected a lack of concern for spiritual matters. While it is not clear that artisanal widows embraced greater religiosity as a result of their husbands’ death, the evidence does reveal that piety was an meaningful part of their lives. The language of widows’ wills, their material possessions, and their relationships to the Church all suggest ways in which widows made religious practice a part of their concerns and experiences.

Testamentary Practices The strongest evidence for widows’ religious sentiments comes from the wills they drew up. In these documents women specified charitable bequests, all of which benefited religious institutions, designated funeral rites and masses, requested a place of burial, and distributed small gifts to friends and relatives who would not normally inherit from the estate. These elements dominated the wills of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century widows. Only rarely did testaments distribute substantial amounts of property. The bulk of such allocations were determined in marriage contracts generally in accordance with the dictates of customary law, the family’s economic strategy laid out long before death.70 Items disposed of in the will were generally small sentimental items with little monetary value. Those dispositions that did appear in widows’ wills generally carried some kind of religious significance, reinforcing the image of the testament as a means to express and order the end of one’s spiritual life rather than a way to order material issues. Wills usually evidence a great deal of uniformity. They tended to conform to the same format, and diverged little in their general content. Since wills were drawn up by notaries, it is not surprising to see their form strongly mediated by the amanuensis. After the widow gave her name and avowed to the notary that she was Roman Catholic and of sound mind (if not always of sound health), she began the statement of her last wishes by commending her soul to God. She then generally 69

Rapley, The Dévotes, p. 181; AN H5 3782. I found just three widows who lived in religious communities. AN MC étude LXXXV/528; étude LXII/403; étude LXXXI/307. 70 Wills often provided the names of intended heirs, but these simply reiterated the closest family members whose right to inheritance was established in the couple’s marriage contract. As Dénisart points out intended heirs were those designated by law according to family relationship to the deceased; “celle (customary law code) de Paris rejette l’institution d’héritier par l’article 299.” Collection de Décisions Nouvelles et de notions relatives à la jurisprudence actualle (4 vols, Paris, 1771), vol. 2, p. 610. Paul Ourliac also stresses the lack of testamentary freedom under the Coutume de Paris. Paul Ourliac and J. de Malafosse, Histoire du droit privé (3 vols, Paris, 1961).

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begged the intercession of the Virgin and the saints, another avenue to salvation for the pious and proof of adherence to Catholic teaching.71 After this introduction, the widow instructed those who survived her to make provision for masses for her soul. Occasionally she would also ask that her late husband be remembered in these services. Most commonly, the testator requested that masses be said the day of her burial. Some wills also noted the deceased’s wish that masses be said on the one year anniversary of her death, although such provisions, costly as they were, remained in the minority.72 Next the widow specified where she wished to be buried, generally in the graveyard or a chapel of her parish. Those widows who did not leave specific instruction generally left the arrangements to their executor, most often one of their children who could presumably be trusted to carry out a mother’s wish. In order to ensure that her wishes were respected, a few women set aside a certain amount of money for transportation costs should her body need to be brought to her home from elsewhere.73 A significant minority (39 per cent) of widows in a sample of 82 wills also asked to be buried next to their deceased husbands. We might not be surprised to see such a request coming from a widow who had recently lost her husband. Marie Denise Lechamp wished to be buried next to the husband who had died but a year before she wrote her will. Similarly, Marie Caillié had been widowed for about a year and a half when she wrote that she too wanted to be laid to rest near her deceased spouse.74 But two widows whose husbands had died decades earlier also expressed the wish to be laid to rest with their spouses. Louise Françoise, whose husband died in 1762, asked in her 1787 will that she be buried next to her husband. She had never remarried and apparently still had a sense of attachment to

71 Protestants did not believe in the efficacy of saints or the Virgin Mary, and thus did not include such invocations in their wills. Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross: Catholics and Huguenots in Sixteenth-Century Paris (Oxford: 1991), pp. 113–14. One widow in this sample did not call upon the saints and Virgin to aid in her salvation and asked that her burial be arranged with “la plus grande simplicité.” She also did not make any provisions for her burial or masses. AN, MC étude CXVIII/589. 72 Fifty-five per cent of the wills in my sample requested masses on the day of their burial. Only 32 per cent also asked that masses be said on the one year anniversary of their deaths. Of those who did not make specific provision for masses, 22 per cent simply noted that their executor would see that they received a proper burial. The remaining wills were very short and simple for the most part, perhaps implying that their wishes were known to those around them and did not need to be solemnified in a written statement. 73 67 per cent of wills named a burial place. Those who did not asked that their executor make suitable arrangements. 74 AN, MC étude XVII/632, 21 December 1723; XXXVI/390, 18 May 1722.

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a man who had been gone for decades.75 When Marie Goubette, a widow who also did not remarry, made her will in 1742, she asked to be buried next to her husband who had died in 1725.76 One widow, Marie Anne Dubois, asked to be buried next to her husband and also wished “that my funeral rites be the same as those said for him.”77 Her deceased husband was to be included in all of the masses and prayers said at the occasion of her burial and on the anniversary of her death. There is no indication of when Dubois’ husband died, but the instructions in her will suggest that there remained a strong affective bond between this widow and her deceased spouse, feelings that she acted out in part by the ritual to take place when she died. Perhaps Dubois believed that by recreating the circumstances surrounding her husband’s burial she could ensure their reunion after death. Such appeals to be buried in a certain place and in a certain way suggest a level of continuity between the married and the widowed state. The language of wills shows that many of these women continued to live in the same parish where their husbands had been buried. Presumably even if a widow had moved from one lodging to another in the years after her husband’s demise, remaining in the same parish kept her in the same religious and social community to which she had belonged as a married woman. This consistency suggests that widows found assistance and support in their neighborhoods and resisted moving from them even as they went through changes in family life. Another factor influencing a widow’s decision to remain in her parish would have been the link between certain geographic areas and particular professions. Ties to her trade and her spiritual community kept a widow in place, grounding her in certain ways, even as life at home was undergoing profound transformation.78 But the allegiance to her parish did not stem simply from calculations about the value of neighborhood and trade ties, as important as they could be to the widow’s continued prosperity. In addition, widows saw their parishes as sources of comfort and support, of spiritual and material kinds. And given the desire of almost half of these widows to have their graves near their husbands’, the impulse to remain in the same parish also seems to have affective meaning behind it. Expressing the wish to be laid to rest in a certain parish revealed a strong bond to that place. The grave was believed to be the body’s final resting place, and the place whence a person would be resurrected at the end of days. The choice of 75

AN, MC étude XXIV/960, 18 October 1787. In her will Françoise mentioned the date of her husband’s will as 1759. The date of his death is found in his probate inventory, AN, MC étude CV/1276, 29 April 1762. 76 AN, MC étude LXXXII/301, 5 August 1742. 77 AN, MC étude VII/309, 8 August 1757. 78 Evidence from probate inventories shows that widows who remained single tended to stay in the same area while those who remarried often moved with a new husband and family. See chapter 4.

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where to be buried thus expressed a strong attachment with lasting implications. This was not a decision to be made lightly given the temporal implications. The wish to be laid to eternal rest near a loved one emphasized the profound meaning the choice of a gravesite carried for the testator. For these women, the parish offered them a final spiritual refuge where they could wait in a well-known and cherished place near a loved one for the last trumpet call.79 Their interest in being associated with a certain church and a certain religious community for eternity helps to illuminate the meaning of religion to these widowed women. In addition to whatever personal dimension their piety included, part of the religious experience was grounded in the people and the church of their parish. Requests for masses said in the local parish, included in most wills, also created a spiritual bond between the widow and her religious community. Entrusting prayers, and thus the duty for helping to free her soul from purgatory, to her parish and its priest expressed trust and attachment. They also formed the basis for an ongoing relationship with the widow’s parish. It provides another way to understand how the widow’s religious sentiments were based in a particular place. Gifts to the parish poor and religious confraternities, as well as bequests to individual priests and nuns, also provide indications about the way widows lived religion. Nearly four-fifths of the wills specified a sum to be given to the Church in some form, either to pay for masses and services, as assistance for the parish poor, or a gift for the parish confraternity.80 A few of these bequests were provided in exchange for attendance at the widow’s funeral. These gifts were generally of a modest amount, a pattern that reflects the economic status of this group of women as well as the general trend of dechristianization the scholars of this period have noted.81 79

Harding, “Attitudes toward the Dead Body,” p. 184; Pierre Chaunu notes that concern over the gravesite dropped precipitously in the early eighteenth century. He finds that many wills did not mention burial, but instead were preoccupied with including safeguards against being buried alive. My sample reveals people still very much concerned about where they would be buried, and not at all concerned about being buried alive. In fact, one widow requested that she be buried the morning she died if possible, perhaps to hasten her journey to her eternal reward. That will is AN, MC étude CXII/700, 19 June 1749. Pierre Chaunu, La mort à Paris. XVIe, XVIIe, XVIIIe siècles (Paris, 1978), pp. 435–38. 80 Seventy-eight per cent of the wills included such clauses. Two of the wills that were not included asked that executors provide for masses but did not specify the amount to be given for that purpose. 81 The wills that included somewhat larger bequests came from widows whose trades were generally well remunerated, like mercers or goldsmiths. Martha Howell notes that wills from French speaking Flanders in the late medieval period included rather generous gifts for religious purposes. “Fixing Movables: Gifts by Testament in Late Medieval Douai,” Past and Present, 150/1 (1996): 11. On the changes in testamentary practices and dechristianization, see Michel Vovelle’s classic study Piété baroque et déchristianisation en Provence au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1973).

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But beyond these insights, this group of wills shows how widows expressed one aspect of their religion through post-mortem gifts. None of these women gave money beyond their local parish. They did not endow distant religious houses or church projects. They kept all their gifts local, reflecting in another way how their belonging to their community expressed itself through religion and how their communal identity was shaped by religious practice. Making this link even more personal, several widows singled out a priest or nun to whom they wished to grant some token of their esteem and affection. These were generally religious attached to the local parish, either as confessor or celebrant of the parish. The nuns so mentioned were endowed by the few women who were boarders in convents, thus implying that these widows gave gifts to those religious who were their friends and support in the places where they lived. Overall, gifts aimed toward religious ends seemed to center on the widow repaying local debts of gratitude, reiterating her sense of belonging in her local community, rather than trying to use such gifts to build expansive networks of obligation or inflate her importance by endowing an important but far-flung religious institution. Another clue about the lived experience of religion comes from probate inventories. As other historians have noted, the presence of certain material objects in a home can shed light on the ways individuals may have used and understood those items. Widows’ probate inventories show that the vast majority of these women owned at least one devotional object, and often more than one. Out of 77 widows, only 11 owned no type of religious object. Three of these latter inventories were only two to three pages long, implying that many of the deceased’s possessions had been distributed before the notaries arrived to draw up an inventory. There is also no way of knowing if a woman had been buried with a cross or devotional picture, thus making invisible certain religious objects. Despite the possible impact of such factors, it is clear that most women had some kind of religious object in their homes. The most common religious icon was the cross. Of the 56 women who possessed a pious object at their deaths, only four widows did not have a cross. The other articles that figured prominently in these inventories were devotional images. Most portrayed Jesus or the Virgin Mary, and they were usually to be found in the room where the widow had died.82 There is no way of knowing how such possessions were used or valued by their owners. They may have simply been part of the house, representing no particular sentiment on the part of the inhabitants. Or they may have been highly cherished and comforting objects that assisted the widow in her moment of extremis. However, the presence of religious objects in the bedchamber does implies a more personal connection between the owner and 82

Some of the inventories state explicitly that the image was with the deceased when she died. Other notaries simply note their presence in what seemed to be a bed chamber, also suggesting that this was the place of death. Only a handful of such images were in other rooms, like a sitting room or dining room.

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the article than prints or religious objects kept in the shared spaces of the house. The ubiquity of religious paraphernalia suggests that widows felt some pull toward the trappings of religion, incorporating them into their domestic surroundings and, in turn, into their daily lives. The other religious possessions that figured in probate inventories, although less prominently, were books. Forty-five widows owned some kind of devotional literature. A few owned numerous volumes, like Marie Sabatier, the prosperous widow of a gilder, who had in her possession “forty volumes of books, most of them prayers, devotional tracts, and religious history.”83 For the most part, widows owned just one or two volumes of prayers, often described as “old” and well-used, that were found in their bedchamber. More so than crosses or prints, the books catalogued in the household inventory can speak to us about how much they were used and prompt us to imagine these widows as partaking daily of their advice and directives. The widows who owned and read religious texts tell us that piety was part of the rhythm of their lives. In a few instances, inventories show us a widow who owned sacred books and objects that were not part of the household’s belongings at the time of her husband’s death. For example, when the thrice widowed Petronille Verrier died in 1765 the inventory of her house showed that she had thirty volumes of books, most of which were devotional. She also owned two ivory crucifixes and three paintings of religious subjects—one of Mary Magdalene, one of a clergyman, and one of Christ.84 What is notable is the contrast between the list of her possessions and the inventory made after the death of her third husband, Jean Guyot. In that document, none of these religious objects appeared. The two inventories were drawn up from the same notary’s office, Verrier remained in the home she had shared with her late spouse, and the two lists were about the same length and overlapped in the household furnishings they itemized. But apparently despite the continuity she maintained in her domestic space, Widow Guyot felt compelled to invest a substantial amount of money in these sacred objects. At the time of her late husband’s death, the house contained a copper crucifix and a painting of Christ, different from the one that later hung in his widow’s home.85 Both of these religious objects owned by the couple were worth far less than the devotional art Verrier owned. We can imagine that in the long years of Verrier’s second widowhood, after her third husband had died, she began to place more emphasis on spirituality at the end of her life, and acted upon that impulse by reading Scripture and other devotional texts, and by selecting religious art that inspired her. In particular, the decision to invest a substantial sum of money in books evidenced desire on the widow’s part to incorporate devotional reading into 83

AN, MC étude LXXXVI/649, 26 August 1751. AN, MC étude XLV/524, 8 March 1765. It is hard to know what the painting of the clergyman (ecclésiastique) depicted given the notary’s cursory description. 85 AN, MC étude XLV/509, 5 February 1760. 84

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her life, perhaps as a way to come to terms with the loss of yet another spouse as well as her own mortality. Another husband and wife demonstrated similar divergence in ownership of religious items. Jacques Meyboum, a master goldsmith, died in 1730 leaving a widow and two children behind. At that time the family had in their home a small crucifix and two paintings, one of Mary Magdalene and the other of the Virgin. These paintings and the crucifix were described as being in the room where Meyboum died.86 In the thirty years that separated Meyboum’s death from his widow’s, her house changed significantly. Marguerite Picasse had moved to larger lodgings and her extensive inventory, nearly twice as long as her late husband’s, catalogued all of the additional goods she had acquired to fill this space. Picasse had continued to run her husband’s shop, and its seeming prosperity must have kept her occupied. She also seemed to devote some time to religious contemplation, judging from the items found in her possession when she died. In a small room next to the room where she died there was an image of Mary Magdalene and 36 volumes of devotional books. Judging from the furnishings, this room seemed to function as a study. Next to it, in the room where Picasse died, there were three paintings, one of the Virgin, another of Mary Magdalene, and an unidentified female saint. She also had a small gold crucifix worth a substantial 12 livres with her when she died.87 While both Picasse and her husband had religious images near them when they died, Picasse’s many volumes of books give evidence of a different attachment to religion than the one her husband seemed to have. The notary made no remark about the condition of the books so we cannot know how much Picasse used them. But their proximity to the room where she died helps us imagine that she took solace from these texts. The considerable sum she invested in them, ten livres, also suggests that they had a certain importance to Picasse, even if the evidence does not let us see the precise ways she employed these objects. The subjects of the paintings surveyed here, as well as those inscribed in other such inventories, have a certain gendered significance as well. These items help us to understand how widows’ responses to death, especially their emotional responses, were shaped in gendered ways, even while in other ways widows reacted in ways that would have been read as male in this society. In general, women have been more attentive to religious obligations and have been more receptive to allowing the sacred to play a role in their lives.88 This particular 86

AN, MC étude CVII/368, 8 November 1730. AN, MC étude LXVI/529, 13 September 1760. 88 For a theoretical consideration of the relationship between gender and notions of morality see Ruth L. Smith, “Moral Transcendence and Moral Space in the Historical Experiences of Women,” Journal of Feminist Studies in Religion, 4 (1988), esp. p. 22 where Smith reminds her readers of the historically grounded nature of feminine moral values and the meaning they come to have. Also, for the early modern period Mary Elizabeth Perry, Gender and Disorder in Early Modern Seville (Princeton, 1990), pp. 98–100 and Flynn, 87

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attachment to piety has made an impact not only on female ministrations, but also on the material objects they used to worship. Representations of Christ, the Virgin, and Mary Magdalene resonated in special ways for women in CounterReformation Europe. Paintings of the Magdalene, the female saint whose image was found most often in eighteenth-century Parisian homes, represented repentance, forgiveness, and religious ecstasy.89 Contemplating Christ crucified allowed women to enter a state of acceptable spiritual meditation, helping to validate the Church’s teaching through private worship.90 Because the Catholic Church curtailed women’s public religious roles, devotional objects in the home took on greater importance as they offered the best way for lay women to develop and experience their faith. For widows, whose thoughts and energies were directed toward acts of faith, the ownership of religious objects provided an outlet for that faith, a means of consolation, and a mechanism for fulfilling social expectations.

Conclusion The Catholic Church tried to intervene intimately in the way a widow lived her life. As an institution, it tried to produce a model of behavior both more ambitious and restrictive than what civil law or guilds presented to women. In some respects it appears that the church was successful. Based on the evidence at hand, widows were attached to the Church and its teachings in certain ways. Through the evidence presented by material objects, we can imagine that they found devotional practices to be important part of life. But widowed women also acted in ways that contradicted Church teachings. Widows remarried, eschewing a life of celibacy and “perfect widowhood.” They also remained part of the world and immersed in its activities and cares. What such behavior tells us is that widows absorbed and made use of certain religious teachings, but also chose to alter the tenor of those teachings to suit their own needs, material and emotional.

Sacred Charity. For France see Suzanne Desan, Reclaiming the Sacred, which examines female piety during the French Revolution but sets up women’s behavior in this period by using the previous decades for background. 89 Pardailhé-Galabrun, La naissance de l’intime, p. 432. 90 Nalle, God in LaMancha, 150. Both Pardailhé-Galabrun and Nalle assert that the use and ownership of religious artwork was more prevalent for women than for men.

Chapter 3

Women’s Place in Guilds Introduction Guilds in French cities in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were undeniably male organizations. The vast majority of guilds admitted only men as members and trained only boys to perform the skilled labor required by these trades.1 Women and girls, because of their sex, were formally excluded from the sector of the economy regulated by these corporations. In practice, this sexual divide was not scrupulously maintained, although it did serve to keep women from claiming a formal position in guilds. But despite their explicit exclusion from the skilled trades and many other sectors of the economy, women occupied a critical place in maintaining a family’s economic viability.2 In both town and countryside, women’s and children’s labor supplemented the wages of male heads of 1 On the male character of guild culture see Robert Darnton, “Workers Revolt: The Great Cat Massacres of the Rue Saint-Séverin,” in his The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History (New York, 1984), pp. 98–9; William Sewell, Work and Revolution in France. The Language of Labor from the Old Regime to 1848 (Cambridge, 1980); Michael Sonenscher, Work and Wages. Natural Law, Politics and the Eighteenth-Century French Trades (Cambridge, 1989). There were a handful of female and mixed guilds which I will not discuss here. On these trades see Barbara Hanawalt (ed.), Women and Work in Preindustrial Europe (Bloomington, 1986); Daryl Hafter (ed.), European Women and Preindustrial Craft (Bloomington, 1995); Daryl Hafter, “Female Masters in the Ribbonmaking Guild of Eighteenth-Century Rouen,” French Historical Studies, 20/1 (1997): 1–14; Clare Crowston, Fabricating Women: The Seamstresses of Old Regime France, 1675–1791 (Durham, 2001); Clare Crowston, “Engendering the Guilds: Seamstresses, Tailors, and the Clash of Corporate Identities in Old Regime France,” French Historical Studies, 23/2 (2000): 339–72. 2 Women’s position with respect to work has been widely studied. In addition to the works cited in footnote 1, see Martha Howell, Women, Production and Patriarchy in Late Medieval Cities (Chicago, 1986), 133–7; Merry Wiesner, Working Women in Renaissance Germany (New Brunswick, 1986); Merry Wiesner, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1993), chapter 3; Lyndal Roper, The Holy Household: Women and Morals in Reformation Augsburg (Oxford, 1989); Jean Quataert, “The Shaping of Women’s Work in Manufacturing: Guilds, Households, and the State in Central Europe,” American Historical Review, 90/5 (1985): 1122–48; Judith Coffin, Gender and the Politics of Work: Women in the Parisian Garment Trades (1750–1914) (Princeton, 1996).

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household.3 Gender and economic support intersected somewhat differently in artisanal workshops than in the realms of unskilled labor or agricultural work. A master who oversaw a successful shop earned far more than the average unskilled worker and was often in a position to support his family on the business’ revenues. However, in order to run and maintain successful businesses, masters were generally obliged to rely upon their wives and children. Their labor, always available, unpaid and reliable, provided the master with a guaranteed level of assistance, regardless of any other management issues he might face in his shop. Wives and daughters of masters were integral to the survival of the family’s shop although their contribution was almost never codified in guild regulations. While women were absent from guild life as reflected in their statutes and other prescriptive records, they were nonetheless central to the economic success of all master’s shops. The one moment when women had an explicit entry into male guilds was when their husbands died. A widow could take over her husband’s title of master and continue to run the shop herself, usually for as long as she remained unmarried. This represented an important privilege as guild mastership was available to few and offered the potential to earn a secure living for those who held it. In fact, as this chapter will argue, widows of guild masters were privileged beyond other women and many men, due not only to their position as independent legal actors and their newly found control over their families’ economic resources but also due to their access to guild mastership. They enjoyed a social, economic, and legal position that few other members of this society could claim, male or female. Many widows of master craftsmen did take up the guild’s invitation to run independent shops and subsequently became financially comfortable and socially advantaged. Incorporating an examination of craft corporations into this study of widows allows us to examine the outward edge of female privilege. Widows could exercise authority in their shops, making decisions about how to conduct business and manage the workers employed there. They had standing in the guild itself and the title mistress that conveyed this standing. Direction of a business, with its attendant responsibilities, provided widows with a means to support themselves and lead an autonomous life. All of these aspects of widowhood placed them in roles normally out of reach to most women. In addition to delimiting the roles widows fulfilled in this society, looking at the guilds from this perspective reveals certain aspects of guild life that have been underexamined. Ideas about gender relations and the role of the household in guild life, 3

The classic article on this question is Olwen Hufton’s “Women and the Family Economy,” French Historical Studies, 9/1 (1975): 1–23. See also Joan Scott and Louise Tilly, Women, Work and Family (New York, 1978). A more recent work that demonstrates the importance of women’s work to the family’s economic integrity is Tessie Liu, The Weaver’s Knot. The Contradictions of Class Struggle and Family Solidarity in Western France, 1750–1914 (Ithaca, 1994).

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while never explicitly addressed in corporate statutes, formed part of guild assumptions about the world. Looking directly at the position of widows in these corporate bodies reveals some of their underlying assumptions about gender and family life. This chapter explores how the institution of the guild created a certain kind of structural space within which widows could function. The structure I refer to here did not dictate the life-course of these women, nor did it coerce them into making certain decisions or carry out predetermined actions. The structure that the guild provided simply laid out a framework that constrained its members, including widows, in certain ways but also presented them with an array of possibilities. This structure presented widows with a range of potential choices within which they could act according to their own volition, their material and social positions, and other obligations. Once we understand this frame, it will be easier to understand the meaning of widows’ practices and experiences, as well as the ways that guilds defined themselves and their members.

The Meanings of Guilds Members of early modern French society normatively conceived their society as a hierarchy where each person had a fixed position and purpose.4 Guilds comprised important building blocks in this hierarchically conceived society, providing their members with a sense of place and belonging, as well as a moral imperative to uphold and live within the strictures of that hierarchy. In turn, that sense of belonging and moral constraint was believed, by elites and commoners alike, to prevent chaos and disorder by instilling not only a sense of duty in members of this society but also guidance for their behavior. Guilds performed an important function within this hierarchy by providing a structure to help organize and control their members. They were particularly useful as guilds drew together people who worked, thought to have great potential to create disorder and disruption, and

4

The classic formulation of this idea is to be found in Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being: A Study of the History of an Idea (Cambridge, 1964), esp. pp. 186–207. See also Roland Mousnier, “Les concepts d’ordres, d’états, de fidelité et de monarchie absolu en France de la fin du XVe siècle à la fin du XVIIIe,” Revue Historique, 247 (1972): 289–312; William H. Sewell, “Etat, Corps, and Ordre: Some Notes on the Social Vocabulary of the French Old Regime,” in Hans-Ulrich Wehler (ed.), Sozialgeschichte Heute: Festschrift für Hans Rosenberg zum 70. Geburtstag (Gottingen, 1974), pp. 49–68; Steven L. Kaplan and Cynthia J. Koepp, “Introduction,” in Steven Laurence Kaplan and Cynthia J. Koepp (eds), Work in France. Representations, Meaning, Organization, and Practice (Ithaca, 1986), pp. 15–21.

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provided them with a place in the world, one that expressed and affirmed the larger social taxonomy.5 This concern with creating order and providing a rational structure for all members of society was expressed in the early modern notion of police. According to theories about how to effectively police a people, those who knew where they belonged did not have the highest potential to gravely threaten social order. In a well-policed city, all inhabitants knew where they belonged and what they were meant to do, and thus did not create disorder.6 Craft guilds, with their hierarchically positioned workers and their rankings relative to one another, were mechanisms meant to impose tranquility on the potentially chaotic world of work. Given this emphasis on the need for social structure to maintain tranquility, guilds provided a way not only to organize economic relations but also social ones. In addition to governing the affiliations between masters and workers, and thereby defining the path from apprentice to journeyman, states of fiscal dependence, to mastership and greater financial independence and autonomy, the guilds also helped to define normative ideas about rank and gender. These corporate bodies instructed their members on how they should comport themselves toward their chronological and hierarchal elders as well as the relations that should prevail between men and women. Corporate tenets about hierarchal connections were explicitly articulated in statutes and other documents that these groups generated, but concepts of gender relations were not always immediately apparent. As essentially male bodies, guilds tended to overlook women, as they also tended to disregard other marginal elements: journeymen who had no chance of ever achieving a mastership, alloués who worked at the same tasks as apprentices but could never move up in the hierarchy, and unsanctioned workers who furtively produced goods without the guild sanction they could not obtain. All of these groups, despite their important

5

The ways that guilds imbued members with a sense of social place and shared identity is explored in a number of works. See François Olivier-Martin, L’Organisation corporative de la France d’ancien régime (Paris, 1938); Henri Hauser, Ouvriers du temps passé (XVe–XVIe siècles) (Paris, 1899). More recently Sewell, Work and Revolution and Steven L. Kaplan, “Social Classification and Representation in the Corporate World of Eighteenth-Century France: Turgot’s Carnival,” in Steven Laurence Kaplan and Cynthia J. Koepp (eds), Work in France: Representations, Meaning, Organization, and Practice (Ithaca, 1986). For a different interpretation of the intersection of work practices and identity see Simona Cerutti, La ville et les métiers: Naissance d’un langage corporatif (Turin, 17e–18e siècle) (Paris, 1990). 6 Nicolas de La Mare, Traité de la Police (4 vols, Amsterdam, 1729), vol. 1, pp. 240– 41.

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roles within the guild system, were not members of the guilds; only masters were truly members of these corporate bodies. 7 According to the formal statutes that defined each guild, and became legally binding documents after they were approved by the King and registered by the Parlement, women played an almost nonexistent role in the workings of guild business. Wives’ labor was not regulated or even always mentioned, although we know that women did work alongside their husbands.8 But despite their relative invisibility, women, as either wives or widows, were curiously both marginal and central to the ideology of the guild. They represented those who needed to be excluded categorically from the guild, unlike illicit workers who might be rehabilitated and incorporated into the group, and those whose work and other contributions made it possible for masters to prosper. The corporate injunction on married apprentices and journeymen, along with the assumption that once a man achieved mastership he would marry, reflected the assumption that a prosperous workshop was reliant on the contribution of a family. Women, children, and servants were, each to a different extent, crucial to the good functioning of the shop. A master could not easily get along without his wife; nonetheless, the guild did not formally recognize her place in this business undertaking. The moment when the guild recognized the great value of a woman’s contribution was when her husband died. Her importance, skill, and hard work persuaded the guilds that a wife had a legitimate claim to continue running the family business. Widows were granted the right to inherit a mastership from their deceased husbands in all but two Parisian guilds. According to René de Lespinasse the two guilds that required widows to renounce a mastership were the wine inspectors (jaugeurs de vin) and the sword masters (maîtres d’armes).9 There are no obvious reasons why, of all the incorporated trades in Paris, these two would not include widows. Many trades included tasks and skills not normally taught to or practiced by women. For example, many widows continued to run their husbands’ carpentry shops although woodworking has not traditionally been

7

On the marginality of these workers to guilds see Steven L. Kaplan, “The Character and Implications of Strife among the Masters inside the Guilds of Eighteenth-Century Paris,” Journal of Social History, 19/4 (1986): 632. 8 There is a single exception to that statement. The tailors’ statutes of 1660 asserted that the wives and daughters of master tailors were entitled to make clothing for children under the age of 8. René de Lespinasse, Les métiers et corporations de la ville de Paris (3 vols, Paris, 1892), vol. 3, p. 195. On the role of women in corporate work see Natalie Davis, “Women in the Arts mécaniques in Sixteenth-Century Lyon,” Lyon et l’Europe: hommes et sociétés: mélanges d’histoire offerts à Richard Gascon (2 vols, Lyon, 1980), vol., 1, p. 145; David Garrioch, Neighborhood and Community in Paris, 1740–1790 (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 113–14. 9 Lespinasse, Les métiers, vol. 1, p. 642; vol. 3, p. 603.

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considered a female endeavor.10 Likewise, many bakers’ widows held on to the family ovens, even though the process of baking and the symbolic valence of bread in this society might seem to militate against female participation.11 Similarly, many trades that incorporated skills that might be considered quintessentially female, like embroidery, excluded all women except widows. The gendered nature of guild tasks cannot be traced to any simple relationship between skill and its gender appropriateness for men or women. However, the wine inspectors and sword masters, the two trades that excluded widows without even providing for compensation for the loss of the mastership, had certain elements in common that may explain their difference from other trades. Wine carried certain clear sacramental connotations that may have served to exclude women. Wine, as manipulated by men, became Christ’s blood, the most revered Christian religious symbol. Such a connection may also explain old wives’ tales that associated certain women with making wine sour and unfit for consumption. Widows did become wine merchants after their husbands’ deaths. But merchants simply handled wine that had already been sealed in bottles and packaged for trade before they took possession of it. Wine inspectors handled wine in a much more intimate way, and in a way that the guild apparently believed should be restricted to men. Similarly, sword masters were symbolically engaged in what was a quintessentially male endeavor, fighting. But many urban men who engaged these instructors were not in the military. By the eighteenth-century arms were owned most often by holders of venal offices whose honors included the right to carry a sword. The sword signified the individual’s social and honorary status to all who saw him. Women were excluded from holding venal offices and thus could never have legitimate call for wearing a sword. In fact, the wearing of a sword by a female could be seen as an act of perversion and subversion, to be deterred as much as possible.12 In addition to the social connotations of the sword, psychologically the sword is an obvious phallic symbol, and as such would not be appropriate for a woman to manipulate publicly. It would be particularly unnerving to see a widow engaged in swordplay with men, even through the proxy of a master in her employ, as widows were already in some sense “honorary men,” disturbingly close to holding all of

10

Elizabeth C. Musgrave, “Women in the Male World of Work: the Building Industries of Eighteenth-Century Brittany,” French History, 7/1 (1993): 30–52. 11 Steven L. Kaplan, The Bakers of Paris and the Bread Question, 1700–1775 (Durham, 1996). 12 Gary Kates, Monsieur d’Eon is a Woman: A Tale of Political Intrigue and Sexual Masquerade (New York, 1995).

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the privileges of being male in this patriarchal society.13 Allowing them to manipulate swords would simply add to the cultural anxiety that widows already churned up. Of all the incorporated trades in early modern Paris, these two carried perhaps the most obvious symbolic and cultural baggage. While they would not necessarily have been difficult occupations for a woman to learn and practice, their totemic meanings worked to forbid women from undertaking these professions. But with respect to all other professions, regardless of their technical complexity or demand for physical strength, widows were given the option to forge ahead on their own. The statutes of the remaining guilds treated widows similarly, with only a few variations in their provisions. To quote one example, the tailors’ guild stipulated in their 1660 statutes that “widows will continue the trade and will keep on the apprentices their late husbands had.”14 However, guilds did not accord the widowheaded workshop the same level of attention as they did to the shop run by a master. For example, unlike the regulations pertaining to the workshop headed by a man, the statutes say nothing about the normative relations between a widowmistress and her workers. They detail nothing about the place of the widow within the governing structure of the guild or how she should relate to her fellow masters. But despite the widow’s relative absence from official guild regulations, she had a solid claim to privileges in this group. The compelling nature of these claims was evidenced by the retention of widows’ privileges in guild statutes. All guilds periodically revised their regulations, reshaping them to reflect and respond to changing social and economic contexts, or in response to demands from the royal government. For example, the statutes of all guilds changed their provisions, restricting masters to one apprentice at a time rather than allowing them to train as many young workers as they wished, to reflect the slowing of economic opportunities and address the problem of excess workers. Yet, even while statutes underwent certain changes and adaptations, guilds never revoked widows’ rights. This is particularly striking given the perception of shrinking access to mastership, and the concrete difficulties attendant on attaining this status, as well as concerns over the value of mastership leading up to the eighteenth century.15 One way to

13 Laurel Thatcher Ulrich explores the notion of women becoming “honorary men” under certain circumstances in her Good Wives. Image and Reality in the Lives of Women in Northern New England, 1650–1750 (New York, 1980). 14 Lespinasse, Les métiers, vol. 3, p. 196. 15 The issue of accessibility to mastership in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries is a vexing one. While guilds did increase numbers of masters to some extent in this period, there continued to be a perception of the inaccessibility of ascending to mastership. On this question, to which at the moment there is no definitive answer, see Edward J. Shephard, “Social and Geographic Mobility of the Eighteenth-Century Guild Artisan: An Analysis of Guild Receptions in Dijon, 1700–1790,” in Steven L. Kaplan and Cynthia J. Koepp (eds), Work in France: Representations, Meaning, Organization, and Practice (Ithaca, 1986);

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alleviate the demand for mastership would have been to eliminate all widowmistresses, allowing men to assume the positions of deceased masters. Further, men who were received as masters paid the guild substantial fees. Even the sons of masters, whose way into the guild was considerably smoothed, had to pay a certain sum to confirm their right to mastership. But widows who took over their husbands’ titles and businesses paid no such fees. They simply assumed the duties of the deceased and continued working. In allowing widows to occupy one of the limited spaces allotted to masters, the guild lost fees they could have collected for those offices. Yet despite the advantages the guild could have derived from limiting widows’ privileges, they never took steps to change these provisions. This continued respect for and retention of widows’ privileges demonstrates the importance masters and the guild placed on providing a livelihood for their wives. Such an interpretation is strengthened by the evidence provided in a letter dated 1784 that deals specifically with masters’ attitudes towards widows’ rights. The background for this letter was the 1776 action by the French royal government, led by the Controller-General Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, to reform the economy, which included the abolition of the guilds and other corporate entities throughout France. In all quarters, the reaction to these edicts was unabashedly negative. Guild officers predicted chaos, economic loss, and diminished quality of French goods as a result. Faced with these complaints, as well as serious resistance by the Parlement of Paris and its regional counterparts, the Crown reinstated the corporate system in slightly different form.16 When the royal bureaucracy reorganized the guilds in 1777 it threatened to abolish or diminish widows’ rights. Specifically, the statutes that the royal government sent to the Parlement for ratification in 1777 required a widow to pay a fee, equal to one-half of the ordinary price of a mastership, if she wished to retain the right of mastership her husband had exercised.17 Masters loudly protested at this change in their wives’ status with respect to guild privileges, and continued to rail against this change for years. Even the royal government’s attempt to reach a compromise, by lowering the level of the fees widows would have to pay or by allowing husbands to pay before they died to assure their widows’ reception in the guild, did not neutralize these complaints. The masters whose views were reflected in this letter were particularly distressed because “in the case of widowhood, their wives became outsiders to the community.”18 The issue receded somewhat, with the royal government reducing the fees, although a number of widows continued to

Cynthia M. Truant, The Rites of Labor: Brotherhoods of Compagnonnage in Old and New Regime France (Ithaca, 1994); Sonenscher, Work and Wages; Kaplan, The Bakers of Paris. 16 Crowston, Fabricating Women, p. 208; Steven L. Kaplan, La fin des corporations (Paris, 2001), pp. 79–83, 139–40. 17 Lespinasse, Les métiers, vol. 1, p. 127. 18 Letter from Meusair addressed to the Procureur du Roy, BN, JF 555, fol. 269.

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practice their husbands’ craft without the proper approbation.19 What this episode helps to define are the ways masters understood their wives’ standing in the guild. This outburst over widows’ rights shows that they did have a claim on the guild that other masters recognized, despite the nearly total absence of widows from the defining documents of the guilds.

Becoming a Master Before we consider the widow-mistress and how guild regulations structured her possibilities and experiences, we need to understand something about what it meant to be a master and how a man attained that status. According to the terms of guild statutes, the process of becoming a master was lengthy but not particularly onerous. Normatively, an aspirant simply followed a given trajectory that resulted in achieving a letter of mastership. The first step in becoming a master was to serve as an apprentice in the establishment of a master in the chosen trade. Each trade prescribed what it believed was the appropriate length of the mastership. The period ranged from a short three years for mercers and four years for fan makers, to a lengthy eight years for goldsmiths and watchmakers.20 The time required for an apprenticeship was purportedly based on the difficulty of the skills to be acquired and the perceived need for repetition of these necessary skills. After completing an apprenticeship, a young man (or rarely woman) graduated to the level of journeyman. This intermediate phase denoted a worker who had the basic skill level required by his trade but who had not yet refined those skills to attain a level of technical excellence. During his time as a journeyman, a worker would often undertake what was called the tour de France, a time of traveling around the kingdom, working for various masters in these different locales.21 After spending a number of years working for a single master, journeymen benefited from the tour by learning new skills and techniques. They enhanced their knowledge of their trade and gained confidence by working in the profession.22 One of the ways journeymen elevated their standing in the trade was by creating a 19

BN, JF 555, fol. 270. Lespinasse, Les métiers, vol. 2, pp. 146, 217, 231, 477. 21 A recent study of journeymen’s practice and culture is provided by Truant, The Rites of Labor, particularly in chapter 6. For firsthand accounts see also Jacques-Louis Ménétra, Journal of My Life, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, Daniel Roche (ed.) and foreword Robert Darnton (New York, 1986) and Mark Traugott (ed.), The French Worker: Autobiographies from the Early Industrial Era (Berkeley, 993), pp. 61–4, 131–50. 22 Jacques-Louis Ménétra, in his account of his life, talks at great length about the people he met while on his Tour de France and the ways those connections helped him to gain employment when he travelled to various cities on his route. Journal of My Life, especially pages 35–7, 57–9. 20

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network of professional contacts that they might be able to exploit later in their careers. The completion of several years as a journeyman marked the moment when a worker could seek a mastership. The expertise and connections the journeyman obtained during his years of working for other masters facilitated his attempt to become a master. His final elevation required that the aspirant achieve a masterpiece in his chosen field and, once he had fulfilled that obligation, pay a certain sum to the guild. Having acquired the title ‘master,’ he could finally marry, start a family and open his own shop. Such a tidy trajectory almost never happened in practice. This brief narrative of a climb to the top of the corporate trade hierarchy does not account for many unstated obstacles. The provisions of guild statutes discuss skill acquisition without mentioning the other primary goal of apprenticeship: socialization into the identity and culture of the guild. It does not mention masters’ needs for cheap labor, and thus their recruitment of more apprentices than could be absorbed by the guild as masters, clogging the professions with many superfluous young workers. Nor does it describe the often harsh and lonely conditions or the physical hardship that many apprentices and journeymen endured as part of their work. As Jacques-Louis Ménétra, an eighteenth-century glazier who documented much of his life in that profession, described his tour de France, he experienced a great deal of discomfort, poverty, and rough treatment, in part due to the conflict and brawling with masters and fellow workers that seemed endemic to the experience of compagnonnage.23 Strife between journeymen and masters not only produced difficult work conditions and periodic unemployment, but may have also limited a journeyman’s chances at achieving mastership. If a young man did not have strong connections with the elite of his guild he would find it quite difficult to advance. Even for those who were given the possibility to stand for a mastership, the description of the normative path did not disclose the often substantial amount of money an aspiring master would disburse to hasten along the process of having his chef d’oeuvre approved.24 A hopeful candidate also needed to provide banquets and gifts for the officers of the guild, hoping for a speedy and favorable decision on his application.25 This account also does not discuss the most elusive and troubling of questions surrounding the climb to mastership: access. While it is not entirely clear how accessible the incorporated trades were in the eighteenth 23

Ménétra, Journal of My Life. See also Steven L. Kaplan, “L’Apprentissage au XVIIIe siècle: Le cas de Paris,” Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 40/3 (1993): 436–79; Michelle Perrot, “On the Formation of the French Working Class,” Ira Katznelson and Aristide R. Zolberg (eds), Working Class Formation: Nineteenth-Century Patterns in Western Europe and the United States (Princeton, 1986), p. 82; Michael J. Childs, Labour’s Apprentice: Working-Class Lads in Late-Victorian and Edwardian England (Montreal, 1992), pp. 53–4. 24 Kaplan, “Character and Implications of Strife,” pp. 639–41; James R. Farr, Hands of Honor. Artisans and Their World in Dijon, 1550–1650 (Ithaca, 1988), pp. 48–9. 25 Kaplan, “L’apprentissage,” p. 462.

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century, it is certain that there were more journeymen and apprentices than could be accommodated among the ranks of masters. Many trades may have recruited masters from the ranks of journeymen who were not kin to existing masters, nonetheless there remained a glut of workers in skilled trades who could not ever achieve the highest status in their professions. This problem was exacerbated by the preferential treatment accorded masters’ family members. All trades provided for easier access for the sons of established masters than for those who had no kin relations within the guild. Even those guilds that required sons of masters to pay fees and complete a chef d’œuvre provided space with more alacrity to sons than they did to other candidates. This preference was written into the statutes of all guilds and there is no reason to doubt that such preferences prevailed in practice. Certainly for those without family connections to the guild, the path to mastership was more expensive, more difficult, and more uncertain. Another means of achieving guild mastership was to marry a master’s widow or daughter. Surprisingly, historians of early modern guilds have not examined this path to mastership extensively. Traditional historiography has asserted that the guilds became increasingly inaccessible through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.26 Historians remain split on this question. A recent study of journeymen’s culture and compagnonnage has asserted that by the eighteenth century it was “an increasingly impossible goal” to attain mastership and then go on to establish a family and business.27 In contrast, other research focused specifically on mobility has found that the guilds “remained highly open and accessible to ‘new blood.’”28 One aspect of journeymen’s mobility that these historians neglected to take into account was the crucial role of women in providing a path to mastership for men who did not necessarily have a kin connection to facilitate their advancement. Both widows and daughters of masters, by providing access to a space in the guild, furnished a means for this upward mobility. Men who married daughters of guild masters often had the same advantageous relationship with the guild that the sons of masters had. To give one example, an apprentice or journeyman who married a master saddler’s daughter was admitted to the guild “after a simple

26

For example, Etienne Martin Saint-Léon, Histoire des corporations de métiers depuis leurs origines jusqu’à leur suppression en 1791 (Paris, 1897), discusses in great detail the process of moving from apprenticeship to compagnnonage to mastership without once mentioning the privileges accorded to men who married masters’ daughters or widows. He does, in contrast, discuss the different requirements for masters’ sons. Emile Coornaert, Les corporations en France avant 1789 (Paris, 1941) only briefly mentions the widow’s ability to transmit mastership upon remarriage. 27 Truant, The Rites of Labor, p. 329. James Farr documents the same limited access in the sixteenth century. See his Hands of Honor, pp. 44–5. 28 Shephard, “Social and Geographic Mobility,” p. 124.

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demonstration of skill.” All of the onerous fees and the complex masterpiece were waived.29 Similarly, a journeyman who married the widow of a master could achieve the status of master, generally just by paying a fee to the guild. To cite one set of statutes, the jewelers’ guild (lapidaires) allowed that a journeyman who “having been an apprentice for seven years, served a master for four years, and was certified as being of good morals (de bonne vie), he would be received, dispensing with the masterpiece (chef d’œuvre) to get his mastership” upon marriage to a widow.30 Even when they did not enjoy reduced fees and waiver of the masterpiece, as was the case for the butchers’ guild, journeymen still had the guarantee of a title they could assume upon marriage. Given that journeymen could spend their entire lives waiting for an opportunity to stand for mastership, the access a widow or daughter provided was an extremely valuable asset. When the widow’s new spouse became a master, he took over the position previously held by his wife’s deceased husband and, in a process that recalls the mystical continuity of one king succeeding another, a seamless transition took place, through the corporal vessel of the widow. She conferred the title master that she had been occupying for the moment when she would turn it over to another male occupant. It was she who provided the physical bridge between her late husband and her new husband, transmitting status along with her household goods and her body. But marriage to a widow could provide an even surer path to a successful shop than the one a son or son-in-law took as it often included not only a title but also the infrastructure of a successful enterprise. If the widow had been actively engaged in her late husband’s profession she would have preserved his tools, perhaps some inventory and raw materials, and most importantly a clientele. The newly married and established master would simply step into a shop and start his work without having to raise capital for equipment and supplies, or to establish a reputation and entice customers. In terms of the question of the openness of guilds to new masters, one historian has suggested that rather than looking at the possibility for a journeyman to attain a letter of mastership, it is more relevant to consider whether a newly minted master had any chance of establishing an independent business for himself.31 After all, in addition to the guilds themselves, an aspiring master could obtain his letter from a charitable organization like the Trinité hospital, or from the King who often sold 29

Lespinasse, Les métiers, vol. 3, p. 463. Lespinasse, Les métiers, vol. 2, p. 358. There were a few guilds that did not follow this pattern. The butchers’ guild did permit a journeyman who married a widow to stand for mastership right away, but he was required to do a masterpiece and pay the same fees as any other aspirant. See ibid., vol. 1, p. 296. 31 Steven L. Kaplan, “The Luxury Guilds in Paris in the Eighteenth Century,” Francia, 9 (1982): 288. 30

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letters of mastership to raise funds. Such channels required ready money but were relatively easy to follow. But that letter conferred little save an honorific title if it was not accompanied by a solid plan and the resources to establish a shop. It was in this respect that the widow offered a prospective husband a boon that he could find nowhere else. Even the daughter of a master did not always provide such a certain path to business establishment. The widow was the means, without equal, to a successful introduction to guild mastership by virtue of the title she offered, the capital she could convey and the physical setting and, especially, clientele she furnished.

Widow as Mistress While taking another husband would reinsert the former widow into her traditional place in the guild, as the wife and helpmeet of a master, remarriage was not the only option for such a woman. In fact, it seems that artisanal widows were less likely to remarry than other widows.32 Although the independent widow-mistress was a common fixture in the Parisian corporate world, she presented problems of both practical and intellectual natures. The challenges a master’s widow faced and created matched up with the dual purpose of the guild structure, economic, and social or moral. While the guild was certainly meant to be a mechanism to organize economic activity, it was also designed to create and perpetuate social status and moral expectations for its members. It was more difficult for the widow to achieve the latter objectives than the former, evidenced by the number of successful shops run by widows but the absence of widows as guild leaders or as participants in the guilds’ process of social reproduction. Widows did not serve as apprentices, work as journeymen, or train apprentices, the activities of socialization. Craft corporations allowed widows, apparently willingly, to be independent businesswomen, but granted them no role in shaping and defining the identity of the guild and its members. The dissonances that arose between a widow and the corporation over her standing raised the issue of the extent to which she was a member of her late husband’s guild. Prior to couching a response to this question we must examine the assumptions and limitations that circumscribed the widow who attempted to take her husband’s place, as well as the ways in which the widow behaved like and was treated as any other master. Perhaps the most basic question we need to ask about these women was whether they had the ability to guide a business. Before the widow could be considered a mistress, and thus be regarded on a somewhat equal footing with other masters in her guild, she needed to show that she could in fact perform the tasks required by various trades. On the surface this problem seems to yield to an easy solution. Certain trades, like butchering meat or baking bread, required great 32

See chapter 5.

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physical strength and stamina, requirements that might seem to put them beyond women’s abilities. Practitioners of other trades, like mercers and wine merchants, needed to have highly developed communication and trading competences, skills that women had less opportunity to develop than men. Such high-end business also required travel over long distances at times, an undertaking that was out of the question for most women.33 Master goldsmiths and master watchmakers, both of whom were required to complete a lengthy apprenticeship before moving on to the status of journeymen, needed very fine and specialized abilities in order to perform their jobs. It is not clear how much the less formal training a woman received either in her father’s or husband’s shop prepared her for performing the work required in skilled trades. But there are several indications about the level of knowledge and expertise a widow could be expected to command. Records of marriage patterns within the artisanal ranks show that children of master craftsmen tended to marry partners whose parents were also involved in the same or a related trade.34 It was also likely that most girls from this social strata had some level of formal instruction, rudimentary and religiously-centered though it might be. Given this educational and family background, many women already knew something of their husbands’ trades when they began to manage their new households. 35 After a number of years of a marital and economic partnership, women learned a great deal about the workings of the trade. This period, a kind of informal apprenticeship, provided a foundation for the widow who looked to manage the family enterprise on her own. The guild clearly assumed that a wife acquired some level of trade competence as a result of her period of marriage or it could not reasonably allow her to choose to manage a business.

Restrictions on Widows It is difficult to assess the impact such expectations and assumptions had on widows’ livelihoods. Given the restrictions placed on women’s activities in this society it would not be unreasonable to assume that widowed women could be shut 33 Natalie Zemon Davis, Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-Century Lives (Cambridge, 1995), pp. 13–15; Daniel A. Rabuzzi, “Women as Merchants in EighteenthCentury Northern Germany: The Case of Stralsund, 1750–1830,” Central European History, 28 (1995): 435–56; Howell, Women, Production and Patriarchy. 34 My evidence on remarriage shows a strong tendency to marry within related trades. See chapter five. Also consult Maurice Garden, Lyon et les lyonnais au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1970); Elizabeth Musgrave, “Women and the Craft Guilds in Eighteenth-Century Nantes,” in Geoffroy Crossick (ed.), The Artisan and the European Town, 1500–1900 (London, 1997), pp. 154–5. 35 Martine Sonnet, L’éducation des filles au temps des Lumières (Paris, 1987), pp. 88– 90.

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out of certain business opportunities because of their gender. Grimod de la Reynière, the gourmand who criticized a widow baker for attempting to run her husband’s bakery by herself, reminds us that seeing women in male roles could be jarring. As a proprietor, the widow might face resistance from her late husband’s clients or workers when she took over his position in the business. While we cannot know for certain, widows who failed to continue businesses and suffered financial losses may have fallen victim to stereotypes about what women should and should not do. But we do know that despite the perceptions, and realities, of women’s talents and limitations, widows did participate in every trade where they were granted privileges. Archival records show that many widows worked as bakers, butchers, blacksmiths, and in the varied construction trades despite the considerable physical and organizational challenges demanded by these professions. They may not have entered these professions as readily as men did, and perhaps their incomes suffered due to bias against widows performing certain kinds of work. Nonetheless, it was the case that many widows were mistress butchers, bakers, mercers, and wine merchants, as well as all other trades. Obviously the appearance that such professions were beyond their abilities did not deter widowed women from jumping in and working. In terms of formal restrictions, the most consequential limitation placed on the widow was her inability to train apprentices. This restriction, more than any other, marked the widow as disadvantaged, economically and socially, in comparison to her fellow masters. But the position of the guild was delicate. While the perpetuation of widows’ rights in guild statutes clearly demonstrated the desire on the part of masters and their guilds to provide their wives with a means of support in their widowhood, the guild also had a strong interest in institutional reproduction. Part of the purpose of the guild was to teach and perpetuate a certain package of skills, and that training began with the apprenticeship. It was during this several-year period that a youngster endeavored to learn the skills, tricks, and culture of a given trade. The guild, with the master functioning as a cipher, used the process to confer a particular identity upon the apprentice, as well as convey a body of technical knowledge. Part of that training, on the master’s part, was to inculcate a “good feeling in the workshop (which) had never been spontaneous and genuine but had been induced or imposed and ritualized by the corporate model of subordination.”36 The master was meant to convey the meaning of the guild and of membership in that body to the apprentice, just as he had learned it during his own apprenticeship. By the end of his apprenticeship, a young man was expected to understand not only the elements of his craft but also the purpose of the guild, its place in society, and his place in both. Widows, having never formally experienced that process of

36

Kaplan, “Turgot’s Carnival,” p. 190.

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identity creation, could not transmit that element of the guild’s patrimony to a youngster. Given cultural reticence about women’s aptitudes, it was problematic to allow a widow to train an apprentice in the ways of craft guilds. The perception that a woman was not as able as a man could reflect poorly on a youngster trained in a widow-mistress’ workshop. As a journeyman, such a young man might find his skills underestimated and his manliness questioned if he had spent time being instructed by a woman. But not allowing widows to have apprentices disadvantaged them considerably. The wine merchants guild explicitly recognized the problems this limitation presented to widows and acted to try to mitigate its impact. Their guild’s 1647 statutes, like those of all other guilds, did not allow widows to take on any apprentice to work in their shops. But unlike other trades, the wine merchants stated that widows could “have servants to help them with the merchandise.”37 This variance allowed widows to tap into a cheap source of labor, similar to what apprentices provided for masters. These laborers commanded lower wages than more highly skilled journeymen, and would perform repellent tasks without as much grumbling. While this provision addressed the economic hardship occasioned by a lack of apprentices, it did not speak to the less tangible ways not ever having an apprentice could affect a widow’s status. In addition to providing a master with cheap labor, the apprentice also endowed him with a certain status among his peers. The training of an apprentice signaled the master’s ability to be a good father to his workers, and to demonstrate his paternal wisdom, by teaching the next generation of guild members. It also raised his status in the hierarchy of the guild. The act of grooming an apprentice for future membership in the guild made masters active participants in the process of socialization and guild reproduction. The way that apprenticeship was meant to inscribe certain roles on both master and youngster demonstrates the socializing elements of that period of tutelage. As important as transmission of skills was during an apprenticeship, the transmission of elements of identity and social status ranked equally in significance. In addition to teaching craft technique, the guild was supposed to teach young men how to be members of their society at a certain rank and in a particular place. One of the reasons corporate bodies developed, and persisted, in this society was to confer these qualities on their members. This indoctrinating dimension of guild membership was meant not only to perpetuate corporate bodies themselves by constantly producing new members who would carry on guild ideas, but also to ensure a certain stability and predictability in this group. If the larger corporate structure was designed to create a stable framework for the kingdom, then its members were the elements that allowed for the success of this larger ambition. Sometimes the realization of such socializing ambitions could not be fully integrated with the situation in a shop, namely when a master died when he was in 37

Lespinasse, Les métiers, vol. 1, p. 687.

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the process of training an apprentice. In the face of such circumstances, the guild offered two possibilities for an apprentice. If she wished, the widow could transfer the apprentice and his contract to another master in the same trade. In this case, the boy would finish out his apprenticeship under the same terms but in a different shop. He would then complete his training under a master, rather than a mistress, thus reaping the benefits of having a male role model. The disposition of a child and his contract in such a way supports Coornaert’s assertion that the apprentice “was part of the inheritance of the deceased master.”38 It is easy to imagine why a widow, overwhelmed by her husband’s death and trying to organize the family’s assets and debts, might choose to move an apprentice to another household. Such a decision minimized the widow’s responsibility to the shop at a time when she might not have a moment to spare. It would also be a logical decision for a woman who knew that she had no intention of continuing to run her husband’s business and wished to wrap up those affairs as quickly as possible. But a woman might gain advantages from transferring an apprentice to another master, even if she intended to engage in commerce herself. Such a move provided a master without an apprentice with a source of cheap labor. The widow could furnish an apprentice to a master who might not otherwise have an opportunity to have one, given the limitations some guilds placed on training. Such a transaction created an obligation on the part of another master toward the widow, an obligation she might be able to exploit at a more leisured and considered moment. Imagining the apprentice as a kind of property that the widow could dispose of in order to better her own financial or emotional situation makes clear that such a decision might be a tactical one on the part of the grieving wife rather than an admission that a child trained under a mistress could be put at a disadvantage in his future career. Guild statutes provided a second option for widows left with an apprentice. The statutes of all guilds, like those of the harness-makers, asserted that widows of masters “can have no apprentices, except that she can have the apprentice that her late husband left in order that he can finish his apprenticeship.”39 In order to minimize the considerable disruption that must have prevailed in the shop after the master’s death, the guild allowed an established apprentice to remain where he was until his term of service was finished. This provision recognized that the apprentice had already spent a certain amount of time in the deceased master’s household, and had made his own investment in the shop. Both the widow and the apprentice would endure a certain amount of hardship if the guild forced a change in the apprentice’s status. The widow needed reliable and knowledgeable labor in the wake of her husband’s death. Many of the widows who were forced to default on their businesses did so as a result of the enormous debts families often contracted during a prolonged illness. The possibility of failure would be even more 38 39

Coornaert, Les corporations en France, p. 202. Lespinasse, Les métiers, vol. 3, p. 475, 1578 statutes.

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threatening if the widow lost her apprentice and was forced to find someone quickly to replace his two hands. Likewise, the apprentice also stood to lose in some instances if he was obliged to move and serve with a new master. He would lose any seniority he might have acquired by serving for some period of time in the same house. He would also need to learn the ways of this new household and shop, as well as learn to navigate new temperaments. Such a change would put him back in his quest to finish his apprenticeship. Consequently, both parties benefited from this provision under certain circumstances. The reasons behind this exception to the rule that widows could not train apprentices make a great deal of sense given the material situation that could have prevailed in the workshop at that moment. However, as reasonable as this provision seems, it also undermines the guild’s unspoken rationale against widows training apprentices on their own. While not ever articulated, the reason behind restricting widows access to apprentices was clearly not related to a widow’s ability to transmit the necessary craft skills. If that were the concern, then it would be irresponsible even to allow a widow to finish the training for her late husband’s apprentice. In addition, it is not clear how much a master himself actually trained his apprentices. In many shops the apprentice’s training was the responsibility of the journeymen who were most intimately involved in production. While this scenario would not have been played out in all shops—many masters employed only one journeyman and so would be integrally involved in all stages of production—in many instances journeymen did serve as the primary workers in an enterprise.40 The question we must then ask is what was the function of the master in the training of his apprentices. Clearly the master’s role was largely to socialize and legitimize his apprentice. What the apprentice gained from this experience, whether his craft training came directly from the master or from another worker, was the master’s name. Even after the apprentice finished his period of service he would remain known as having been trained by a certain master.41 The apprentice’s time in a workshop lent him legitimacy not only as a trained worker who had learned the ways of a given trade, but also as possessing the other requirements of guild membership: good morals, a sense of the importance of the guild in providing an identity to its members, and an understanding of the unique nature of the particular corporate body. The widow, retaining her husband’s name for the shop, sent an apprentice along with that intangible asset. However, given that the apprentice had the name of a master but not the master’s oversight, it is not clear how he would be received in the world. 40

Kaplan, “L’Apprentissage,” p. 447. A journeyman was required to carry a brevet d’apprentissage that provided his work history for potential employers. This document included the name of the master with whom he had done an apprenticeship. 41

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These considerations show that widows had a certain stature in the guilds, although not the same as what men possessed. The muddled nature of guild policy with respect to widows and apprentices shows the ambiguous position widows occupied in these institutions, just as they did in the larger society. In a sense, there is no way to apply guild statutes to widows in strictly rational terms because they did not fit into any simple category that could clearly determine the extent of their claims on the guild. They were not men so they could not function fully as masters. They were obviously not considered like other women because in that case they would have been wholly excluded from guild functioning. Sometimes widows were shut out of guild privileges due to their gender and at other times, for reasons of expedience, they were permitted to exercise certain corporate prerogatives. Widows occupied an ad hoc category that expressed the puzzling nature of these women’s relationship to power. The limitation on taking apprentices was a statute-based restriction on widows’ guild activity. The other statute-based restriction was that a widow had to give up her title of mistress upon remarriage, either altogether or by handing the status and title to her new husband. No guild permitted a woman legitimately to maintain an independent shop after her remarriage. While guild statutes never explain the reason for this restriction, there are several likely reasons for it. One reason stems from the ban on any master practicing more than one trade at a time. Such a situation would present enormous legal issues as a master in one trade would be using materials and techniques reserved to another trade. Even if he were legitimately privileged by virtue of his two letters of mastership to practice different trades, such mixing of skills and materials was anathema to the corporate notions of definition and separation they used to distinguish themselves from other trades.42 In a sense, a married couple created a single entity within their family and so it was possible to see a husband and wife practicing different trades as presenting similar problems for the guild. This situation also raised the issue of authority in the household. Women who attained the status of female merchant (femme marchande publique) could run a business that was independent from their husbands. However, this status was meant to apply to those wives who engaged in trades explicitly defined as female. To allow a married woman independently to practice a trade that was exclusively male could create a situation where a wife’s status was more elevated than her husband’s. For example, the widow of a goldsmith, a trade that did include widowed women in their ranks, who married a master baker could count herself as of higher status than her husband. The goldsmith’s trade was part of the Six Corps, the small group of exclusive Parisian luxury trades, and was thus more honorable than all other trades. Their elevated status became concrete during ceremonial

42

Sonenscher, Work and Wages, pp. 254–5.

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processions when the Six Corps preceded all other craft guilds.43 The relative ranks of husband and wife in this household could undermine the man’s authority in their home. If the guilds permitted widowed women to continue practicing a trade after remarriage, those institutions of maintaining proper order could inadvertently become instruments of turning the proper order of the house upside-down. Such effects of differences between a husband’s and wife’s status would only be magnified if a widow married a journeyman from another trade. Not only could her trade be more honorable than his, but her personal status as “mistress” placed her categorically ahead of her husband in honor and authority. A mistress married to a journeyman, who might then work for her in the shop, utterly trampled on the normative expectations of the positions of men and women in marriage. The guilds’ position on remarriage sought to avert situations considered so unnatural. Another consideration in the guilds’ policy on remarriage was control of the mastership. In several guilds, a widowed woman who decided to take her husband’s place submitted to a certain amount of surveillance by the corporation.44 This oversight was meant to ensure the quality of work coming out of the widow’s shop as well as her compliance with the guild’s statutes. Another, unstated, purpose may have been to assert the guild’s control over that mastership. When a master received his title, he participated in a ceremony and often tests of his skill in the trade. That ceremonial conferral of the title imprinted upon the master the fact that the guild was the source of his status and authority. For a widow there was no such ceremonial rite of passage. A few guilds stipulated that widow needed to register with their officers, but most mention no formal requirements for the widow. Extant guild records that list master’s receptions do not include widows, even when notarial contracts document their commercial activity. The guilds had no formal mechanism for giving a woman her mistresship. In part this lacuna stems from the widow’s role as cipher. In theory, she occupied the title of master temporarily. She never became a master through a process and a ritual of conferral. As such, guilds’ policies on remarriage reiterated the temporary hold that a widow had on mastership. A related issue that guild statutes did not discuss explicitly was the possibility that a master’s widow could be deceitful in her dealings with the guild. She did not undergo the indoctrinating experience of an apprenticeship or compagnnonage. While she may have had the requisite skills to run a shop, she did not participate in the rituals of belonging that marked guild masters. A widow was not trained and 43

Alfred Franklin, Dictionnaire historique des arts, métiers et professions exercés dans Paris depuis le treizième siècle (Paris, 1906), pp. 645–7; Saint-Léon, Histoire des corporations, pp. 324–8. 44 The goldsmith’s guild required that a widow destroy her deceased husband’s hallmark and work as a widow-mistress under the mark of another master who would provide some oversight of her shop. Lespinasse, vol. 3, p. 226.

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bound by honor to act in the way that best furthered the goals of the corporation.45 In fact, compared to other masters, widows had certain economic hurdles to overcome and thus could find it more difficult to place the guild’s best interest before their own. Independent widow mistresses did not have a marital partner they could count on to work loyally and dependably. They had to rely upon hired labor for their needs, a distinct economic disadvantage. Nor could they exploit the labor of an apprentice. Further, many widows groaned under the burden of debt incurred during their husbands’ extended illnesses. For these women it was imperative that they maintain profitable shops, even at the cost of breaking guild statutes.

Labor Problems The arena where widows were most likely to circumvent guild statutes was in the search for labor. For example, widows did take on apprentices and alloués, young workers who functioned like apprentices but had no future in the guild, performing the most lowly tasks in the shop.46 While widows could engage alloués, any contract agreeing to train an apprentice was null. But that did not prevent a few parents from bringing their boys to be trained in widow-headed shops. A contract drawn up by the parents of the sixteen-year old Jean Lucette placing him with Antoinette Montane, widow of a master sculptor, follows the same form as other apprenticeship contracts. In exchange for 200 livres, Montane agreed to take the boy on for a five-year apprenticeship, “to show him the art of sculpture without hiding anything from him,” and to lodge and feed the boy as well.47 The contract gives no indication that the parties realized it was not an agreement that could be enforced legally. The miniscule number of contracts gives no idea of the prevalence of this act, although it does establish the existence of widows who violated this prohibition. Furthermore, the repeated injunctions in guild statutes against widows taking apprentices suggests that widows did continue this practice despite repeated reminders that they were forbidden to do so. Some widows also rented their titles to journeymen who paid for the franchise so they could work independently, but under the protection of a bona fide master. Guilds denounced this practice, although despite their efforts it was rather common. Widows desperate to support themselves and capitalize on the value of their late husband’s mastership, used this strategy to generate some steady income. For a woman who felt herself incapable of running a shop on her own, this was a means of using the value embedded in the title to provide some support. This 45

Truant, Rites of Labor, pp. 157–9. Kaplan, “L’apprentissage.” 47 AN, MC étude XXXVIII/391, 19 October 1751. Other apprenticeship contracts signed by widows are in étude XXXVIII/390, 19 July 1751, étude XLIX/682, 20 March 1749 and Y 15352. 46

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tactic, while advantageous for the widow, introduced illicit workers into the body of the guild. It permitted journeymen to ape their betters and claim privileges to which they were not entitled. This kind of arrangement also presented the possibility that inferior goods could enter the marketplace while appearing to have the guild’s stamp of approval. This situation undoubtedly occurred frequently as widows sought any means to maintain their businesses. But we know that while widows rented their titles to workers, so too did many guild masters. This kind of fraud did not confine itself to the women who exercised trades, although they had particularly compelling reasons to do so. A related problem, although not a violation of guild policy, was that a widow might allow a journeyman without adequate training or proper supervision to run her shop for her, essentially stepping into a mastership in practice if not in name. Such an arrangement could result in substandard products being sold under the title of a guild-sanctioned master. But apparently uncertainty about widows’ ability to work in a given trade, and concern about these work practices, did not push guilds to curtail their privileges. It is true that statutes did forbid renting masters’ titles, and jurés, guild officers, reserved the right to inspect all shops to ensure the quality of work, but beyond these warnings, the guilds did not single out widows for surveillance. Yet despite the danger widows presented to the guild’s symbolic integrity when they employed such strategies, they did offer a way for widows to surmount some of the difficulties they faced after their husbands’ deaths. The memoirs of the journeyman, and future master, Jacques-Louis Ménétra provide evidence for the difficulties a widow faced when trying to hire help. According to his memoirs, Ménétra worked for quite a few widows during his journeyman’s Tour de France.48 According to his account, the widows he worked for treated him very well and paid him good wages. One of his widow-mistresses bought him a gray suit and another sent him 60 francs when he was in need of cash.49 Another widow assigned him to an extremely well-paying job where Ménétra earned 21 écus in a week’s time, and yet a fourth sent him 24 francs while he was away from her shop.50 These may have been the actions of besotted women, an explanation Ménétra forwards as evidence of his sexual magnetism, but they were also strategies these widows used to retain a good worker. Ménétra recounts that “I stayed for nearly eleven months with my widow because the town was proscribed.”51 Thus for the price of a suit, this widow retained a skilled worker for nearly a year in a city that was under a boycott by other journeymen. Her investment in Ménétra may have saved her business from collapsing. Also, according to his account, Ménétra, whose Parisian training was considered superior to that of provincial journeymen, had worked with many masters and acquired a 48 49 50 51

Ménétra, Journal of My Life, pp. 46 and 91. Ibid. Ibid., pp. 57 and 68. Ibid., p. 46.

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wide range of skills as a glazier. Due to this extensive experience, any master looking to hire would find Ménétra an attractive worker. It is striking that the widows who employed Ménétra provided him with extra remuneration, suggesting that they needed to be more generous to workers in order to hire and retain workers in the face of competition from other masters. The other factor that Ménétra alluded to in discussing the widows he worked for was sexual attraction. He implied that he had an intimate relationship with all of the women he worked for, and that two of them had sought Ménétra as a marriage partner. What is striking is the way he described his relationships to these widows. Ménétra writes as though in addition to claiming the affections of these ladies, he had also taken over as the head of their households. For example, he writes “we sat together at table after the companions had had their meal and we amused ourselves drinking good wine and my widow was captivated… I found myself the master of the house nothing could be done without my consent.”52 In another widow’s house, Ménétra recounts that upon returning to Toulouse after several days of work, “the only person waiting was my widow. We had supper together and afterwards she wanted me to sleep in her bed… I accepted this fine proposition and spent the night as one should in such cases.”53 Both of these scenarios implied not only that Ménétra was engaging in a sexual relationship with these women but also that he had assumed a position of authority in the house. He broke bread with these widows and assumed in some respects the position of a husband. From these accounts, it seems that these women were seeking to reinstate nuptial order in the home and shop, at the table, and in bed. These relations appeared to be more than simple sexual dalliances. These accounts of widows’ behavior resonated with popular perceptions. Guild statutes stipulated that widows could maintain their titles and shops “on the condition that she lead an honest life.”54 The brewers guild stated these expectations in slightly stronger language, perhaps to stress the need for decorous behavior on the part of women providing alcohol to men: the widow could continue “provided that she is a woman of good habits and reputation, without any untoward reproaches.”55 The concern expressed in these statutes, and more widely in literary works, was that widows freed from male authority would be sexually wanton. This concern stemmed in part from the close quarters a widow could keep with her workers in the shop. Physical proximity and working cooperation encouraged informal relations between a widow and the men she employed. The concern that a widow, freed from her husband’s control, would engage in sexual relations with her workers tapped into broader concerns about female sexuality. Contemporary writers and medical experts believed that widows, having 52 53 54 55

Ibid., p. 46. Ibid., p. 57. Lespinasse, Les métiers, vol. 1, p. 587. Ibid., vol. 1, p. 622.

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experienced sexual intercourse, could not afterward remain chaste.56 They believed women would physically and psychologically crave these kinds of relationships, even if they had to seek them outside marital bonds. Widows who employed young men had greater opportunity to pursue illicit sexual relations than other such women, a concern borne out by the guilds’ statutes and seemingly confirmed by Ménétra’s memoires. Although Ménétra surely exaggerated in his descriptions of the relations he had with his widow-mistresses, these episodes confirm the link established between widows and illicit sex in popular perceptions. The final statutory restriction placed on widows was their exclusion from meetings. Guilds held periodic meetings to vote on officers, apportion debt and taxation, and decide policy. Widows, while subject to the authority of jurés and liable to pay the fines and taxes imposed on all masters, had no formal voice in deciding how the guild resolved such matters. This decision to make widows subject to the male authority of the guild without allowing them to question it reinscribed them as dependent on men. While their husbands were alive, these women participated in guild work without having any mechanism for expressing their opinion about the functioning of that corporate body. A woman’s husband made decisions about the functioning of the shop, decided how he would respond to guild demands, and his wife acquiesced in these matters. Through these policies, the guild became a stand-in for the male authority and decision-making formerly imposed by husbands. The widow would remain subject to male interpretation of corporate policy, in a position to react to guild decisions rather than help make them, even once she was an independent craftswoman. All of these restrictions sought to curtail widows’ access to clear and recognized authority. According to guild structure, women were permitted to practice trades, but it was clearly problematic to allow them full claim to the command a mastership conferred. In some respects the guild took on the role of the male authority figure previously occupied by a widow’s husband. The corporation behaved in a paternalistic manner toward widows, allowing them only a measure of independence and imposing itself in the widow’s shop more than it did in the shops of other masters. The guild became a husband surrogate to the widow, at least with respect to the formal rules of running her business.

56

Dorinda Outram notes the persistence of this perception in the revolutionary period. The Body and the French Revolution: Sex, Class, and Political Culture (New Haven, 1989), p. 133. See also Sara F. Matthews Grieco, “The Body, Appearance, and Sexuality,” in Natalie Zemon Davis and Arlette Farge (eds), A History of Women in the West, vol. III. Renaissance and the Enlightenment Paradoxes (Boston, 2000), pp. 74–5.

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Widows in Professions Since widows faced a number of important restrictions and limitations, it appears that on the surface they could not be considered fully masters and members of their late husbands’ guilds. Particularly with respect to recruitment of affordable labor, widow-mistresses were at a marked disadvantage in comparison with their male counterparts. But there are a number of other factors that we need to consider before we make a final assessment of the widow’s relationship to the guild. Several of the restrictions placed on widows concerned issues that also plagued masters. In order to understand the meaning of the limitations guild statutes imposed on widows, we need to look at how masters dealt with those same problems. One of the first indications of how much widows were integrated into guilds was the number of such women who practiced various trades. A number of dictionaries and guides list the masters and widows for a number of Parisian guilds. While these sources are not conclusive, they do give an idea of what trades were most open to widows and which ones provided more limited access. One of the most comprehensive was the almanac drawn up by Roze de Chantoiseau in 1769.57 Chantoiseau included those he considered the most accomplished masters for 107 different professions. This number did not include every incorporated guild in existence at that moment, but it included nearly all of the trades listed in other sources.58 Of these 107 guilds, 38 include names of widows along with other masters, 42 of them list only the jurés, the sworn officers of the guild, and 27 give masters but no widows. Thus for the trades in which Chantoiseau included ordinary masters, more listed widows than not. This inclusion of women in a work intended to guide the reader in finding the highest quality craftspeople shows a confidence in their ability to run a business well. We also know from other sources that most of the guilds that listed only jurés, as well as those that gave only the names of men, included widows, so we can say with great confidence that nearly every profession practiced in Paris included widows among the ranks of masters. While this source is far from definitive in terms of sketching out the membership of guilds, nonetheless Chantoiseau’s information can serve as one way to determine which guilds were most likely to include widows and the professions where they had the best opportunities to succeed, and even distinguish themselves.

57 Roze de Chantoiseau, Essai sur l’Almanach Général d’indication d’adresse personelle et domicile fixe, des Six Corps des Arts et Métiers (Paris: n.p., 1769). This book is not paginated so I have given all citations by the trade listing. 58 René de Lespinasse lists 121 trades in his nineteenth-century collection of guild statutes. Jacques Savary des Brulons lists 117 in Dictionnaire universel de commerce (3 vols, Paris, 1723–1730), vol. 1, p. 1056. Ludovic Lalanne gives 124 in Dictionnaire historique de la France (Paris: Hachette, 1873).

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According to the lists in this almanac, the guild that included the largest number of widows keeping a shop was the hosiers’ guild with 85 of the 396 masters listed as widows.59 The highest percentage of widow-mistresses according to Chantoiseau was to be found in the guild of the embroiderers where 26 per cent of superior shops were run by widows.60 A number of other guilds had a percentage of widow-mistresses in excess of 20 per cent of the total: drapers, printers, mirror makers, tinsmiths, tanners, and vinegar merchants. A number of these trades are not surprising. The hosiers, embroiderers, drapers, and vinegar merchants dealt with materials commonly deemed appropriate for women, namely textiles and food. However, it is more surprising to see tinsmiths and leather tanners included among the guilds with the largest numbers of distinguished widow-mistresses. What Chantoiseau’s information allows us to see is not necessarily how many widows were involved in which guilds. The data are not consistent enough to draw any decisive conclusions about which trades were more welcoming for women and which were more difficult to access. We know that widows were active in a number of trades where Chantoiseau has included no women. What it does help us see in terms of possibility for female entry, is that we cannot simply classify some trades as open to women because they were food and textile trades and others as closed off because they concerned materials considered male, such as leather or glass.

Two Case Studies: Curriers and Goldsmiths The information that Chantoiseau provides in his almanac gives a broad sense of where widows were most prevalent, and most well-accepted, in the guild system. But a closer look at the situation of widows in two trades, curriers and goldsmiths, will give shape to these aggregate numbers, allowing us to understand better how widows and guilds related to one another. These two guilds left records of specific professional issues in which women, as wives and widows, were central. Focusing on these two trades also provides an opportunity to contrast women’s and widows’ activities in diverse kinds of work. Curriers, leather dressers who prepared animal skins for specific kinds of products, mainly for belts and shoes, engaged in difficult and dirty work.61 By definition, they could not perform the more profitable work of adding substantial labor value to raw materials and transforming them into consumer goods. This trade allowed its members to carry out only the most basic work of transforming hide into consumer products, thus resigning them to a fairly 59

Chantoiseau, bonnetier listing. Bonnetiers made hose, hats, gloves, and other accessories. For a description of their trade see Franklin, Dictionnaire historique, p. 89; Lespinasse, Les métiers, vol. 3, pp. 241–4. 60 Chantoiseau, brodeur listing. 61 Franklin, Dictionnaire historique, p. 75; Lespinasse, Les métiers, vol. 3, p. 457.

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low level of compensation. Also, their work with raw animal products rendered these leather dressers somewhat base. Just as butchers were contaminated by their contact with blood and flesh, so too were leather workers sullied by association with such impure materials.62 In contrast, goldsmiths occupied the highest echelon of the world of work. Their place was determined not only by their wealth and the contact they had with elite members of French society but also by the inherent nobility of the materials they transformed. Shaping gold, that most precious of raw materials, into miniature works of art required a fineness of touch and a reservoir of skill rivaled in few other trades. These craftsmen certainly benefited economically by their trade, but they were also changed socially into higher ranking workers, members of the “labor aristocracy” of the world of work. Also, in formal terms, the guild’s membership among the Six Corps, the top rank of guilds, cemented their conception of themselves as the apex of this corporate ranking. So in certain respects these two professions fall at two ends of the labor spectrum: one was unclean, not highly remunerated and lowly; the other was highly compensated, highly skilled and well-respected. Despite the possible obstructions that might seem to present themselves, widows were active in both of these guilds. Curriers In the early eighteenth century, masters and jurés wrangled over the question of a wife’s role in the leather dresser’s enterprise. At stake was whether a wife could go to the Halle des Cuirs, the leather market, and purchase hides for her husband’s shop.63 The jurés of the guild requested a decision from the Lieutenant-General of Police that would prohibit a master’s wife from purchasing leather from the market unless she could document his illness or absence. If she were in possession of a formal declaration to that effect she would be permitted to act on her indisposed husband’s behalf. The guild also prohibited masters without sanctioned boutiques from purchasing hides at the leather market. The latter request was completely unremarkable. Early modern corporations waged a constant battle against what they called faux-ouvriers, workers who were not sanctioned by a guild yet worked furtively within the given trade. Such workers challenged the exclusivity of the guild’s claim on a craft, and also often undercut the price a master could command for his work, thus weakening the corporate organization of work.64 But the exclusion of a master’s family members from participating in his enterprise is 62

Sydney Watts, “Boucherie et hygiene à Paris au XVIIIe siècle,” Revue d’histoire moderne et contemporaine, 51/3 (2004): 79–103. 63 Statuts des Maîtres Corroyeurs-Baudroyeurs de la Ville de Paris (Paris, 1724), piece 11. 64 Steven L. Kaplan, “Les Corporations, les faux-ouvriers et le faubourg SaintAntoine,” Annales E.S.C., 40/2 (1988): 262–3.

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surprising. Despite the lack of formal foundation, masters always called on the labor of members of their households in order to keep their shops running profitably. Family work was an important source of unpaid labor. Forbidding wives from helping their husbands was a rather unexpected request, one that is not easy to understand. This request is even more surprising in so far as an early set of statutes from the curriers guild stated that masters could train no girls to work in their shops except for the daughters of masters.65 This provision implies that all children, boys and girls, could be expected to know and work in their family trade. Further, in contrast to other trades where provisions were made for a son to learn his father’s trade but not for a daughter to do so, this statute shows a willingness to train girls formally. Such knowledge would prove to be useful since many guild marriages were endogamous, meaning that the daughters of curriers would tend to marry other workers in the leather trades. Early training in the workshop allowed wives to add to the value of the family’s shop by working beside their husbands. These and other considerations were important to a certain number of masters in this guild, evidence by a challenge put forth by 87 master curriers. They claimed it was common practice before the 1724 sentence for wives to go to the market for their husbands and “they will continue to send them, and their wives would buy and sell hides, as they always did.”66 As these masters saw it, the jurés’ request was seeking to establish an important change in the role of the family in the trade of leather dressing, and was also implicitly challenging the master’s authority in his home and his ability to command his family to do what he thought beneficial. The obvious question to ask at this point is why make such a change. The answer is not immediately clear as the jurés did not explain why they wanted this new policy. Nor did the King’s Council explain why they refused to overturn this innovation in guild policy. Several possibilities suggest themselves based on the language of these proclamations. The coupling of the prohibition on wives going to market with a ban on masters without shops buying leather suggests that this statute was part of a larger effort for the leaders of the guild to impose tighter order on the corporate body. It was a means both to remind guild members of the jurés’ power to define both the activity of the guild as well as the membership. Enacting this statute meant excluding all non-guild members from activities that should be reserved exclusively for masters. This element of control over membership in the guild and over access to the space of the market was highlighted by the requirement that a sick or absent master procure proof of his status so that his wife could take his place under these circumstances. Here the guild leadership, rather than a master and his family, determined the process of access to raw materials, and jurés intruded on the private decisions of the family. This situation strengthened guild control of trade activity, a point that was reinforced when the 65 66

Lespinasse, Les métiers, vol. 3, p. 357, 1595 statutes. Statuts des Maîtres Corroyeurs, pièce 12.

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jurés defied many of their fellow masters in retaining this ban on wives in the marketplace. In creating this rule, jurés were also inserting themselves into the workings of the family economy. Customarily, all members of a family unit worked and contributed to its continued fiscal well-being. Neither gender nor age, except when accompanied by infirmity, excluded an individual from doing some kind of work to help support the family. Given this model of family and economic organization, wives always had some role in the family shop alongside their husbands. Not only was this part of a cultural assumption about how families functioned, it was also a necessity for continued prosperity. When the jurés of the curriers guild interfered with this model they were meddling in household affairs, and undermining the authority of the father to assign work to members of his household, possibly imperiling the continued prosperity of these families. Wives provided a crucial source of skilled and trusted labor, one that these jurés wished to curtail. If masters could not count on their wives to run errands, buy materials, work with clients, supervise the shop, they were in danger of not being able to run their businesses smoothly and profitably. The great value of the wife’s assistance in this particular trade was evidenced by the protest raised by the 87 renegade masters who asked the King’s council to strike down the ban on wives purchasing hides in the leather market.67 It is not entirely clear why the jurés of this guild wanted to interfere with the use of family labor in this trade; we can only speculate. One of the effects of this change in regulations was to place the master firmly in charge of the merchant activities of the household. Once his wife was no longer authorized to act in his name without explicit documentation she would no longer have the opportunity to make purchases at the market without her husband’s permission and knowledge. The jurés may have feared that women were acting without their husbands’ permission. Such behavior would undermine not only the smooth running of the shop but also the harmony of the household. Ironically, one of the motivations of the jurés may have been to strengthen the authority of the father even while the result of this legislation was to impede the use of family members in the business. There is also the possibility that the officers of this guild feared that a female face would be attached to their trade. If many women were going to market for their husbands then the public face of the curriers’ guild would be female. Requiring men to transact the public business of purchasing leather would ensure that the face of the guild in the marketplace was male. There may also have been concerns that allowing women freely to patronize the marketplace would inspire jealousy or resentment on the part of men who were excluded from this activity, namely journeymen or aspiring masters. There is no way to be sure why the jurés took this action. None of the writings on this statute make any mention of the justification for this change in guild practice. But this guild persisted in upholding 67

AN, E* 1138 b.

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this ban, over the protest of a sizeable number of their members, for more than 50 years and over numerous objections. The persistence of argument over this issue implies that masters continued to send their wives to the Halles des Cuir despite the formal ban against them. Such perseverance also suggests that this was not simply a minor concern but was in fact a meaningful issue for this guild. The difficulties the jurés faced in attempting to enforce this ban implies that only such major concerns as the reputation of the trade or the issue of authority over who would take part in the public activities of this trade could inspire such a statute. The end result of this protracted struggle over wives’ participation was that women were limited in how they could take part in a family leather dressing operation and in the end their role was to be a private one. This ambivalence over female participation was reflected in other ways in the running of this guild. For example, the issue of widow participation never came up in statutes after the 1595 redaction. There was never a rejection of widows’ rights, as in the arms masters’ guild, so presumably widows maintained the right to run their late husbands’ shops. Mistress leather dressers appear occasionally in the archival record so some of these women did continue to ply the trade. However, before 1769 they appear rather infrequently and disappear altogether after that date.68 This evidence suggests that in comparison to widow-mistresses in other trades widows of leather dressers were less likely to become mistresses, perhaps reflecting a weaker connection and identification with their late husbands’ guild. Unlike other trades where the use of the family’s labor was at the discretion of the master, here the guild imposed itself to reduce the wife’s role, thereby decreasing her connection to the trade.

Goldsmiths In contrast to the leather dressers’ statutes, which rarely mentioned the status of widows, the goldsmith’s guild (orfèvres) made very specific provisions about what happened when one of their number died. In part this specificity stemmed from a great concern about maintaining control over the sensitive work of goldsmiths. This trade was unusual in that it was overseen not only by its own corporate structure and the Parisian commissioner of police, but also by the Cour des Aides.69 The latter regulatory body took an interest in the goldsmiths’ guild in order to root out counterfeit currency or other such acts of fraud. Given the delicate nature of 68

Chantoiseau, L’Almanach Général ; Ludovic Lalanne, Dictionnaire historique. The Cour des Aides oversaw complaints aimed at goldsmiths, along with supervising issues of forgery and financial misdeeds. Records concerning goldsmiths are in AN Z1a963. Marcel Marion, Dictionnaire des institutions de la France, XVIIIe-XVIIIe siècles (Paris, 1989 reprint), p. 156. 69

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their work, and the extremely valuable raw materials they worked with, the goldsmiths’ guild kept careful watch over those who practiced the trade. This caution was evidenced in the way the trade functioned. For example, unlike other trades, the goldsmiths did not recognize any zones where unsanctioned workers could ply this craft. The faubourgs of Paris harbored many illicit workers, protected in their work by the designation of these geographical zones as free for such labor. But illicit goldsmiths were not permitted to take advantage of such areas. The goldsmiths’ guild, along with a few other corps like the surgeons, were exempt from absorbing any new masterships on royal occasions such as births and marriages. They also differentiated masters who bought letters of mastership from those who earned them through the avenue of apprenticeship or from a family connection. The former group, called orfèvres surnumeraires, could not convey any privileges to their widows or sons and were not considered full members of the guild.70 These provisions show that goldsmiths tightly controlled access to the privileges their guild conveyed and refused to incorporate members who had not achieved their mastership through the guild-sanctioned path. Any master who acquired his title through other means was marginalized and limited in the way his mastership was understood by his peers. This great concern over fraud shaped the guild’s attitude toward widows. As discussed earlier, the widow-mistress presented an opportunity for an unsanctioned worker to gain access to the trade, either by renting the widow’s title or by de facto taking over her shop. Given those dangers, when a master died there was great concern over how to achieve two goals: first, to allow the widow a means of support and a way to capitalize on her knowledge of the trade; second, to ensure that she was not defrauded by dishonest journeymen who might seek to engage in illegal activities under the aegis of her title. The issue was how to strike a balance between surveilling the widow and allowing her to earn a living using her family’s enterprise. The guild took two different approaches. Prior to 1679, a widow received her own distinct hallmark when her husband died. The guild required that she bring her late husband’s hallmark to the guild offices where it could be broken so that no one could manufacture pieces under that obsolete mark. At that point she was given her own mark so that pieces made under the widow’s management could be distinguished from those pieces the deceased master himself had made.71 Such a provision forced the widow to come in person and register with the guild and provided a measure of protection to those who purchased pieces from her shop. Customers could not be duped into believing that a master had crafted an item that had in fact been fabricated after his death. This arrangement allowed the widow 70

Pierre LeRoy, Statuts et Privilèges du corps des marchands orfèvres-joyailliers de la ville de Paris (Paris: n.p., 1759), pp. 12–13, 20; Lespinasse, Les métiers, vol. 2, p. 146; Marion, Dictionnaire des institutions, p. 152. 71 LeRoy, Statuts des marchands orfèvres, pp. 154–5.

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autonomy but also let the guild identify the work she was putting out in case complaints about quality arose. The guild changed this arrangement after 1679, although it did not explain the reasons behind the change. The new regulation, which significantly altered the way a widow could practice this trade, stated so that widows not find themselves exposed to heavy fines and other significant punishments, widows will not be able to have their own hallmarks in the future.72

Instead of having control over her own hallmark, the widow was required to create a relationship with another master goldsmith who would mark the goods produced in the widow’s workshop with his own stamp. In essence, the guild forced widows to make partnerships with men who had received the formal training that women lacked. A number of concerns may have led to this change in the widow’s status. As articulated in the guild’s explanation, the quality of widows’ work or their ability to run such a business may have been in question. Certainly the wording of the statute promotes such an interpretation, evoking as it does the widow’s lack of knowledge about the materials used in this trade. By invoking the possibility of penalties a widow might have to pay, presumably due to infractions of quality controls, this statute strengthens the interpretation that the caliber of the work coming from widows’ workshops was inferior. This provision promoted two different notions of the widow’s relationship to the guild. On the one hand, it demoted widows to dependent workers who could not exercise their independence in running their own legitimate businesses. Similar to the relationship journeymen had to their masters, widows could produce goods but the product of their work was legitimized only by the touch of a fully accepted master. Economically such an added step may have made no impact on the widow’s ability to run her shop. The provision did not limit the kind of work the widow did; it simply required an extra layer of oversight. This observation is supported by the widow goldsmiths who did in fact maintain independent shops after their husbands’ deaths, despite the tutelage forced upon them by the guild.73 Apparently in practice widows were not deterred from this profession by the prospect of supervision. But psychologically this provision did demote widows from the full exercise of the title “mistress” and from full exercise of sovereignty in their shops. However, this provision may have encouraged greater integration of widows into this craft. In order to practice this trade legitimately, every widow was obliged to create and maintain a close relationship to another master in the guild. By that 72

Lespinasse, Les mètiers, vol. 2, p. 146. In addition to the probate inventories and marriage contracts that document widowgoldsmiths, the deliberations of the Six Corps and of the goldsmith’s guild mention widows. AN KK 1342–1346; 1351–1352. 73

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mechanism widows may have had greater access to news of guild proceedings and gossip about other masters. The widow would also be more visible to other guild masters by dint of close relations with the master who marked her products. The legislating of such relationships also encouraged the formation of partnerships between widows and other masters, a practice seen in every trade in the eighteenth century. These forced alliances may have made it easier for widows to maintain an independent shop, as she had some support, even if it was at times slight, from another master. The outcome of this change in treatment of widows is ambiguous. It may be that widows did feel themselves discouraged from holding on to their husbands’ businesses and sold their enterprises rather than submit to the rules of the guild. Other aspects of this trade may have also contributed to low widow participation: demands for a high level of skill from the workers involved and the amount of capital outlay on raw materials are two likely impediments to a widow’s continuation of the business.74 In this instance, perhaps it was better to sell the enterprise, profit from the high value of the works produced, the tools and the raw materials than to risk failure in this demanding profession. Whatever the logic widows used to decide how they should proceed after a husband’s death, we do know that these statutes did not deter all women from practicing this craft, despite these complexities. These examples demonstrate some of the ways guilds handled the presence of wives and widows in their ranks. Compelled for several reasons to allow widows to practice their husbands’ trades, guilds nonetheless placed certain restrictions on their participation. Yet none of these restrictions pushed widows out of guilds altogether. These women may have felt encumbered by certain requirements, and some, like the inability to take on apprentices, certainly had an impact on a shop’s feasibility. But the continued presence of widows in guilds testify to the attractiveness of this choice for some women, and the possibility for economic and social rewards from this position. The guilds both invited and discouraged widows from exercising their privileges. And, unremarkably, some women accepted the invitation and others declined. But overall guild widows remained, despite the obstacles they faced, highly privileged members of working society.

74

On the centrality of credit to the success of businesses and the gendered nature of credit see the following: Judith Bennett, Ale, Beer, and Brewsters in England: Women’s Work in a Changing World, 1300–1600 (Oxford, 1996); Julie Hardwick, The Practice of Patriarchy. Gender and the Politics of Household Authority in Early Modern France (University Park, 1998); Philip Hoffman, Gilles Postel-Vinay, Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, “Economie et politique. Les marchés du crédit à Paris, 1750-1840,” Annales HSS, 49/1 (1994): 65–98; James B. Collins, “The Economic Role of Women in Seventeenth-Century France,” French Historical Studies, 16/3 (1989): 436–70.

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Widows as Masters Widows claimed the right to work in diverse trades based not only on the work they had contributed to an enterprise over the course of their married lives but also on the training and experience they attained in childhood and marriage. In a sense, the widow claimed a position in the guild because she had made an investment in the family business, and in so doing acquired the ability to do that work on her own. She owned part of the business through her labor contribution and through the investment she made in developing business skills. This assumption of a widow’s competency demonstrates to some extent the important qualities of mastership. The master’s job was to understand and oversee the process of production. His job was not necessarily to perform the bulk of the manual labor required in the shop. If that were the case, widows could not persuasively lay claim to a mastership. Many wives did perform the organizing labor in a family enterprise, and the acceptance of women in that role gave the widow the opportunity to manage the shop on her own.75 That experience, and the guild’s acceptance of that work as both female and male, permitted the widow to lay claim to one important element of the identity of mastership. While widow-mistresses could never gain numerical parity with masters, or claim the same training and background as their male counterparts, there were ways in which guilds treated widows and masters in the same fashion. To begin on a very basic level, all participants in guild activity paid taxes and dues to the guild. Widows, despite their attenuated claim to membership, nonetheless were expected to pay the guild just as men did. The restaurateurs’ guild (traiteurs) stated that “the said masters, their widows and journeymen will pay twenty sous each year to the confraternity.”76 Widows and masters also had to pay the guild a yearly indemnity to cover the cost of inspection visits to workshops and they all shared the burden when the King imposed fiscal payments on the guilds.77 With respect to these latter monies, only masters and widows paid such fees. Journeymen, who were not sworn members of the guild, were not obliged to contribute to discharging these corporate debts. In terms of contributing to the fiscal health of the group, widows were counted on to the same extent as masters. In exchange for those monetary contributions, widows received certain attentions from guilds. Jurés did visit widows’ shops, just as they visited the establishments of other masters. They imposed fines on widows and punished them 75 For wives in the shop see Ménétra, Journal of My Life, pp. 111, 161, 166, 205. Also AN, Y 15804, Y 15365, Y 9527, among other archival sources (see chapter 4). Peter Earle confirms that wives of English tradesmen and shopkeeper also had an active role in his The Making of the English Middle Class: Business, Society, and Family Life in London, 1660–1730, (Berkeley, 1989), pp. 163–5. 76 Lespinasse, Les métiers, vol. 1, p. 307. 77 Ibid., vol. 1, pp. 396, 537.

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according to the regulations that applied to all who practiced the trade. Also, widows and poor masters were entitled to poor relief from guilds’ confraternities if they fell into impoverishment. Lists of impecunious masters and widows show that guilds provided relief to men and women in roughly equal numbers.78 Assuming that there were more male than female masters, widows were slightly more likely to require assistance. Nonetheless, they did share the expense of poor relief with their fellow masters and both men and women benefited from this charity. The guild also assisted in the burial of indigent members, masters or widows. In this way, too, women and men with equal needs received equal treatment from the corporation.79 At times widows also took a more active role with respect to guilds. Just like masters, groups of widows occasionally petitioned guilds to ask for changes in statutes and policies. This kind of behavior has been well-documented for men who were members of guilds but widows who have at times taken on similar roles have not elicited similar attention. In 1777 a group of printer’s widows drew up two petitions, one addressed to the King and one to Parlement.80 Both documents pled for changes in the guild’s new statutes. Fifteen widows came together in the first petition asserting that they “dare to raise their voices, as they have a special claim for protection and justice from their sovereign.”81 The issue that troubled these women was the provision in the 1777 reconstitution of craft corporations stating that widows were required to pay certain fees to maintain the right to exercise a mastership, a marked departure from previous policy. In addition, according to these petitions, widows were not considered eligible under the new statutes to hold full privileges, and would see the value of their shops diminished. As these widows pled, “they only wish to present for a quick glance all of the interests compromised by the new rules.”82 Their property rights were at risk, and in response, these widows petitioned the royal government and the guild as had numerous groups of masters in the past. For these women, part of their membership in the group meant that they could express their opinions just as other masters did. This petition also suggests that widows believed that they could assert their particular interests, as women working in the printing trade, and be heard on those issues. These widows demonstrated not only a sense of having a stake in the definition of the trade in the statutes, but also that their specific needs should be addressed in that agreement. At other times widows joined with other masters in asserting a position that ran against the grain of the guild leadership. A large investigation by the vinegar makers’ guild ferreted out 31 masters who were violating corporate statutes. This 78 79 80 81 82

AN, F4 1241, piece 1, piece 11, piece 12, piece 13. Lespinasse, Les métiers, vol. 2, p. 486. BN, 4 F 25039 pieces 1 and 2. BN., 4 F 25039 piece 1, p. 1. BN., 4 F 25039 piece 2, p. 2.

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group included three widows who had allied themselves with a group of masters hoping to wring concessions from the guild of the wine merchants. These masters were using a lesser quality wine “mixed with fermented apple and pear juice” to make vinegar.83 Corporate statutes forbade tainting wine in such a manner. Master wine merchants also objected to this practice as it endangered the income they brought in from selling wine to be made into vinegar. None of the investigators or numerous witnesses heard from in the case remarked upon the inclusion of women in this scheme, although several witnesses testified that they had seen Widow Bourdon mixing foreign substances into her wine. The inclusion of these three women just provided a larger network for making and distributing inferior vinegar. These widows were punished along with their male conspirators, with no consideration given for their sex or household status. Widow Bourdon was fined a hefty 100 livres, to be given to the General Hospital in the form of alms, and also saw her shop closed for three months. About half of the other masters suffered the same penalties. The two ringleaders served time in prison as well as paying substantial fines. The two other widows in the scheme, Luce Verrier, widow Legrand and Anne Chazel, widow Duvire, were sentenced, along with ten other masters, to a fine of 3 livres and also saw all of their wine and vinegar discarded in front of their shops.84 Here we see how in certain circumstances widows shared interests and action with other guild masters, despite the gender split that guild ideology often asserted. Regardless of the distinctions drawn between widows and other masters in statutes, in terms of concluding business and making deals, widows could be integrated into the rhythm of business. In this fashion, women and men behaved in similar ways with respect to their relation to the guild, masters, and clients. These examples show how widows were included in the rhythm of guild life, just as other masters were. Guilds expected widows to shoulder some of the group’s financial burden, and allowed them to benefit from their membership in the group if they fell on hard times. They also suggest that when guilds validated widows’ participation on the basis of their training and work, and when widows expressed positions on issues facing the corporate body, these women shared in the identity of mastership, even if the extent was limited by their gender. But there were ways that widows were excluded from guild business, specifically because they were women and not fully members. How can we reconcile these limitations and assess the ways widows shared in the identity of mastership? Widows did not articulate how they understood their status vis à vis their late husbands’ guilds. For these women, their actions stand in for words. The behavior examined thus far suggests that widows did act like other masters in some important ways. Before giving a more certain response to this query, we need to examine how the ways guilds excluded widows influenced the extent of their belonging to the group. 83 84

AN, Y 9527. Ibid.

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Two matters critical to both a master’s success and his integration into his corporation were access to labor and access to decision-making. Widows were at a disadvantage in some respects when it came to recruiting labor. The prohibition on taking apprentices, one that widows did at times violate, deprived women of a cheap source of labor. But it was at times difficult for masters to recruit apprentices. Some guilds limited the number of apprentices taken in a given year, and the granting of apprentices was subject to political currying just like other decisions made by corporate leaders.85 Many masters recruited alloués to provide cheap labor for their shops, just like widows did. If a master had a difficult time obtaining permission to train an apprentice, he too could be forced to circumvent formal guild requirements and seek his own cheap workers. Undeniably widows were at a disadvantage compared to other masters. They had no legitimate means to take on an apprentice, and the reasoning that supported that prohibition deprecated women’s ability to be full members of the guild. However, in practice other masters faced the same challenges as widows did, narrowing the gap that separated them from other masters in the guild. The other major activity from which widows were excluded was in voting for guild policy and serving as officers. At first glance, this exclusion seems quite significant. Widows had no formal means for setting guild policy, no voice in how the guild’s fiscal burden was apportioned, no way to take a leadership role in the body. Women were shut out of a large part of what seemed to constitute a master’s identity. But this exclusion was far less significant than it appears. According to Steven Kaplan’s study of strife in the guilds, many masters were excluded not only from guild office but also from participation at meetings and in votes. As he explains “(m)ost guilds seem to have been as allergic to general assemblies encompassing modernes and jeunes (less senior masters) as they were to assemblies of journeymen… Instead the inner council deliberated in closed sessions that were said to represent (and obligate) the full membership.”86 Not only did guild leadership seek to exclude most masters from meetings and votes, those masters appeared to be complicitous in their disenfranchisement. Kaplan describes the majority of masters, “the marais” or swamp in his words, as “cautious, if not indifferent, or preoccupied with other concerns.”87 Even for masters who showed an interest in corporate matters, or in guilds that did not exclude their membership from attending meetings, it was difficult to attain guild office and real power within the group. The majority of officers came from families that had dominated the guild for some time, sons following their fathers or nephews following their uncles to positions as jurés or anciens (both titles for guild officers). This continuity was not simply a matter of custom or habit, the 85

On the limitation on apprentices, see Lespinasse, Les métiers, vol. 3, tanners’ 1680 statutes. 86 Steven L. Kaplan, “Character and Implications of Strife,” p. 634. 87 Ibid., p. 632.

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assumption that bloodlines conferred ability. Guild officials explicitly created this system of quasi-inheritance: “(t)he ruling group was self-recruiting, for in most cases the anciens had the decisive voice in the selection of their successors.”88 The existence of this method for recruiting guild leaders is important to note because it reminds us that most guild members, male or female, had little access to leadership roles in the guilds. It also alerts us to an area where widows may have had greater influence in swaying jurés and anciens than other masters. One of the most striking characteristics of Chantoiseau’s almanach is the degree to which widow-mistresses shared names with jurés and anciens. For example, among the masters given for the brodeur corporation, sixteen of the guild’s jurés shared a family name with active widow-mistresses.89 This connection suggests that certain widows had a channel of communication with corporate leadership that the majority of the guild’s masters did not enjoy. Such women, if they could not directly influence guild policy, at least might have used these connections to gain reliable information about the group. We know that those masters who were well-connected could expect to receive fewer visits from guild officers seeking statute violations. Widows who could avoid such intrusive inspections certainly had an advantage over their peers. Based on this comparison of the way guild structure treated men and women, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that widows were in many important ways members of the guild. Despite efforts to push women from visibility, by imposing restrictions on female activity in the guild, or by failing fully to address the ways they could function within the shops they inherited from their husbands, widows continued to occupy positions in corporate groups. Even faced with the structural restrictions placed on female activity, a brief examination of practice demonstrates the significant degree to which widows were masters in this guild. These women found ways to skirt restrictions; they developed strategies that helped them overcome constraints and function like other masters did. When compared to the majority of masters in Parisian guilds, widows seem to be peers in terms of how they related to workers, the guild, and their clients. We will see through a closer examination of practice that this assertion is supported by looking at how widows worked in their shops and ran their businesses.

88 89

Ibid., p. 633. Chantoiseau, brodeurs.

Chapter 4

Widows in the Workshop Introduction Guild statutes granted widows the opportunity to continue running their husbands’ commercial enterprises provided that they adhered to the rules of the trade, for the most part simply those other masters also promised to obey. The question these regulations do not answer is how well widows succeeded in taking advantage of the privilege and position available to them when their husbands died. Were these concessions to masters’ wives, then widows, meaningless because women were generally incapable of taking advantage of them? Did widows in fact profit from their affiliation with guilds by managing profitable businesses? Could these women find other ways to use their guild connections to support themselves? Were widows members of guilds or simply bystanders who did not succeed in integrating themselves into these corporate bodies? Finally, to what extent did widows adopt an identity for themselves that was based on being part of guilds and practicing their trades? Despite the male ideology of incorporated work, widows did forge an identity as part of these bodies. Their experiences showed that they did become highly integrated into the workings of all-male guilds; in turn, other masters and the governing apparatus of guilds also acted in ways that acknowledged widows’ belonging to the late husband’s guilds. Furthermore, widows’ frequent success in running businesses questions the harsh outcome seemingly dictated by the family economy. Instead of women languishing in poverty with the loss of the male wageearner, we find them supporting themselves on their own. What the experience of these widows suggests is that the crucial form of capital was liquid wealth, tools, workers, and customers. The shop could tolerate the loss of the master’s labor if his widow commanded these other forms of capital. The family economy logic did not pertain to an independent woman whose resources and status as mistress shielded her from the loss of her husband’s wages. There are a number of ways to gain a sense of widows’ activities in the shop. We start by looking at the impressions and recollections of a worker who spent some time laboring for widows. His experiences suggest some of the ways in which these women ran their businesses like other masters as well as the ways in which they had to address particular challenges. Jacques-Louis Ménétra was an eighteenth-century Parisian glazier who has left a record of his journey, both literal

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and figurative, from journeyman to master.1 In addition to chronicling his sexual prowess and capacity to drink wine, Ménétra gives his reader a sense of what other experiences a journeyman might gain from his Tour de France, a trek workers took across the kingdom to gain expertise and connections in their chosen profession.2 Ménétra described his experiences in many small jobs, and a few larger ones, in different provincial cities and villages.

Wives in the Shop In many ways the wife played a critical role in determining the success of her husband’s shop. All family members, as well as servants and workers, contributed their labor to make a business successful. Craft guilds shared the belief that a master needed a wife’s help in the shop, shown in the informal, and ill-enforced, stricture that journeymen only marry once they achieved the mastership.3 Statutes did not explicitly address the role of family members in the shop, although the tailors’ guild did include a clause that master-fathers could use children to perform certain tasks in production.4 Historians have noted the same use of wives that these statutes noted. In the hatting trade, “the preparatory work of tearing and shaving fur from the pelts was done by women called coupeuses, arracheuses, and repasseuses... It is probable that many of the women who worked in the trade were the wives and daughters of journeymen.”5 In fact, so prevalent was family work in the hatting trades that when the officers of the guild regulated casual laborers, they carefully included exceptions for the families of masters and journeymen.6 Women and children also assisted the master baker in his daily work. The family often lived behind the shop, and spent a great deal of time there. Wives sold bread, chatted with customers, took charge of the bookkeeping. They often handled relations with other merchants as well, leaving their husbands free to oversee the journeymen at the ovens.7 Children also spent much of their free time in the shop and near the ovens. They could help their parents with small tasks, and might also charm the clients. Even on the construction site, where we might not expect to see 1

Jacques-Louis Ménétra, Journal of My Life, trans. Arthur Goldhammer, Daniel Roche (ed.) and foreword Robert Darnton (New York, 1986). 2 Cynthia Marie Truant, The Rites of Labor: Brotherhoods of Compagnonnage in Old and New Regime France (Ithaca, 1994), chapter 2. 3 Truant, Rites of Labor, p. 329. 4 René de Lespinasse, Les métiers et corporations de Paris XIVe–XVIIIe siècle (3 vols, Paris, 1886–97), vol. 2, p. 412. 5 Michael Sonenscher, The Hatters of Eighteenth-Century France (Berkeley, 1987), p. 23. 6 Sonenscher, Hatters, p. 134. 7 Steven L. Kaplan, Le meilleur pain du monde: les boulangers de Paris au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1996), p. 346.

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women and children, families took an active role. Women and children were responsible for picking up scraps of wood and metal which littered the site. These leavings could be valuable resources for workers, and served to supplement their wages.8 The wives of builders also performed other related duties. They were “to supply the workshop or enterprise with raw materials, to do the accounts and to merchandise finished goods, together with supervisory tasks and manifold household duties.”9 Jacques-Louis Ménétra tells repeatedly of wives working in their husbands’ enterprises. Ménétra talks about a woman who tended a cabaret he frequented while her husband was away.10 In the workplace, Ménétra also interacted with women. When he worked for Monsieur Vilmont, a master glazier, he had to ask Vilmont’s wife for his wages. The master’s wife frequently served as paymaster for her husband’s journeymen. When Ménétra came to her asking for 6 livres, “(s)he only wanted to give me three claiming that (he) wasn’t going to work the next day.”11 Madame Vilmont would not allow the workers to cajole her, nor did she behave timidly in her dealings with them. Indeed, Ménétra’s own wife was actively engaged in their glazing business ; Madame Ménétra handled much of the shop’s money, and often dealt with their clients.12 The wife of a master could also stand in for him if he needed to leave his shop. During a visit to a mistress poultry-roaster, the jurés needed someone to open the recalcitrant woman’s door. They dispatched someone to the nearby shop of a locksmith. The master, Martin Fourain, was not there, so the jurés asked Fourain’s wife to open the door. She did not hesitate to use his tools to comply with their request.13 Marie André, the wife of a master carpenter went to the jurés of her husband’s guild to ask for assistance in collecting money from a client. The client, Sieur Lambert, had taken a small cabinet from the André workshop, signing a promissory note for 30 livres. Lambert had not made any payments against the note, and still kept the cabinet. The jurés investigated Madame André’s claim, although they did not report any conclusion to the case.14 The jurés did not hesitate to help when approached by of the wife of a master, and they did not demand to ask the master himself about the case as well. They accepted that the wife’s role in this business was to deal with clients, and acted to look into her case without any apparent hesitation.

8

Elisabeth C. Musgrave, Women in the Male World of Work: The Building Industries of Eighteenth-century Brittany,” French History, 7/1 (1993): 36. 9 Musgrave, “The building industries,” p. 34. 10 Ménétra, Journal of My Life, p. 205. 11 Ménétra, Journal of My Life, p. 111. 12 Ménétra, Journal of My Life, pp. 161, 166. 13 AN, Y 15804, 25 March 1753. 14 AN, Y 15365, 12 April 1757.

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Marie Luce, wife of a master lemonade-seller, also asked for assistance from her husband’s guild when he was away on business and she was left alone looking after the boutique. She sent for the jurés when a chocolate seller came into her shop and tried to intimidate her into buying some of his merchandise. When she refused, telling the chocolate-seller Maillard that she knew he was only a messenger for legitimate chocolate-sellers, and drunk as well, he became abusive. He told her that all limonadiers were bastards, especially her husband. She asked him to leave, but he continued to insult her, so she sent for the jurés. Madame Luce made a formal complaint once the jurés arrived. After hearing her account, the jurés forced Maillard to leave.15 We see that the wives of master artisans assumed they had a relationship with the guild similar to that of their husbands. Each of these women invoked the authority of the guild’s officers when she was having a problem with the family business. These women did not hesitate in taking this step, and felt confident that the jurés would intervene in the dispute. These women were familiar with the structure of the guild apparatus, and comfortable working within it. We cannot suppose that the wife of every master enjoyed such a relationship with the guild. Indeed, many masters, especially those in larger guilds, probably did not themselves share a sense of community with their corporation and its officers. But these cases point to the fact that among widows of master artisans there would be some who already felt part of the guild, and had dealt with corporate authority, even before their husbands’ deaths.

Women’s Training and Education How did the wives of master artisans learn the trade? They did not serve formal apprenticeships, take a tour de France, or work for other master artisans. However, wives were expected to contribute their labor to support their families; the wives of master craftsmen would not be exempt from that charge. Many cobbled together adequate training to perform the duties of the wife of a master from two sources: the home and parental workshop, and the local parish school. Most children, both boys and girls, received their first training from their mothers. Teaching children rudimentary work skills formed a part of a mother’s responsibilities, particularly if the family ran a business. In particular, “a daughter served a kind of apprenticeship to her mother, learning the domestic, agricultural, or technical skills she would need as an adult.”16 The use of children’s labor was not restricted to the artisanal strata; children from all working families frequently ran errands, and did light household chores and simple tasks in the shop. 15 16

59.

AN, Y 15365, 23 December 1742. Joan W. Scott and Louise Tilly, Women, Work and Family (New York, 1978), pp. 33,

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So while a girl did not serve an apprenticeship in her family trade, she often received some rudimentary instruction at institutions run by female religious orders.17 In such schools, girls achieved basic mastery of writing, religious doctrine, and even some rudimentary mathematics. This level of instruction enabled girls to perform basic tasks in the home or family business. Some women, like Madame Ménétra who maintained the financial records of her husband’s business, gained mastery beyond a basic level and could perform more complex mathematical and business tasks. Girls also learned part of the trade at home from their parents. Many marriages at this level of society were endogamous, arranged so that families could cement trade ties and advance their business interests. Marriage contracts demonstrate that the vast majority of artisanal widows hailed from families that practiced the same, or related, trades as their husbands. Such girls who received training in the home, by working in their family shop, had a general knowledge of the business when they entered marriage. Such informal, but effective, training continued during years of marriage, leaving the widow with a practical knowledge gained through experience and repetition of the work done in the enterprise left to her at her husband’s death. With the possible exception of knowing the statutes of the guilds, wives mastered a measure of training and skill in most of the facets of their husbands’ trades. While a master’s wife might have a good working knowledge of the trade, she would not experience the kind of socialization a man experienced when he entered a guild. The question here, then, is how much of a master’s effectiveness as a worker depended on skill and how much on his sense of identity as a sworn member of a guild.18 For the master’s path into the guild, as apprentice, journeyman, and then master, not only educated him in the techniques of his trade, but also socialized him into the culture of that guild. It taught him the limits of appropriate behavior within that group and gave him a way to construct a sense of his social place and identity.19 From the perspective of the guild, an apprenticeship taught a boy or girl not only manual skills and techniques, but also the relationship a member of the guild enjoyed with other members of the guild, and with the larger society and its members. In considering the importance of socialization, we see how the guild, in the ways it trained apprentices and journeymen, treated 17

Martine Sonnet, L’éducation des filles au temps des lumières, (Paris, 1987), pp. 88–90. 18 On this debate see Steven L. Kaplan, “Social Classification and Representation in the Corporate World of Eighteenth-Century France: Turgot’s Carnival,” in Steven Laurence Kaplan and Cynthia J. Koepp (eds), Work in France: Representations, Meaning, Organization, and Practice (Ithaca, 1986) and Simona Cerutti, La ville et les métiers: Naissance d’un langage corporatif (Turin, 17e–18e siècle) (Paris, 1990). 19 Nancy C. Lutkehaus, “Feminist Anthropology and Female Initiation in Melanesia,” in Nancy C. Lutkehaus and Paul B. Roscoe (eds), Gender Rituals: Female Initiation in Melanesia (New York, 1995), pp. 12–13.

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mastership as “a system of social classification and representation before it denoted a system of production, distribution, and consumption.”20 This view of the guild places a master’s place in society alongside his work as a means of understanding his status. In addition to officially guiding and structuring the socialization of their masters, guilds also strove to instill a camaraderie in their members, to encourage them to consider themselves as a discrete group, with a certain status, within the larger schema of French society. Although it was not a part of official guild socialization, the tour de France which most journeymen undertook went a long way to fulfilling that goal. Ménétra, in his memoirs, regales his reader with numerous stories of his friendships and adventures with other journeymen. He also expresses his disdain for craftsmen in other trades, demonstrating his understanding of glaziers as a group, with a certain status vis à vis others. Ménétra’s fellow glaziers frequently help him out of scrapes, as for example when a fellow glazier hid him from a jealous lover determined to take revenge on Ménétra who had courted his sweetheart.21 Ménétra makes his reader understand that his travels not only helped him to hone his skills as an artisan, but also initiated him into a brotherhood of fellow glaziers who had common experiences, and common perceptions of their place in the world. The rhetoric of the guilds around the question of abolition presents the clearest articulation of how guild masters understood their roles within the corporate structure. In 1776, the royal government, largely at the provocation of the Controller General Anne-Robert-Jacques Turgot, liberalized economic regulation, with one of the most significant reforms being the abolition of all trade guilds. The rationale behind this bold initiative was to open up the economic marketplace, getting rid of regulations that limited innovation and curtailed ambitions. Members of corporate bodies across France, most notably members of the Parlement of Paris as well as the guilds themselves, strongly protested this action. These groups argued that without the hierarchal bonds that guilds imposed upon labor, men and women workers would run amok and become a source of disorder and even potentially violence. One function of these arguments against abolishing the guilds was to define what it meant to be a master. Incidentally, they also point out the intangible qualities a widow needed to possess if she were to become a guild master, and not just a legitimate practitioner of the trade. It is important to keep in mind not only the economic or mechanical qualifications mastership required, but also the more ineffable authority a master needed to project in order to be successful. Recall Grimod de la Reynière’s concern that a widow could not govern workers. Public trepidation about the maintenance of good order, and general distrust of Turgot’s laissez-faire policies, also point out the importance of having masters who could 20 21

Kaplan, “Turgot’s Carnival,” p. 183. Ménétra, Journal of My Life, p. 48.

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control their workers for the general good. These concerns, along with the considerable efforts of members of the Parlement of Paris, pressured the government to reestablish the guilds, albeit in a slightly different form. One reason for doing so was to ensure control of potentially volatile workers by masters and the structure of the guild.

Authority in the Shop While the widow might succeed as overseer of a workshop, she was not perhaps qualified, in her fellow masters’ and journeymen’s eyes, to take on the social identity her new role demanded, and make herself fit into the corporate schema of her new guild. The lack of an apprenticeship in the ways of the guild, her inability to join in the camaraderie of the group, deprived her of tools she might use to discipline and cajole her workers into putting their efforts into her enterprise. This aspect of mastership represented the most difficult one for a widow to acquire. Widows could certainly learn many craft techniques, especially those which did not require great strength, and in all likelihood had been responsible for several aspects of running their husbands’ enterprise. However, certain guild members doubted the ability of a widow to handle the many challenges that came with running a successful business. The goldsmiths’ guild regulations remarked that “the widows of master goldsmiths have no knowledge of assaying and alloys, and not being able to manage the work, they depend on the journeymen they employ.”22 A widow, or a master, who was managing a shop would have a number of journeymen skilled in the production of goods, making it unnecessary for her or him to be able to perform all tasks. But the ability to hire workers did not make a master. In certain ways, the widow could never fully integrate herself into the life of the guild, having never been an apprentice or a journeymen, and not having had the opportunity to participate in all aspects of guild life. For example, one of the master’s tasks was to ensure a “good feeling in the workshop (which) had never been spontaneous and genuine but had been induced or imposed and ritualized by the corporate model of subordination.”23 Since the widow did not have the experience that other masters had, since she was not a member of the guild in the same way that male masters were, it might have been difficult for her to impose that kind of coerced order in her workshop. Aside from the difficulties of learning craft skills, or learning to supervise workers, the widow would meet resistance to her authority based on her gender. The guilds consciously excluded women from virtually all of the trades they 22 Pierre LeRoy, Statuts et Privilèges du corps des Marchands Orfèvres-Joyailliers de la Ville de Paris (Paris, 1759), p. 156. 23 Kaplan, “Turgot's Carnival,” p. 190.

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controlled. Only four corporations received women: the seamstresses, linendrapers, hemp merchants, and fresh flower sellers.24 Many male guilds, like the tailors’ guild, strongly resisted women’s inclusion among the ranks of the guilds. Widows might be only grudgingly accepted by other men in their guild because they were women participating where they were not normally welcomed. This strain in the guilds’ attitude toward women would likely result in resistance to widow mistresses because of their gender. Ménétra’s recollections offer clues about ways that widows could create smooth work relations with their workers. During Ménétra’s tour de France he mentions working for five different widow glaziers. Ménétra’s description of life in Paris also refers to a number of widows running shops or practicing trades. For example, after returning to Paris, Ménétra considered marrying a widow glazier who owned a successful shop.25 Ménétra’s widow employers seem to have offered him better terms of employment than other masters. He mentions one widow who gave him “four louis to buy a suit because she’d heard (him) say that (he) liked a gray color.”26 The widow Ménétra worked for in Nîmes sent him 60 francs by messenger to help him along on his travels.27 Ménétra implies that part of the favoritism his employers showed him was motivated by love and desire, but it is also not implausible to imagine that widows offered qualified journeymen good wages because they depended so much on them. It may also have been the case that widows treated their workers more fairly than male employers did. A number of masters asked their journeymen to perform domestic tasks, although such work was discouraged by guild regulation and custom.28 A widow who could not directly perform tasks in the workshop needed to attract and keep trustworthy and talented workers, and part of achieving that goal was to give workers incentives to stay in the shop and perform well. Some savvy widows must have realized that reliable labor was the most crucial element to success as an independent mistress. Clearly these women commanded a certain amount of authority, perhaps a residual prestige carried over from husbands, or perhaps they commanded respect in their own rights since they were skilled business people; probably it was a combination of these factors. Women often handled the commercial side of the family business, while husbands took on more direct responsibility for production. Wives often worked with clients, paid wages, kept the books, handled all money, bought raw materials, and interacted with other master craftsmen. In fact, English writers urged wives of businessmen 24 Clare Crowston, Fabricating Women: The Seamstresses of Old Regime France, 1675–1791 (Durham, 2001), pp. 180–81. 25 Ménétra, Journal of My Life, p. 115. 26 Ibid., p. 46. 27 Ibid., p. 91. 28 Steven L. Kaplan, “Réflexions sur la police du monde du travail, 1700–1815,” Revue historique, 261/1 (1979): 22, 29.

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to “make the greatest effort, learn the business, study accounting and work as the bookkeeper and close partner of their husbands in preparation for the possibilities of widowhood.”29 Trades that did not have a strong commercial side might be more difficult for widows to enter. Heavy manual labor and lifting would almost surely be out of the question for most women. Widow roofers and stone masons might therefore have a more difficult time continuing than a widow druggist. It might also be difficult to supervise directly groups of men, as would be necessary for a master builder. In these kinds of trades, a widow would need to depend on other men to do this labor for her. Many widows did succeed in continuing in trades, like the building trades, which could require heavy labor. But she needed to assign tasks she could not do herself to a reliable journeyman or worker. The reasons for a widow’s success or failure can usually only be imagined. Certainly one variable had to be the extent to which she could participate in the life of the guild, that is to say, would she would be accepted by workers, customers, wholesalers, and other masters as one of their ranks. If a widow were constantly harassed by guild officials, and challenged by her journeymen and workers, if she did not convince others in the workplace that she could be a master, she would find it very difficult to succeed in her trade. The size of the guild would surely influence how well a widow could fit in, since some guilds were “large, quasibureaucratic structures with hundreds of masters, many of whom may not have known each other, (o)thers were on the village scale of intimacy.”30 In general larger guilds, such as the bonnet makers guild and the embroiderers guild, were more accommodating of widow masters than many of the smaller guilds. Of the 105 trades listed in Roze de Chantoiseau’s 1763 almanac of Parisian workshops, approximately two-thirds included widow mistresses.31 The extent to which widows took part in these trades seemed to depend to a great extent on the kind of trade. As we saw earlier, textile-type trades, such as bonnet makers, embroiderers, and drapers, included a large percentage of widows. However, several surprising trades included a large number of widows, such as glaziers, mirror-makers, and book dealers-printers. Chantoiseau’s compilation is not comprehensive, and he used different criteria for compiling his lists for different trades, but he supports the claim that widows maintained a presence across a wide variety of trades. It is clear that neither the size of the guild nor the type of trade can explain alone whether a widow could work in a business; multiple factors played a role.

29

Peter Earle, The Making of the English Middle Class: Business, Society, and Family Life in London, 1660–1730 (Berkeley, 1989), p. 163. 30 Steven L. Kaplan, “The Character and Implications of Strife among the Masters inside the Guilds of Eighteenth-Century Paris,” Journal of Social History, 19/4 (1986): 629. 31 Roze de Chantoiseau, Essai sur l'Almanach Général d'indications d'adresse personnelle et domicile fixe, des Six Corps des Arts et Métiers (Paris, 1769).

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Another concern was certainly the ways the corporate body governed itself. In many of the larger guilds, the more senior masters, or jurés, “confiscated control of all facets of corporate existence, denying most of the commoner-masters participation in both electoral and business assemblies.”32 In such guilds where a large split existed between senior masters and all other masters, widows enjoyed virtually all of the privileges of the majority of ordinary masters. Their inability to participate in guild politics did not mark them off from the majority of their peers. Like many men, widows used their standing in the guild to provide them with a profession, a status, a way to earn a living, and a way to understand their relations to their communities. While they faced real barriers to true and full membership in the guild, wives and widows played a role in craft production within the corporate framework.33 We see that the constant intervention and labor of the master’s wife, while often invisible to historians, formed an important component of the master’s capital. However, the meaningful nature of her work in the enterprise is attested to by her right to accede to the mastership at her husband’s death. While a master’s widow might not have all the skills and knowledge that her husband had, she was considered well enough equipped to take over the workshop and manage it by herself for a certain period of time. According to René de Lespinasse’s compilation of guild statutes, only two trades limited the amount of time a widow could run her deceased husband’s shop. Those guilds were the wine cask makers (jaugeurs de vin) and arms masters (maîtres d’armes). Both of these guilds were very small, and the exclusion of widows from lifetime privileges probably had an impact on just a handful of women. The goldsmiths, aware of the sensitive nature of their work and the potential for fraud, required a widow to turn in her husband’s hallmark (poinçon) and work under the aegis of another master goldsmith. The guild statutes required that “they (elles) are called upon to come to the goldsmith’s office within fifteen days to have their husband’s hallmark broken.”34 Subsequently, any work a widow executed in her workshop would be inspected and marked by a neighboring master. However, this requirement did not deter women from practicing this trade since many widow goldsmiths were part of the guild. For the rest of the guilds, the widow was entitled to remain a master until she remarried. Many widows never remarried and spent the rest of their lives as mistresses, managing their businesses. While certain trades might have been more welcoming to women than others, widows were nonetheless represented in a wide variety of professions.

32

Kaplan, “Character and Implications of Strife,” p. 631. In addition to previous works cited on this point, see Daryl M. Hafter, “Women Who Wove in the Eighteenth-Century Silk Industry in Lyon,” in Daryl M. Hafter (ed.) European Women and Preindustrial Craft (Bloomington, 1995), pp. 48–54. 34 Lespinasse, Les métiers, vol. 2, p. 45. 33

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Financial Factors A widow would need to consider some of the non-financial questions invoked above. She would need to imagine herself in a position of power and authority in the workshop, particularly since the estate of mastership connoted social as much as economic status.35 But even a women prepared to take on the challenges of running a workshop full of men, some skeptical or even hostile, needed to assess the financial legacy her husband had left her. A widow left in possession of a workshop with a large inventory of finished wares and raw materials might feel economically obliged to continue the enterprise, in order to fulfill contractual obligations, for example, even if she felt little inclination to do so. Likewise, a widow with a formal right to mastership, but with few tools or finished goods she could sell right away, would face a difficult time if she attempted to continue running the shop. However, we cannot consider the widow’s material situation to necessarily be the primary consideration in her decision about her future. A woman’s income or wealth would be just one of several factors to consider. However, in spite of these limitations, considering the financial contours of the widow’s life can lead to useful insights. In order to explore the material situations of women at the moment when they entered the status of widowhood, historians can turn to the records of probate inventories.36 Probate records offer rich, detailed information about the material existence of the past. These inventories, drawn up at the request of heirs, provided the family of the deceased with a fairly comprehensive list of all property in the house at the time of a person’s death. A notary, in addition to writing out a list of belongings, estimated the value of all household goods. Where the deceased also ran a business, and owned both finished products and raw materials in addition to tools, the notary would summon another master in the guild to estimate the value of the business assets. Heirs of the deceased were present when the notary drew up the inventory, and had to declare their financial interest in the estate. In general, one of the primary heirs would call for the notary’s services, and other heirs would be present in order to ensure their interests.37 Usually family members would solicit the inventory, but sometimes a neighbor, a domestic servant, a parish priest, or

35

On this point see in particular Kaplan, “Turgot's Carnival,” especially pp. 180–83. Important studies that have employed probate inventories include several works by Daniel Roche, The People of Paris: An Essay in Popular Culture in the 18th Century, trans. Marie Evans and Gwynne Lewis (Berkeley, 1987); La culture des apparences: histoire du vêtement XVIIe-XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1997) and L’histoire des choses banales: naissance de la consummation dans les sociétés humaines (XVIIe–XIXe siècle) (Paris, 1999). See also Annik Pardailhé-Galabrun, La naissance de l’intime. 3000 foyers parisiens XVIIe–XVIIIe siècles (Paris, 1988). 37 The inventory generally began with a statement by the primary heir. For one example see AN, MC, étude LXI/388, 4 August 1732. 36

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even creditors, would make the request.38 The notary would entertain a demand from any party with financial interests in the estate, or from the declared executor of the estate. Depending on the amount of assets, the notary might finish the inventory in one day, or he and the beneficiaries might have to visit several times. When the succession was finally portioned out, this document served as the basis for awarding goods to claimants. While the probate inventory offers a wealth of information about material life and assets, it has some limitations which should be considered. At the most general level, it is a document which a notary produces for a family in crisis, at a moment of rupture. The event often evoked hostility and competition among heirs, who were convinced that all of the other parties were conspiring to defraud one or another of the parties. If there were orphaned children to consider, it was also a moment of tension over who would be burdened with the financial, moral, and spiritual responsibility of raising them. When there was a surviving mother or father, he or she would usually be named guardian to the children. But when children were left parentless, they would often be doled out among relatives in order to minimize the burden on each individual guardian. The guardian would receive compensation for the child’s upkeep, generally paid out of the estate, and in addition the child would often work to defray costs.39 If orphaned children had no resources at all, no wealth or obliging relatives, they would look to friends, neighbors, the parish, or any poor relief available. At least in some instances, work relations could play a role in reforming the remnants of a family after the death of one of its members. While the presence of children complicated the process of dividing an estate, and magnified latent tensions, the moment of death always produced a rupture which was not a part of everyday family life. Apart from the abnormal circumstances which produced inventories, historians must be mindful of several other factors which limit their utility. At the beginning of the eighteenth century approximately 10 per cent of Parisians had inventories after their deaths; that number rose to approximately 15 per cent by the end of the century.40 In terms of studying a representative population of the city, and particularly the poorer levels, the inventory has limited use. Also, the list of possessions an inventory provided cannot be considered definitive. People living in the house might steal or hide certain objects they wanted to take without anyone’s knowledge. In particular, small objects of high value, like jewelry or silver, might tempt servants or relatives. Another type of property which notaries did not 38 AN, MC, étude LXXII/309, étude LXI/388, étude XLVI/445, étude CV/1276, étude LXVI/404, étude XLVI/445. 39 Micheline Baulant, “The Scattered Family: Another Aspect of Seventeenth-Century Demography,” in Robert Forster and Orest Ranum (eds), Family and Society: Selections from the Annales, Economies, Sociétés, Civilisations, trans. Elborg Forster and Patricia Ranum (Baltimore, 1976), pp. 106–7. 40 Roche, The People of Paris, p. 60.

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uniformly include in their inventories was real property (immeubles), such as land or a house. Such assets might be alluded to in any papers which were included in the inventory, but most often nothing among the possessions of the deceased indicated the type or value of real property. Records of annuities generally appeared in the inventory, but their terms were not always fully described. These important gaps in the probate inventory limit how precisely they can describe the deceased’s fortune. Other factors could also skew the accuracy of this catalogue. If a notary had to visit the house over several consecutive days, the list might be less reliable at the end. The notary might accelerate his pace in order to finish a long task, and in the process neglect to account for every item in the house. Often heirs urged the notary to work as quickly as possible in order to keep down the cost of his services.41 The notary might also give vague descriptions of items, making it difficult to rely on his information. Another drawback to certain probate records is that heirs frequently commissioned inventories months, or even years, after a death. Both Geneviève Tixerand and Madeleine Rousseau requested inventories long after the deaths of their husbands. These women, both of whom had children, had the option to put off an accounting of the estate because under the law it was possible for the marriage community to exist for a period of time between the surviving widow and her children, as the heirs of their father. At times it was considered more advantageous to the children, especially if they were very young, to allow them to continue being supported by the community rather than come immediately into their inheritance.42 This time delay also benefited the widow who could manage the estate as she pleased without any heir or guardian interfering with her activities. However, the widow was obliged to commission an inventory before she remarried, in order to ensure that the children of her first marriage, and any other heirs, received their due inheritance from their parents’ communal assets.43 Creditors also had a stake in the reckoning of the estate since they could often take the opportunity to finally collect what the deceased owed them. Usually the marital community between the widow and her new husband would support her children from prior unions, so it was to the children’s advantage to claim their share of the estate before any remarriage took place. When there was a considerable lag between a death and the drawing up of the probate record, there was, of course, the increased possibility for theft or loss of property. Also, if a surviving widow continued to run a business, it would never be possible to reconstruct the state of the business at the moment when her husband died. In 41

Paul Servais, “Inventaires et ventes de meubles: Apports à l'histoire économique,” in Micheline Baulant, Anton J. Shuurman, and Paul Servais (eds), Inventaires après décès et ventes de meubles: Apports à une histoire de la vie économique et quotidienne, XIVe–XIXe siècle (Louvain-la-Neuve, 1986), p. 31. 42 Baulant, “Scattered Families,” p. 109. 43 AN, MC, étude XI/574, 27 January, 17 April, 1751.

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particular, the stocks of inventory and the amount of finished goods would fluctuate. Unless the inventory was drawn up right away, we cannot estimate the change in the widow’s fortunes over time, or what degree of business success a widow was achieving in comparison to her husband. Of course, another factor in understanding a woman’s possibilities was how much she was constrained in the management of the property she inherited. Depending on how the couple’s marriage contract had been drawn up a widow might have nearly total control over all assets, or her husband’s family might exercise influence over the disposition of property. The type of property a husband left his widow would also influence how extensive her control over it would be. A community composed primarily of household goods and cash was more flexible than one which included a great deal of real property, which would be more cumbersome to manage. Again, the widow’s age, and her children, would greatly determine her degree of autonomy. In this respect, widows who were attempting to continue a business would be freer to dispose of some amount of wealth in order to facilitate financial transactions, such as discharging debts or buying raw materials. However, regardless of the amount of legal control a widow might have over property, her level of wealth would shape her options.

Business Choices Meager resources made it much more difficult for a widow to contemplate continuing a family business. At his death in 1730, Roch Cachet, master enameller, possessed goods with a total value of roughly 520 livres, 10 sous, 3 deniers. Of that total sum, his bed comprised 100 livres, and some household silver 120 livres, 16 sous. He and his wife owned little more than their clothes and household goods; their house contained only a few tools to indicate that Cachet still engaged in his trade. Given that the couple married in 1698, the pair may have been too aged to work. They lived with their son-in-law, Lejeune, and their young grandson, in rooms adjoining a larger apartment. While the couple may have been too old to live independently, it was not because they did not have the means to do so. According to the inventory, Lejeune owed his in-laws 3389 livres, 13 sous.44 Apart from that debt, Cachet’s inventory indicated no other outstanding debts or annuities. Widow Cachet’s probate inventory, drawn up when she died 22 months later, indicates that Lejeune never paid the sum he owed over to his mother-in-law. The two agreed to convert the loaned sum into an informal annuity which paid the widow 100 livres per year, in addition to room and board.45 Given the state of her finances, several factors militated against widow Cachet’s participation in the trade. In addition to her likely advanced age, without the funds 44 45

AN, MC, étude XXVI/357, 5 February 1731. AN, MC, étude XXVI/354, 20 December 1732.

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her son-in-law owed, she lacked the capital to run a business. Widow Cachet also did not have a workshop or any space in which to conduct a business, or any laborers. In this instance, circumstances virtually prohibited Widow Cachet from attempting to take up the trade of enameller, regardless of whether she had any interest to do so. In contrast to Widow Cachet, Widow Bournier’s inheritance almost enjoined her to continue as a mistress candle maker. When her husband Nicolas Bournier died, his business capital alone was valued at 2597 livres, 10 sous. Apart from the business assets, the couple’s household goods were worth approximately 4236 livres. A notary drew up this probate inventory on 27 January 1751, although Bournier had died nearly a year earlier.46 In the intervening months Widow Bournier had been directing the business, as evidenced in a journal found among their possessions. According to the notary, Widow Bournier had recorded business transactions in this journal every day from her husband’s death up to the day before the inventory was drawn up. Bournier’s heirs requested an inventory at this point because his widow was to marry three days later, to her journeyman.47 As the proprietress of a thriving business, Widow Bournier would not appear to have reason to remarry, although she was the mother of a seven-year-old boy. Perhaps Widow Bournier could not keep up with the demands of raising a child alone and overseeing her commercial enterprise without permanent and reliable help. At the time the inventory was commissioned there were many finished orders, which needed to be delivered to clients, as well as an enormous quantity of raw materials. Perhaps, when Nicolas Bournier died his widow intended only to deliver finished products to clients, and found herself drawn further into the business. Perhaps she had an abiding interest in her husband’s profession. However, in this instance, the amount of commercial wealth her husband left certainly encouraged Widow Bournier to continue the trade in order to make the most of her assets. The widow might feel strong pressure to continue her husband’s trade if he were involved in intricate credit relations with other businesses. At his death, Martin Aubert, a master button and trim maker, had only modest stores in his workshop: he had a quantity of buttons of different types, some cloth, and thread. The notary did not even call in masters to estimate the value of these items, perhaps because the widow did not wish to pay for those services for such a modest stock. However, among Aubert’s papers were a dozen contracts governing credit relations between himself and several master tailors. Aubert owed some money to suppliers; many suppliers also owed him money. He owed less money than he had lent, an unfortunate calculus for his widow who would then need to harass clients into paying their debts. The situation would have been less difficult for Widow Aubert if she had been left a large stock of goods in the shop that she could liquidate to settle her debts. 46 47

AN, MC, étude XI/574, 27 January 1751. Ibid.

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She would always have the option of renouncing the estate, thereby relieving herself from the obligation of settling the debts of the estate. But such a decision would force her also to give up some of the money the estate owed her: her half of the couple’s common property and possibly some of her survivor’s benefits if the available assets were inadequate.48 If Widow Aubert wanted to both claim her property rights and settle the estate’s debts without putting herself in financial peril, one way to achieve those ends would be to continue plying the trade, trying to make it solvent. That way she could continue to draw benefits from the extensive credit network her husband had built and continue to press those who owed her for payment. That was the path Widow Aubert chose, although she was not left with much wealth at her disposal. One way Widow Aubert made up for her meager estate was by remarrying. She married a journeyman button and trim maker just 14 months after her first husband’s death.49 She then had the misfortune of facing widowhood again when her second husband died, leaving her in similarly challenging straits. It is difficult to judge, based on her probate inventory, whether Widow Mangin, formerly Widow Aubert, was successful in making her first husband’s business work. When she herself died, she had in her possession just a minimum of household goods and a receipt for her rent paid six months earlier. She had no other papers in her rooms. Eight creditors and her son requested the notary to inventory the premises. Judging from her financial state at the end of her life, Widow Mangin was not very successful as a mistress button and trim maker, although she was still living in her own lodgings at her death. While we cannot know what happened to this woman between her second marriage and her death almost 20 years later, she did make what must have seemed the best choice: to continue the business, albeit with little material backing and a large network of credit to manage.

Assets and Liquidity Indeed, at times widows found themselves pushed by circumstance to work in the family trade. But widows, assuming they had some material resources, could choose another option. Many probate records indicate that widows bought annuities, generally what were called rentes viagères, to assure them permanent income. This kind of financial instrument provided a life-long stream of income. The other widely held type of annuity, called a rente perpetuelle, paid not only a life income but also continued to provide benefits to heirs. Widows purchased perpetual annuities rarely as they paid a lower benefit during the primary beneficiary’s lifetime. Pressed to assure themselves a secure future, widows placed 48 49

AN, MC étude XXXVIII/230, 8 March 1725. AN, MC étude LXXII/308, 29 November 1746.

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little importance on leaving a legacy to their heirs.50 This generalization does not hold true for the wealthiest of widows, who often used perpetual annuities to structure children’s financial future. But widows worried about their solvency needed the higher payments a lifetime annuity provided. Not surprisingly, widows generally chose one or the other financial paths; these two alternatives usually did not overlap. In a sample of 72 widow probate inventories, spanning from 1704 to 1790, I have found that a widow usually chose either to remain active in her business, or to buy an annuity which would provide her with a reasonable and steady income for the rest of her life. Of the 72 widows, 35 continued to run a business and had not purchased an annuity of any kind. Twenty-one of the widows owned at least one annuity, and most of them owned several, but had no apparent ties to their deceased husbands’ trades. Sixteen widows were still active in business and also owned an annuity. Three women died with almost nothing. This pattern emerged in response to several factors. First, all of the widows who both ran a business and owned annuities were very wealthy. As a group, they had commercial assets worth an average of 4523 livres. Rich business women could afford to diversify their investments to a degree that modest shopkeepers could not. One of the women in this group, Petronille Verrier, had been married three times in her lifetime, the first time to an innkeeper and the second and third times to wine merchants. As a result of these three alliances, she had acquired a dower and survivor’s benefit several times over, as well as a stock of merchandise and a network of clients.51 It is not surprising that she was able to accumulate a comfortable level of wealth during her life. A widow like Verrier could afford to take risks with her money, by investing in diverse assets, since her wealth insulated her from the possible repercussions of losses in her business. More typical was Elisabeth Maury, widow of François Drouard, master tailor. Her probate inventory indicates that although she possessed considerable wealth— her household belongings totaled 1151 livres in goods and 846 livres in cash—she had cut all ties with her husband’s profession. Instead, the notary found that, in her widowhood, Elizabeth Maury had purchased three life annuities, which brought her a comfortable yearly income of 464 livres.52 Marie Madeleine Marjeot, widow of Jacques Gogol, master mercer, made similar financial provisions. She too had given up the mercer trade and lived entirely on her resources, which included a household worth 2273 livres, 8 sous and 424 livres in proceeds from six life annuities. Widow Gogol was also the beneficiary of 96 livres in yearly income based on three perpetual annuities her grandmother and parents had purchased on 50

Philip T. Hoffman, Gilles Postel-Vinay, and Jean-Laurent Rosenthal, Priceless Markets: The Political Economy of Credit in Paris, 1660–1870 (Chicago, 2000), pp. 159– 61. 51 AN, MC étude XLV/524, 8 March 1765. 52 AN, MC étude XXVII/330, 12 March 1767

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her behalf.53 For these two women, and others like them, investments provided stability and security, and assured them a comfortable old age. Of note is the fact that both Maury’s and Marjeot’s husbands predeceased them by several decades. The financial arrangement reflected in their probate inventories showed women finished with their working lives and looking for some other way to support themselves. The women in this group had the resources to provide themselves with ample yearly incomes without having to work until their deaths. Widows who ran businesses until their deaths, as shown by probate inventories full of raw materials, finished goods, and business contracts, did not purchase annuities for several reasons. Most obviously, many shops required substantial and regular infusions of capital, leaving little left to invest elsewhere. Such widows gambled that their enterprises would generate enough surplus income to support them. Take for example Petrouille Turguet, widow of Jean Beaumont, master fan maker. At her death she owned tools, raw materials, and finished products with a value of 322 livres, 15 sous as well as a parchment register of 141 pages detailing all of the orders Turguet had fulfilled and orders still outstanding at the time of her death. While there is no indication of her yearly income, she died in a comfortably furnished apartment of at least three rooms on the rue St. Louis where her landlord and neighbor was a master goldsmith.54 Her business sustained her without the supplementary income annuities might provide. Annuities addressed the fiscal needs of certain widows, while remaining less attractive to widow entrepreneurs who preferred to reinvest their income in their businesses, betting that they could support themselves through work rather than investments.

Work Practices Despite the possibility of finding other ways of supporting themselves, most widows of master craftsmen tried to keep the business going for at least some period of time. The motivation for that choice is not always clear. While the shop provided a source of income, and a status in the community, those rewards often came at great expense, requiring the widow to work extremely hard. Undoubtedly other motivations played a part in the decision to continue the trade. While it can be difficult to judge the role of inclination and desire in these decisions, we cannot dismiss their probable influence on the process. One widow declaring a business failure gives us a glimpse of how these factors might play a role when she remarked briefly on how she felt about her and her husband’s trade. The Widow Beville, a mistress draper who filed for failure in 1743, added a short note to the end of her file. Her business appeared to be fairly prosperous; the inventory of merchandise and materials filled eight pages, and she had goods with a total value 53 54

AN, MC étude XII/582, 29 December 1762. AN, MC étude XXI/294, 4 February 1705.

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of over 7000 livres. Her debts also required eight pages to enumerate, and totaled a staggering 153,000 livres, a sum far beyond what she could ever hope to repay. The document does not say when Beville’s husband died, but since his name does not figure anywhere in the dossier, we know that the failure proceedings did not begin until after he had passed away. It seems, though, that Widow Beville tried to keep the shop going for at least some time since she stated all the details of expenditures are not to justify myself, but to persuade anyone who might take the trouble to read (this) and examine my business that I did not embezzle anything; on the contrary, they will see that I am reduced to beggary, and after having the good fortune to be born for good things, I must die poor and miserable.55

Widow Beville seems both proud of what she tried to accomplish in her trade, and deeply depressed by her failure. She hoped that an objective eye would scrutinize her books, in order to recognize her hard work and grant her approbation. The extent of her debts suggest that she inherited an ailing business from her husband which she never succeeded in turning around. But she seems to have taken pride in her endeavor, and to regret bitterly the loss of her livelihood and of her identity. But Paris was full of women luckier and more prosperous than poor Widow Beville. Two sources illuminate well the extent of widow participation in the guild economy. The records of Parisian notaries hold many contracts which link widows to successful businesses. The few guild records which survive also give evidence for widows’ continued participation in many trades after their husbands’ deaths.

Submitting to Guild Discipline For Paris there are frustratingly few sources on which to base suppositions about the guilds. Many of those surviving records are proceedings of seizures done by guild officers against masters who contravened guild regulations. The records of those seizures provide virtually the only way in which the historian can catch a glimpse of the workshop. These records are invaluable in terms of gauging how readily the guild administration accepted the participation of widow-mistresses, and how well integrated these women were in the workings of the trade. One important piece of evidence which supports the view of the widow as an active participant in the trades are the records of guild seizures. One of the functions of master craftsmen, in name if not in person, was to police their fellow masters to be sure that they were obeying guild regulations. Jurés enforced their 55

AS, D4 B6, carton 5, dossier 218, 14 January 1743. Beville filed for a simple business failure, indicating that she had to abandon her business due to insolvency. A banqueroute, or bankruptcy, was a serious financial scandal that included not just insolvency but also fraudulent and criminal behavior.

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guild’s statues by inspecting workshops to be sure that workers and masters had proper documentation, and that uncertified workmen were not practicing a trade illegally. The masters of each guild elected between three and six jurés whose responsibility it was to enforce guild statutes and punish offenders. Jurés were senior masters who had been members of the guild for at least five years, and often more. One of their primary duties was to make workshop visits, accompanied by an officer of justice, searching for irregular work practices. If the visiting officials found violations, they would seize that master’s tools and materials, and assess a fine. The master would invariably protest the seizure, and would often be able to reclaim his or her tools, but only after paying the fine. While many masters fell victim to the guild’s search and seizure operations, the work of these jurés sought to ensure that only the received community participated in their trade. So while many masters resented this intrusion into their shops, the practice was generally defended by invoking the need to maintain the value of masterships by enforcing strict standards of quality control. The guilds demonstrated in a number of ways that their identity as a trade was based not only on economic considerations, but also on issues of status and prestige. A trade which allowed untrained workers to participate unchallenged would not only suffer from the possible circulation of inferior goods, but also from the perception that the guild itself was not concerned about the kind of people who were claiming status in the trade. Arguments about the status of a guild vis à vis other guilds, often provoked by arguments about position and precedence at ceremonial affairs, demonstrated the guilds’ desire to maintain and promote their own identity. We can draw a number of conclusions based on the records of seizures. First, they help us gauge the presence of widows in guilds. Approximately one-third of a sample of 77 seizure cases involved widows. Even allowing that widows, due to their lack of training, may have broken rules more frequently than other masters, these numbers suggest the significant number of women practicing trades. Second, these cases also offer insight into how widows demonstrated their affiliation with their husband’s guild. All but 14 of 42 artisanal widows kept records of their husbands’ business. Many widows kept the papers their husbands had received upon attaining the status of master. Those who did not have the actual mastership letter often kept receipts for goods their husbands had sold or records of debts accrued and discharged. What was the purpose of keeping such papers, often for thirty or forty years? Widows themselves did not have papers attesting to their right to run a shop. These records from a husband’s business proved that the widow had a legitimate claim. The passage of time reduced the number of people who would remember a deceased master, but a widow armed with such papers could prove her status to rivals, customers, and guild officers visiting her shop to check for violations. As well, the records of guild seizures provide insight about some of the challenges widows faced as they managed their enterprises. One major problem for

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widows revolved around labor issues. Even widows who succeeded in hiring laborers often faced disciplinary and morale problems in trying to oversee their work. In one such case the jurés of the vinegar-makers guild were investigating a number of masters accused of selling tainted vinegar and wine. In the transcript of witnesses’ testimony, the former journeyman of Widow Parquier accused his former employer of selling doctored merchandise. When confronted with his testimony, Parquier replied that the journeyman no longer worked for her, that he had left her workshop and she did not know where he was. She denied his accusation and the jurés passed over her case.56 These few sentences do not give a complete description of Widow Parquier’s shop, but they do show that she could not discipline her employee or keep him in her employ. Not only did he prove disloyal to her by snitching to the guild authorities, but he also left her employ without her permission and without the requisite brevet, proof of discharge, that the guild required a worker to get from his master when he left the shop. Widows did sometimes have exceptional problems running a shop full of male workers, problems which masters could perhaps manage more authoritatively. In another instance that touches upon problems of finding dependable workers, Widow Joron, a second-hand clothes dealer, was forced by guild officers to discharge her journeyman. The young man, Vallé, had been in her employ for a few weeks but prior to joining Widow Joron’s enterprise he had been employed by another second-hand clothes dealer for about a year. The problem here was that she had poached Vallé from his former master whose enterprise was “less than ten shops away” which contradicted “the terms of article 13 of the statutes and rules of the community of second-hand clothes merchants.”57 This violation cost Widow Joron a 48 livres fine as well as the loss of an experienced worker.58 We can draw a number of conclusions based on the records of seizures. The rules widows and masters contravened fell into several broad categories. Some work was confiscated because it was of inferior quality, or used unsanctioned materials. Work in a particular trade had to be not only of good quality, but, in accordance with guild statutes, made with only specific tools from specific materials. The jurés of the carpenters guild confiscated three armoires and three dressers from the Widow Lainé because they were poorly made from inferior wood.59 Widow Deloge, a mistress cooper, had several pairs of clogs seized from her premises by jurés of the shoemakers guild. While Widow Deloge had the right to work with wood, she could not, according to the jurés, sell wooden shoes. Deloge protested, but the clogs were taken anyway. She did not officially have the right to make shoes, even if she was capable of doing so, and consequently her

56 57 58 59

AN, Y 9527. BN, JF 1330, fols. 92-93, 29 July 1701. Ibid. AN Y 15365, 23 August 1755.

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product could not be sanctioned.60 In spite of their sometimes difficult circumstances, jurés held widows to the same standards and regulations that applied to all guild masters. A number of widows visited by the jurés responded just as many masters did in similar circumstances: they denied the authority of the jurés and their writ of complaint. In one instance, Widow Loyante, a mistress grocer, denied knowledge of what was happening in her own shop. When the jurés told her that her shop boy had sold a glass of liqueur, she replied “that she never sold small amounts of liqueurs... and if her shop boy sold some it was without her participation; that since she was busy selling something she did not pay attention to what he was doing.”61 The jurés seized the alcohol and glasses nonetheless, although Widow Loyante refused to sign their report. Other widows would not cooperate with jurés because they too believed they had not broken guild statutes. Widow Levêque, a mistress fruit-vendor, received a visit from the jurés of the guild of liqueur sellers, because she was selling small amounts of liqueurs from her shop. Levêque was amazed by their visit, and explained that she was within her rights to sell refreshments because she had “a letter allowing her to resell with which she believed she was authorized to sell liqueurs.” She did not say how much she had paid for this privilege, nor where she had bought it. But Levêque remained convinced of her rights: she refused to acknowledge the rules laid out in guild statutes, and also refused to sign the jurés’ report.62 Other widows produced alternate explanations of their privileges. Several widows continued the trade of their first husbands even after remarriage to someone who was not in the guild. In one such case, jurés lemonade-sellers set upon the shop of Widow Santerre, claiming that she had no right to run her business since Santerre, her deceased husband, had never been a master lemonadeseller. Widow Santerre explained that the late Santerre was her second husband, and before she remarried, she was Widow Dodin. The late Dodin had been a master lemonade-seller. Although her second husband was never received into the community, “she believed her widow’s privileges still continued.” Widow Santerre denied the jurés’ charges, but they seized her tools and goods in any case.63 She was unlucky enough to be caught in what seems to have been rather common practice. The record of seizure made on a mistress poultry-roaster explains the complications which a case might present. The jurés poultry-roasters went to the shop of Widow LeClerc because several customers had bought roasted meats at her address during Lent, a practice forbidden by guild regulation, royal ordinance, and 60 61 62 63

AN Y 15365, 24 October 1752. AN Y 15365, 6 February 1748. AN, Y 15365, 29 February 1748. AN, Y 15365, 10 January 1752.

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canon law. When the jurés arrived they read their warrant to Widow LeClerc, who denied that she was selling meat, and reported that she had rented her shop to another master for the period of Lent. It was never made clear to what legitimate use she imagined he might put her shop at a time when the sale of virtually all meat was to cease. When the jurés opened the shop, they found a great quantity of contraband food which they confiscated. Both Monsieur Pierre, the tenant, and Widow LeClerc were named in the report in contravention of regulations. While Widow LeClerc was not technically engaging in illegal trade, she was not prepared to flout the law during Lent, she was willing to turn a blind eye to her tenant’s activities in order to continue to turn a profit from her business.64 The above case points out another area where guild records can shed light on widows’ work practices. Widow LeClerc used her status as a mistress poultryroaster for a profit even when she did not ply the trade herself. LeClerc, in a sense, diversified her business when she lent her unused quarters to another master. Other seizures provide evidence of similar widow entrepreneurs, women who expanded or transformed their businesses to suit their own or the market’s needs. At least some widows did not feel intimidated by the prospect of running businesses by themselves. Many took risks, and pushed to extend their trade and make it more profitable. Widow Levêque, the mistress fruit-merchant who illegitimately expanded her business to include the sale of liqueurs, bought a bogus letter to accommodate this planned diversification.65 Levêque’s purchase, while it made sense to a businesswoman trying to make her shop more profitable, did not fit into the strictly regulated and minutely defined regime set out in guild statutes. Other widows showed similar business sense, and ran into identical problems with the corporate system. Widow Quignon, a mistress grocer, was also caught selling small amounts of liqueurs to her customers, a practice, explained the jurés, that was strictly forbidden. Quignon told the jurés that “she sold almost no liqueur,” and also refused to sign the complaint.66 Widow Toulay, a fellow mistress grocer, also saw the opportunity to extract more business from her usual customers by selling them refreshment when they came into her shop. The jurés, after witnessing her shop boy selling some eau de vie to a customer, informed her that the guild forbade such practices. Toulay replied that “they sold so little liqueur that it was not worth the trouble to mention it.”67 The jurés disagreed; they believed it was worth the trouble of seizing Toulay’s bottles and glasses. While manifesting more humor in this situation than other widows, Toulay still refused to sign the complaint. While every master subject to a seizure became angry at the jurés, and frequently complained, most of them signed the report. The fact that these widows 64 65 66 67

AN, Y 15804, 25 March 1753. AN, Y 15365, 9 February 1748. AN, Y 15365, 21 August 1748. AN, Y 15365, 24 February 1747.

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would not sign the complaint signals, it seems, not only that they believed the seizure to be entirely unjust, but also that they did not imagine the statutes could be so retrograde. The widow who said it was not worth the trouble to mention the amount of liqueur she sold was saying that she did not believe the guild could be so petty as to forbid that practice. Since these widows may have been less familiar with guild statutes than their fellow masters, it makes sense that they would be incredulous when they learned they were in contravention of those statutes. They also had a good sense of what it took to be successful in business, and were willing to expand their shops in order to see a profit. Several widows professed complete ignorance of guild regulations when faced with a visit from the jurés of a guild. Again, while masters might be displeased by a visit from the guild, none claimed explicitly that he had no idea that regulations prohibited certain practices. When jurés liqueur-sellers arrived at the shop of Widow Delarue, mistress grocer, they found her selling spirits to two customers. The jurés began to gather up her glasses and liqueurs, while informing her of their right to do so. Delarue was shocked, and declared that “she did not know until the present that she was not permitted to sell anisette in small amounts.”68 Delarue did not specify whether she believed the sale of spirits to be unregulated, or whether she believed it was a privilege accorded to grocers. She did, however, allow the seizure to proceed calmly, and did nothing more to impede the jurés. The jurés of the same guild found another mistress grocer who was selling coffee to her customers. Widow Regnault also professed ignorance, stating that “she was not aware that it was forbidden to sell ground coffee, but that she would not sell it in the future.”69 Regnault was not as complacent as her fellow mistress grocer, Delarue, and refused to sign the jurés’ report. She seemed to imagine that her promise not to sell coffee in the future should halt any further proceedings. It is certainly possible that these widows feigned ignorance in an attempt to keep their tools and goods. Perhaps they believed that the guild authorities would be more lenient with them since they were widowed women, and women in general were expected to be less experienced, more naive. There is no evidence that widows were treated any differently than other masters by guild authorities. Jurés held widows to the same standards they applied to masters. They also assessed fines and penalties against widows, regardless of the more tenuous economic standing many of them held. But the scenes of seizures illuminate some of the particular problems widows faced: recalcitrant workers, hostile clients, and ignorance of guild statutes. In the face of those disadvantages, widows resisted the authority of guild officers, insisting that they should be permitted to work in the trade, and, at the same time, that they should not be held to the same standards as other masters. They refused at times to sign complaints or give credence to guild regulations, marking themselves off from other masters not only in terms of their 68 69

AN, Y 15365, 13 November, 1742. AN, Y 15365, 5 February 1743.

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knowledge of the craft but also in how they thought they should be treated, even while holding on to their rights to work like anyone else in the guild. Such an attitude was grounded in female experience. In Paris, women often went unpunished by authorities, or were punished much less severely than men, even when they engaged in disorderly or violent behavior.70 One of the most wellknown instances when women engaged fearlessly in disorderly behavior was during subsistence riots. In the eighteenth century women, mothers of families, who had a moral obligation to do anything to feed their households, would not hesitate to break the law, knowing that they would not be as severely punished as a man would be.71 But it is also possible that without the formal training of apprenticeship and compagnonnage widows would be at a disadvantage when it came to the considerable regulatory aspects of the business. While a widow could certainly pick up the techniques of the trade from working with her husband, and she might also gain a certain level of knowledge about guild regulations if her husband were visited by the jurés, she might not always have a deep acquaintance with the statutes of her trade. Such theoretical knowledge would not be crucial to practicing a trade, and was certainly less important than knowing how to run a business on a day-to-day basis, but lack of it could at times put a widow at a disadvantage.

Other Transgressive Practices In addition to the problems uncovered during guild seizures, widows engaged in other behavior that violated guild norms and regulations. Many of the widows the jurés visited worked with another master, either a son or a master who rented the widow’s privileges, a practice repeatedly forbidden by guild regulations. It was a practice, however, which allowed the widow to retain the status of mastership, and some of its financial rewards, without personally continuing with her deceased husband’s business on a daily basis. It was an option part way in between running the boutique independently and liquidating the business entirely. Widow Bonnany, mistress lemonade-seller, had a visit from the jurés because she was renting out her rights of mastership. She lived in a house on the rue Poissonnière while nominally claiming to live in and run a small shop in another part of Paris. For many years an illegal worker had been running her shop in her name. Interestingly enough, she continued to call herself mistress lemonade-seller, 70

David Garrioch, Neighborhood and Community in Paris, 1740–1790 (Cambridge, 1986), p. 86. 71 Cynthia A. Bouton, “Gendered Behavior in Subsistence Riots: The French Flour War of 1775,” Journal of Social History, 23/4, (1990): 735–9. For women’s privileged role in religious rioting, see Suzanne Desan, “The Role of Women in Religious Riots during the French Revolution,” Eighteenth-Century Studies, 22/3 (1989): 454–9.

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although she had not run the business for years.72 The use of that title, and the claiming of the status it implied, suggests that even a widow who was not manually participating in a trade on a day-to-day basis believed that through her marriage, and her perhaps long association with the guild, she too inherited some of the marks of guild identity. Widows who continued the trades of their deceased husbands, even after remarriage to an outsider or after long after abandoning the trade, demonstrated a level of attachment to a guild identity. While there are numerous economic reasons why a widow might want to retain ties with the guild even if she had no right to do so, there were also issues of identity involved in maintaining these formally obsolete relationships. For the widow, especially one who had not only marriage ties but also family ties to a trade, it may have been difficult and depressing to imagine severing that link. Another way in which a widow could continue a nominal relationship with the guild was to lend her name to her son if he was not yet a master. The mother provided the status and privileges of mastership, and the son provided reliable, cheap labor. The guild did not treat that situation as a serious offense, although they did not sanction the practice either. The jurés of the carpenters guild went to inspect the workshop of Widow Charpentier, where they found, in their words, “an illegal journeyman working with another apprentice.”73 The jurés prepared to seize the tools and goods in the workshop when Widow Charpentier explained that although she did not live in the workshop, her son did and he ran the business for her. The journeyman then identified himself as Claude Charpentier, and he and his mother suggested that “if the said Messieurs officers would be willing, he would present himself for a mastership.” The jurés agreed to not to close down the shop, but only on condition that Charpentier go through the formal process of becoming a master.74 It is not clear why Charpentier had not done so earlier; perhaps he and his mother hoped to save the reception fee the son of a master had to pay the guild. But in the eyes of the jurés, the family relationship mitigated Widow Charpentier’s noncompliance with the rules of the trade, and they were not punished for their irregular practices. It is interesting to note that the jurés did not question Widow Charpentier about the presence of an apprentice in her workshop. The boy may have been an apprentice who began his term before Charpentier, père died; or the jurés may have decided to focus on a single transgression in their visit. The practice of renting out masterships was widespread, and certainly was not confined to widows. When the jurés lemonade-sellers guild visited Widow Couronne, and accused her of renting her mastership to René Benoist, she expressed disbelief at the reason for their visit. She told them that “she rents her privilege as a lemonade-seller to the said Benoist as do many other masters and

72 73 74

AN, Y 15365, 21 July1753. AN, Y 15365, 1 September 1756. AN, Y 15365, 1 September 1756.

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widows of lemonade-sellers, not thinking that it was forbidden.”75 Like many other widows, she refused to sign the report. Indeed the guild records bear out Widow Couronne’s statement: just as many master artisans rented out their privileges as did widows.76 On the same day they visited Widow Charpentier, the jurés of the lemonade-sellers guild also visited the boutique of Sieur Prevost and his sister who sold a variety of liqueurs in their shop. They had rented their mastership from Sieur Gregoire Joannes, a master lemonade-seller. The brother and sister paid 120 livres per year to Joannes for the right to use his name, although he had nothing at all to do with their shop. The jurés seized all of their merchandise and tools, since ignorance of the statutes did not grant the Prevosts immunity from punishment. Joannes, like Bonnany, continued to use the title master granted to him by the guild, and capitalized on his privilege without working in the trade. These examples of widows renting out their masterships suggests a possible role for widows in facilitating the work of illegitimate workers. While guilds constantly battled what they termed faux-ouvriers, striving to maintain their monopolies on production, workers in small rooms or in unregulated areas of the city, like the faubourg Saint-Antoine, continued to bring unsanctioned goods to market.77 But widows provided a means to do so in plain sight, under the protection of a guild member. Perhaps widows fulfilled this role due to their liminal position within the guild, neither full member nor outsider. They could grant access to a production license but did not, possibly, feel so bound by honor that they would resist introducing illicit workers into the system.

Partnerships Many widows used other kinds of partnerships and rental agreements, more palatable to the guild, to continue profiting from their mastership while not participating personally in the trade. In such arrangements, widows continued to hold a position in the enterprise, but relegated the bulk of work to another master, an independent merchant or a family member. This kind of arrangement did not violate statute as the widow continued to have a hand in the business, even if her responsibilities were significantly diminished. These agreements gave widows varying degrees of control over the enterprise. At one extreme was Widow Moreau whose husband had been a master printer. At his death she took control of the shop, but decided that she did not want to manage it alone. Running a print shop demanded a serious commitment of time and effort. Presses would often receive orders which needed to be printed on very short notice; as a result, the amount of work and number of workers could vary 75 76 77

AN, Y 15365, 5 August1748. Kaplan, “Police du monde du travail,” pp. 53–5. Ibid., p. 60.

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considerably. In 1778, Parisian print shops employed, on average, as many as 19 workers in the month of June, and as few as 12 workers in the month of October.78 Estimating labor demands, hiring qualified workers, supervising as many as 30 employees, demanded time and energy from the master printer. Widow Moreau wished to reduce her commitment to her shop, so she drew up a partnership with her son Nicolas Moreau, who was identified by the title “printer,” but not “master,” in the text of their agreement.79 Under the terms of this contract, Nicolas Moreau took responsibility for the daily running of the workshop. His mother also gave him all of the tools and machines in the shop, and a salary of 500 livres per year. For her part, Widow Moreau demanded extensive authority over the management of the shop. She required that her son give her an account of all of the enterprise’s credits and debits each month. In the contract, she also stipulated that she expected Nicolas “to manage everything as a good father of a family.”80 If Nicolas Moreau failed to perform any of these duties, including his obligation to act the good patriarch to the workers, or if he did not give all of the shop’s revenue to his mother at the end of each month, he had to pay a penalty of 15,000 livres, the estimated value of the tools in the shop. In some ways this contract answered the needs of both parties. Widow Moreau assured herself an income from her print shop, and she knew it would be wellmanaged by her son. She could reap the benefits of her business without having to invest much labor or time. Her son gained valuable experience running a press with the oversight of an experienced mistress. He also earned a comfortable salary, and at his mother’s death he would own all of the shop’s equipment and take over her mastership. Widow Thomas sold her entire glazing enterprise to her shop assistant, with whom she shared lodgings. Included in this transaction was not only all of the tools of the trade Widow Thomas inherited from her husband, but also her stocks of finished goods and all of the furniture in the shop. Widow Thomas rid herself of everything associated with this trade, and also agreed “never under any circumstances to establish (herself) in the trade of glazing.”81 The list of goods is not extensive–she obviously ran a small business. In exchange, Widow Thomas received 753 livres, as well as shared board and bed, and companionship of some kind. Her continued presence in the household skirted the issue of whether there was a sanctioned master at the head of the enterprise. Although she had affirmed her wish to abandon glazing, the new proprietor could point to her status as mistress to legitimize his business.

78 79 80 81

Philippe Minard, Typographes des lumières (Paris, 1989), p. 60. AN, MC étude XLIX/690, 27 August 1751. Ibid. AN, MC étude XXVIII/448, 12 January 1775.

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Widow Dodin, whose late husband was a master lemonade-seller, agreed to a partnership with Monsieur Beaulieu, another master lemonade-seller.82 The agreement stipulated that Beaulieu would renovate Widow Dodin’s shop, which would be their primary place of business, and do most of the other work associated with manufacturing and selling their products. As compensation, Beaulieu would get room and board with Widow Dodin, and he would be entitled to 200 livres salary per year. Dodin herself collected all profits from the business. The contract offered Beaulieu the option of forgoing his yearly pay in exchange for a legitimate claim on Widow Dodin’s estate, if she predeceded him. In that case, he would receive not only 200 livres for each year he had worked with Widow Dodin, but also a certain amount of interest on that sum. If Beaulieu decided he wanted to buy the business from his mistress, he could do so for the sum of 3000 livres, with six months notice that he wished to exercise this option. If Widow Dodin wished to end this relationship, she would also need to give Beaulieu notice and then pay him any wages he had accrued. This relationship highlights some of the potential assets widows commanded— clientele, tools, and finished products. Here Beaulieu, a master himself, could have struck out on his own. But he joined with Dodin not because he needed legitimacy, but because he did not have the liqueurs, glasses, shop, and customer base that Dodin’s husband had bequeathed to her. A widow made an attractive partner—for marriage or business—because she potentially had so many advantages beyond the license to produce. Each of these cases represents different relationships between widows, their businesses, and their partners. Widow Moreau was the wealthiest of these women, and she also controlled the most valuable commodity in her license to be a master printer. In 1686, the royal government had passed legislation to limit the number of printer’s shops in Paris to a total of 36. The government passed this measure for political reasons: “printing is too important to abandon its entire control to master printers. The royal power, in limiting their number, intended to be able to observe workshops and their production more closely.”83 In addition, a print shop required expensive, specialized equipment to operate. Widow Moreau obviously owned all of that equipment, and after years in the business with her husband and then alone, she probably also had a steady clientele. Particularly in the printing business, where work was not steady, but fluctuated widely during the year, it could be crucial to a business’s success to have a loyal core of clients. Widow Moreau controlled scarce and expensive resources; although her son would have the right to stand as a master in the guild, his chances of success were much greater with his mother’s assets behind him. For these reasons, Widow Moreau was able to negotiate a more favorable partnership than the other widows. 82 83

AN, MC étude LXXVII/235, 3 March 1751. Minard, Typographes, p. 85.

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Widows Thomas and Dodin present instances where family relationships did not play a part in business agreements. Each woman formed a relationship with another male member of her guild. Significantly, each of these women shared lodgings with her business partner. Although employees sometimes lived with the masters who employed them, this practice was becoming more rare in the eighteenth century. Beginning in the sixteenth century, “journeymen printers bore witness to a disintegration of the ties between themselves and masters, who no longer wanted to lodge and feed them and fulfill the duties demanded in return for their loyalty and obedience.”84 It is possible, then, that the parties in these agreements had more intimate relationships than the contract indicated. Certainly cultural stereotypes assumed that widows, once released from their marital ties, would turn into flirts, seeking constantly to have intimate relations with men, and particularly with their shop boys. In these two arrangements, the widows involved may have wished to render more formal a sexual relationship, by including her lover in her business. But this solution allowed both women to remain unmarried, to keep the title and privileges of mistresship, to maintain the legal rights and additional authority widowhood conferred. These partnership agreements may have functioned as ersatz nuptial arrangements, but without all of the formal obligations marriage required.

The Family in Transition Apart from the business decisions involved, widows had to arrange other kinds of relations when their husbands died. Every widow whose business is documented in this study also participated in a profound reconfiguration of her own family. Each widow who remained independent and called herself a mistress in a guild was occupying an ambiguous position in her society, the guild, and her family. The independent widow, with her privileges and her property, was no longer like other women, but she was also not exactly like other men. Likewise, her family no longer had a father to direct it and discipline it, but they did have a mother with money and authority who could take on a paternal role. The widow’s ambivalent position provoked some anxiety in, and even some violence with, her children. They all belonged to a family that could not fall easily into any conventional categories but continued to function nonetheless. A number of cases help shed light upon the new family that emerges after the death of the father. It is sometimes difficult, except in cases of outright violence, to discern the emotions behind certain interactions. But an analysis of some episodes between widowed mothers and children can further clarify the widow’s position, as well as the status of her family.

84

Truant, The Rites of Labor, p. 59.

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One of the more striking aspects of post-mortem family relationships is the extent to which widows retained strong control of communal assets. Although I have touched upon this point at several other junctures, I would like to examine this question here with slightly different evidence. Widowed mothers frequently tried to maintain the structure of the nuclear family, even if it was in a smaller form. Children frequently remained with their widowed mothers, particularly if they were single. Nonetheless, it was not uncommon, even for married children, to remain with a widowed mother. Financial considerations probably exerted the most influence in such decisions; it was more economical to share living expenses with others than to maintain an independent household. The need to share expenses was at times so pressing that widows without close relations frequently sought to create ersatz families by sharing lodging with other widowed or unmarried women.85 The urge to “cluster,” as Olwen Hufton puts it, was particularly strong for women because they potentially earned less than men did. For many women who worked to support themselves it was not possible to support an independent existence. Sharing with other women was a financial necessity, as well as an emotional comfort. For this reason, unmarried daughters frequently remained at home until marriage. Apart from money matters, daughters might have been more inclined to stay with their widowed parents due to their upbringing. Girls were generally subject to greater parental surveillance than boys were, from earliest childhood to when they married and passed from the purview of father to that of husband.86 Daughters might therefore have been more likely to remain at home with their widowed mothers because they were accustomed to living at home and because their mothers wanted to keep a close eye on them until marriage. Joint business ventures might also encourage families to remain together. Recall the widowed mistress printer who drew up the contract with her son which gave her overwhelming control over the enterprise. It comes as no surprise to learn that mother and son shared living quarters, the better for Widow Moreau to oversee her interests. It was quite common for sons, whether married or single, to continue living with their widowed mothers. While this arrangement benefited both, it often came about because a son remained financially dependent on his mother. Theoretically, children should receive their inheritances soon after their father’s estate was settled. However, it was very common for the surviving spouse to retain control of all wealth, and only settle the estate in much later years, or even at her death. Even in situations where a child was not waiting for an inheritance, he or she often needed monetary assistance. Many documents portray the widow as a source of financial assistance for their poor or spendthrift children. Marie Lochet, the 85

Olwen Hufton, “Women without Men: Widows and Spinsters in Britain and France in the Eighteenth-century,” in Jan Bremmer and Lourens Van den Bosch (eds), Between Poverty and the Pyre: Moments in the History of Widowhood (London, 1995), pp. 129–30. 86 Garrioch, Neighborhood and Community, p. 59.

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widow in a second marriage of Charles Langlois, lent her son and daughter-in-law money twice before drawing up an agreement for repayment.87 Langlois was a master roofer, as was his son. In 1755 Widow Langlois lent her son 11,546 livres so that he could buy out her business. She did not make a request for repayment until he landed in jail in 1757, and required another 2199 livres to provide for his upkeep there. The contract does not explain why he was put in jail. Upon his release his mother made up a schedule of payments amortized over two years. Langlois and his mother had agreed to a previous schedule, when he bought her business, but repayment had stopped when he was in prison. This agreement resumes their earlier arrangement, and the document shows that Langlois did acquit his debt to his mother in 1760. Widow Mozac, whose deceased husband had been a rope maker, also sold her son all of the tools and merchandise in her workshop for 12,000 livres. Alexandre Mozac was already a master rope maker himself when he signed this agreement with his mother. Widow Mozac was not establishing her son in a business, he was simply buying her merchandise to expand his own shop. He paid her in several installments over the period of a year. He made a final payment of 6,000 livres on 22 September 1751, just a year after he made the original agreement with his mother.88 Both Widow Langlois and Widow Mozac benefited from the shops they inherited without having to work themselves, while also ensuring that the business would remain in the family.

Conclusion A widow needed to make certain difficult decisions soon after her husband’s death. She acted under constraints dictated by her material situation, her relations to her family, her relations to her guild. She exercised a certain measure of choice in this matter: the material contours of her situation would certainly influence what options she could exercise. But certainly preference would play a role in her choice. If the widow decided to continue plying the family trade, she could be very successful. As we have seen, the widow could work within the guild and could be successful in exercising the privileges that all masters enjoyed, without interference from other members of the guild. However, this choice did not suit every widow of the artisanal milieu. Personal inclination (a matter hard to pin down), age and health, or the nature of the work itself sometimes kept a woman from taking an active role in her late husband’s affairs. While we cannot always know what dictated such a decision, the next two chapters will explore the other options a widow might choose if she could not or did not wish to run her family enterprise.

87 88

AN, MC étude CXXII/704 bis, 26 May 1758. AN, MC étude X/497, 20 August 1751.

Chapter 5

The Calculus of Remarriage Introduction Not long after her husband’s burial had been concluded, the widow faced a pressing question—whether to remarry or remain single.1 Widows’ families and neighbors often urged them to remarry so they could count on a man’s support and the sense of security a husband could provide. But if a widow decided to take another husband, she then faced a number of social pressures over her choice of partner. As Florent Dancourt’s comedy “Le Chevalier à la Mode” highlighted, a widow’s family often had property interests and social status at stake at remarriage which they pushed the widow to strengthen in her choice of a spouse. In addition to family concerns, a widow had her own inclinations to account for: financial assistance, the need for another parent for her children, the requirement for help with a business, grief, or loneliness. However the decision came about, the terms and conditions of second marriages differed significantly from first marriages. Many widows who did remarry chose partners who fulfilled a number of these requirements, suggesting that these women were often concerned with their economic viability and their ability to raise children alone, as well as their physical and emotional wants. Evidence from demographic studies of early modern France suggest that overall widows and widowers remarried rather frequently, particularly if they were young and had children in need of a parent. However, many artisanal widows chose to remain unmarried and independent. Those women who did decide to remarry did so for purposes related at least in part to business considerations, choosing partners from their level in society, namely from among other artisans, rather than based on family connections. For these urban women, guild and professional structures shaped their marital strategies and choices more decisively than did a web of familial ties and obligations. In contrast to rural settings, the work and trade identities these widows shared with their master-husbands created

1

A note on usage: in this chapter when I discuss the issue of remarriage, I will use the terms “remarriage” and “second marriage” to refer to any marriage contracted by an individual who was widowed, regardless of whether it was the second or later marriage for that individual. When discussing a particular contract or couple, I will specify what number marriage they were entering.

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their expectations and the conditions of their marriages more conclusively than did the kin networks of their families of origin. This attraction to marriage partners from the same professional milieu sheds light on widows’ concerns. Most obvious is the frequent need for male labor and male authority in order to maintain a profitable and orderly shop. Women who explained their reasons for remarrying almost always articulated a need for economic assistance, a need for another pair of skilled hands, as central to their decision. However, we cannot assume that the entire decision to remarry was based simply on an economic calculation. Widows could, and did, hire workers to run their shops and were not obliged to marry in order to maintain their businesses. Many widowed mistresses employed journeymen and other workers to keep their shops humming. The other compelling reason to remarry within this social group, harder to demonstrate, was that widows did feel a tie or identification with the guild with which they were affiliated. To some extent, these widows married other artisans because they knew them, they had interests in common, they had shared values and identities. Many second husbands had worked in the family shop or served as godparents to one of the widow’s children. Widows often married their journeymen, partners they knew nearly as well as they had known their late husbands. Sometimes they married men who worked in a related trade, joining a personal connection to existing trade links. Artisanal families created a web of relations they drew upon in both their business and personal lives, one that depended on the work that defined their livelihood rather than their families of birth. The ability of many widows to manage independent shops belies the assumption that all widowed women had to remarry in order to keep themselves from becoming impoverished. A widow who married a man for reasons of affection and affinity was not necessarily looking for someone to save her from financial distress. The pattern of marrying within the world of the guilds also shows the particular nature of a widow with a place in the skilled trades. She did not conform to the demographic pattern established for widows in other situations. She was more likely to remain single, an indication of the privileged nature of her status with respect to other women. And when she married, it was not always an act of raw economic survival but was often a choice based on other criteria. The widow sometimes created an independent household, dependent on her own talents and labor as well as on her hired workers. But she sometimes found herself in a position where she could not survive outside of the intact family structure. Requests for marital dispensations demonstrate the range of reasons and motivations for widows’ remarriages, which will allow us to see the many ways remarriages differed from first marriages, and how widows differed from first time brides.

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Demographics On a very general demographic level, women were at a disadvantage with respect to finding marriage partners, as there were slightly more women than men in the French population. In the eighteenth century, male infants died at a higher rate than female infants, leading to a slight sex imbalance. Thus at birth the life expectancy of a female infant was 25.7 years, markedly higher than the 23.8 years facing a male infant. This disparity in life expectancy gradually disappeared, and by the age of 25 men and women faced essentially equal potential life spans. However, the early demographic pattern would leave a mark by creating a somewhat femaleheavy population.2 This assertion is borne out by statistics on the sex-ratio of the eighteenth-century population. While there are ages where the balance of men and women approached parity, overall for the latter half of the eighteenth century there were 97 men to every 100 women, presenting a challenge to women, young or old, seeking husbands.3 Although life expectancies lengthened considerably for those who lived to the age of 25, marriages were still not long-term affairs in this era. The average length of a marriage hovered around 20 years. Women and men both faced considerable mortality risks in early adulthood. Women, of course, faced the considerable dangers of childbearing, and many women in their twenties and thirties perished while giving birth. Men faced often hazardous work environments and military service, both settings that imposed a certain level of mortality.4 But for women, the danger years passed; once they survived that period they could look forward to a fairly long life. For men the picture was a bit more complicated. Mortality statistics that calculate life expectancy at age 25, but not later, look at women when they are most at danger of dying a premature death due to complications of childbirth. For the years 1740–1789, women outlived men in every age category, except for the years between the ages of 30 and 44 when the sexes were much closer in mortality rates. The effect of this difference in mortality was that for the adult population, there were always more women than men, even at the ages when female mortality was higher than male mortality.5 Even during the years when male and female mortality rates achieved some parity, and both of these groups theoretically faced a roughly equal pool of possible marital partners, widowers remarried more often and more quickly than widows. In particular, while widows with children were among the least likely 2 Jacques Dupâquier, Histoire de la population française (4 vols, Paris, 1988), vol. 2, pp. 236–7. 3 Louis Henry and Yves Blayo, “La population de la France de 1740 à 1860,” Population special issue (November 1975): 102–3. 4 Arlette Farge, “Les artisans malades de leur travail,” Annales E.S.C., 32/5 (1977): 995–8. 5 Henry and Blayo, “La population de la France,” pp. 92–3, 102–3.

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women to find a new mate, widowers with children remarried more often and more quickly than other widowers. Population statistics alone cannot explain the divergent experiences of these two seemingly similar groups. Clearly children created different pressures and challenges for widowed mothers than they did for widowed fathers. In one instance they hindered the finding of a new spouse and in the other instance they hastened it. Overall, for eighteenth-century France, remarriages comprised about 25 per cent of total marriages.6 In general, rural areas saw higher rates of remarriage than urban locations. In the agricultural basin surrounding Paris, remarriages made up approximately 28 per cent of all marriages contracted there. Likewise, in the small city of Thoissy-en-Dombes, nearly 37 per cent of marriages involved at least one previously married partner.7 In addition to having higher rates of remarriage, rural widows and widowers tended to marry more quickly than urban dwellers. There is no definitive source for the marriage or remarriage rates in Old Regime Paris, but demographic studies that have been done for other parts of France provide some guidance about the marital behavior we might expect from the capital. In larger provincial cities, the figures for remarriage are somewhat lower than they are in the countryside. These figures may reflect the more varied opportunities for work that could be found in an urban setting, an economic environment that afforded some women the means to survive without a husband.8 It may also have reflected the fluidity of communities and their composition in urban areas, and the sometimes supple nature of emotional ties in a place where migration unsettled the community.9 In Caen, remarriages comprised 21 per cent of all marriages, somewhat lower than the rate of remarriage in the countryside 6 This figure is approximate. I estimated based on the following three sources: “Introduction” in Jacques Dupâquier (ed.), Marriage and Remarriage in Populations of the Past (London, 1981); André Burguière, “Réticences théoriques et intégration pratique du remariage dans la France d’Ancien Régime—dix-septième–dix-huitième siècles,” in Marriage and Remarriage and Jacques Dupâquer, La population française aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris, 1979). 7 Jacques Dupâquier, La population rurale du bassin parisian à l’époque de Louis XIV (Paris, 1979), p. 318; Alain Bideau, “A Demographic and Social Analysis of Widowhood and Remarriage: The Example of the Castellany of Thoissey-en-Dombes,” Journal of Family History, 5/1 (1980): 29. 8 In addition to the evidence presented here on this question see Natalie Zemon Davis, “The Reasons of Misrule: Youth Groups and Charivaris in Sixteenth-Century France,” Past and Present, 50 (1971): 66; Merry Wiesner notes that widows had a greater chance of hiring a stall at market than any other women, thus giving them the possibility to support themselves. Working Women in Renaissance Germany (New Brunswick, 1986), pp. 137–8. See also Martha Howell, Women, Production and Patriarchy in Late Medieval Cities (Chicago, 1986), pp. 112, 182. 9 David Garrioch, Neighborhood and Community in Paris, 1740–1790 (Cambridge, 1986), pp. 85, 227–8.

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surrounding Paris and much lower than in Thoissy. Meulan’s 22 per cent remarriage share is almost exactly that of Caen, not surprising given the economic and cultural similarities between these two cities.10 Lyon, the eighteenth-century French city most like Paris, also likely saw a low rate of remarriage for its inhabitants. Maurice Garden’s monumental study of this city does not directly address marriage or remarriage rates for the entire city, but in his sample of marriages in two of the city’s parishes, only 15 per cent involved at least one previously married spouse. In explaining this figure, Garden notes the impact migration made on marital behavior. Garden suggests that the large role of immigration in Lyon’s demographic pattern meant that many young people entered the city, especially young girls looking to work in the city’s textile industries, and skewed its sex ratio, which was “one cause of the relative rarity of the remarriage of widows.”11 What Garden did not remark upon were the other possible reasons for low rates of widow remarriage, such as women’s ability to live independently on the wages they earned making textiles. He also did not comment on the impact such migration had on the chances of widowers’ remarriages. Many young men also entered Lyon in search of work, a situation that might also have made widowers less appealing marriage partners for young women. Such high levels of mobility and change in the city’s population surely created fluid social relations, a situation that certainly contributed to the low rate of remarriage that Garden found in Lyon. But the city’s economic strength also must have contributed to this behavioral pattern. Lyon was an economically vibrant city in the eighteenth century, one that rivaled Paris in its wealth and productivity. Such an economic environment created the possibility that a widow could hire labor, rather than marry labor, and maintain an independent business. The influx of young, presumably inexpensive, workers combined with the strength of the Lyon economy created a situation where widows were not compelled to remarry in order to remain solvent. Garden rightly isolated a number of the demographic factors that contributed to low rates of remarriage, but he did not explore the factors that might have made the single state a choice rather than an inevitability. One of the critical factors that all of these demographic studies discuss is the importance of age and presence of children as critical factors in determining an individual’s chance for remarriage. Overall, women under the age of 30 had nearly the same chance to find a marriage partner as a woman that age who had never been married.12 As people got older, and this was particularly the case for women, 10

Jean-Claude Perrot, Genèse d’une ville moderne: Caen au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1975), p. 822; Marcel Lachiver, La population de Meulan du XVIIe au XIXe siècle (Paris, 1969), p. 145. 11 Maurice Garden, Lyon et les lyonnais au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1970), pp. 90–92. 12 Lachiver, La population de Meulan, p. 145. Garden echoes that finding, although without giving specific numbers. He does note that widows over the age of 45 were quite

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they were less likely to find another spouse. Jacques Dupâquier finds that while 72 per cent of widowers between the ages of 30 and 39 remarried, only 46 per cent of widows in the same age group did so. The gender difference is even more striking after the age of 40: 52 per cent of widowers between 40 and 49 remarried as compared to only 20 per cent of widows.13 The impact of aging on remarriage was harder on women in part because a widower could marry a woman younger than he was; in general, it was much less often that a widow would marry a younger man. The cultural stigma attached to the union of a very young spouse to a very old one could express itself in the ritual of the charivari. In the charivari, members of a community mocked and even threatened those who seemed to transgress the accepted mores of the group, especially those that pertained to sexual comportment. In one such instance, a charivari erupted because “a woman of sixty married a young man of twenty-seven this morning. All the jokers of the neighborhood assembled themselves to celebrate the nuptials with a concert of banging pots, pans, and kettles.”14 While such behavior did not prevent the marriage from happening, it marginalized couples who did not live up to community norms and discouraged other such unsuitable alliances. Several studies of the charivari support the assertion that the majority of such rituals were responses to the culturally inappropriate marriages of widows, and occasionally widowers.15 Such community surveillance of marriages, and the prejudice against partners of widely varying ages and status, also represented a barrier for widows who wished to find another husband. Such problems did not, in contrast, present themselves to widowers who wished to marry younger wives. The community tolerated the wishes of an older man to have more children with a younger woman. In contrast, a younger man married to an older woman would always have to fight against the perception that his wife ruled the house, that the household was turned upside-down by a woman who did not wish to submit to male authority. Factors beyond demographics and community disapproval also militated against women who wished to remarry. Widows encumbered with children, particularly if they were over the age of 30, were less likely to find a marriage partner than those who were childless. Children imposed economic and psychological demands on stepparents, ones that men apparently did not always numerous in the census. Lyon et les lyonnais, p. 92. Perrot finds a median age of 37 for widows remarrying during the eighteenth century, suggesting that Rouen followed the same age pattern. Genèse d’une ville moderne, p. 823. 13 Dupâquier, La population française, p. 61. 14 A.R. Lesage, “Le Diable Boiteux,” in Etiemble (ed.), Romanciers du dix-huitième siècle, (2 vols, Paris, 1960) vol. 1, p. 285. 15 Davis, “The Reasons of Misrule,” pp. 45, 53. E.P. Thompson, “‘Rough Music’: Le Charivari anglais,” Annales ESC, 27 (1972): 294. See also the description of a charivari as a community response to marital problems in Natalie Zemon Davis, The Return of Martin Guerre (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 20–21.

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welcome. Reluctance to marry widowed mothers stemmed in part from the fiscal burden men assumed in such alliances. All second marriage contracts contained a proviso that the new marital community would support any children either spouse had from an earlier marriage.16 In addition to the economic burden children placed on the newly formed marital community, their presence also severely limited the movement of property in a second marriage. As discussed earlier, the Edict on Second Marriages forbade a spouse who was entering a new marriage from endowing a new husband or wife with more property than had been provided for any individual child from a previous marriage. In this way families could be assured that their patrimony would not be squandered, or even utilized, by a stranger. It also provided children whose parents remarried with some measure of financial security. However, the strict limitations placed on property arrangements in second marriages meant that a man marrying a widow with a child, while he might live in comfort with his new family, would not leave the marriage financially enriched. This restriction on the couple’s financial settlements may have persuaded some men to marry single women rather than widows. Partners marrying for the first time could grant each other the lifetime use of all property, in the form of a mutual gift, if they had no children. In contrast to second marriages where the surviving spouse was left with only those assets stipulated in the contract, the survivor of a first marriage could benefit from a life-use clause in a marriage contract to hold onto household property until death or remarriage. Following the death of a spouse in a second marriage, children could lay claim to their parents’ property more rapidly and with more certainty than they could after the dissolution of a first marriage. These financial restrictions may certainly have convinced some prospective partners to seek out someone who was not hemmed in by such constraints. Beyond the presence of children, men and women faced different obstacles and different pressures when it came to the question of remarriage. For men, the decision to take another bride was somewhat simpler than it was for a widowed woman. Both custom and law dictated a certain period of mourning for the wife, during which time she dressed in black mourning clothes to signify her grief and loss, and was expected to withdraw from society during her bereavement. Until their period of mourning was finished, widows could not take another husband, out

16

This assertion is based on my sample of marriage contracts. Jean-Baptiste Denisart also stresses the obligation a parent has to educate his or her child from a first marriage. See his Collection des decisions nouvelles et de notions relatives à la jurisprudence actuelle (4 vols, Paris, 1771), vol. 2, pp. 280–81.

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of respect for their deceased husband and also as a practical measure to ensure certainty about paternity if a woman should find herself pregnant.17 For men, these same concerns did not arise. As widowers, they did not meet with such restraints on their actions. While men also experienced feelings of loss when their wives died, the expression of those feelings was not codified as it was for women. In fact, while there was a certain amount of cultural ambivalence about a woman remarrying too quickly after her husband’s death, for a man there were similar cultural pressures to wed again as quickly as possible. In some areas of Europe, political rights and rates of taxation depended upon being married. For example, in early modern Augsburg, a man could not hold urban office if he were not married. In Louis XIV’s France, unmarried men paid more in taxes to the Crown to compensate for their lack of offspring.18 Another significant factor influencing this behavior was the gendered coding of labor within the family. While the family centered economy meant that everyone worked to support the household in some capacity, not all members of the family labored equally or in the same ways to ensure its prosperity. While women could venture out of the home to toil in the fields or the marketplace in the quest for wages, men did not similarly pick up the kettle or washboard to provide their families with meals and clean clothes. The anthropologist Martine Segalen sees this male exclusion from domestic labors as constituting a taboo, one that almost required men with children to find a new mother for them as quickly as possible. Performing the labor required of a mother and wife constituted a threat to their masculinity, one that men tried to neutralize by marrying as soon as they could, sometimes within days of a wife’s death. By contrast, widows performed all tasks that were within their physical capabilities, a flexibility that multiplied their physical burdens but lessened their need to find a new spouse. The community both created and reinforced this gender norm, accepting women who worked to support their families but expressing dismay with men who kept house.19 In an effort to enforce this standard, relatives and friends may have tried harder to find wives for widowers. To fill the breach, solitary men raising their children without a

17

Louis Mercier, Le Deuil , son observation dans tous les temps et dans tous les pays comparée à son observation de nos jours, (London, 1877); André de Ridder, Deuil, funerailles et tombes (Brussels, 1932). 18 Lyndal Roper, The Holy Household: Women and Morals in Reformation Augsburg (Oxford, 1989), p. 31; James Collins, The State in Early Modern France (Cambridge, 1995), p. 47. 19 Alain Bideau ferreted out a number of such rapid remarriages in his research. “Demographic and Social Analysis,” especially pp. 32–3. Martine Segalen, “Mentalité populaire et remariage en Europe occidentale,” in Jacques Dupâquier (ed.), Marriage and Remarriage in Populations of the Past (New York, 1981), pp. 69–70.

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partner often had the help of their sisters, mothers, or other female relatives so that they could be spared from performing domestic labor.20 Communal tolerance of the widow as a kind of bricoleur, able to perform male and female work indiscriminately, reinforces two ideas forwarded here about such women: that they filled a flexible position in their society, drawing freely from male- and female-coded roles, and that they could under certain circumstances choose to remain unwed. Their behavior with respect to remarriage demonstrated this flexibility. The informal code of gendered work also points out the somewhat fluid nature of widowhood. Beyond men and other women, widows could, to a large extent, do what was required for their and their families’ survival. The extent of their activities was opened up by their need, by their legal emancipation, and by their ability to straddle definitions of male and female roles. This flexibility both explains and obscures the reasons for lower rates of widow remarriage. Certainly the ability to fend for themselves made it possible for widows to remain single and solvent. It meant that they could assume the responsibilities of supporting and raising their families without a husband. But this competence would also attract marriage partners interested in a widow’s labor and skills, not to mention the property she had inherited at her husband’s death. Given her assets, the widow inclined toward remarriage would seem to be well equipped to attract a new mate. Yet the statistics do not suggest that the remarrying widow followed an easy road, particularly if she had children. This dynamic seemed to have three main sources. First, population imbalance meant that there were always more women than men, producing a shortage of male partners for women who wished to be married. Second, widows with access to economic resources could choose to remain unmarried in order to maintain their independence. Third, men were often diffident about marrying widows with children. All of these factors combined to create a population of unmarried widows. In part the population of unmarried widows was also the result of active choices many women made. Those widows who maintained businesses on their own, with the help of hired labor or children, very likely chose that path and had the resources to support themselves without the assistance of a husband. For others, the unmarried state was an unfortunate situation, one they could only hope to ameliorate by remarrying. But these women, who most needed a mate, also found it most difficult to find one. Often burdened with children as well as debt, these women had little but adversity to offer a prospective husband. Finding a marriage partner under differing circumstances required multiple negotiations and decisions.

20

Christine Adams, “A Choice not to Wed? Unmarried Women in Eighteenth-Century France,” Journal of Social History, 29/4 (1996): 884–6; Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780–1850 (Chicago, 1987), pp. 348–51.

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Marriage Negotiations In order to understand how individuals in this society entered into and negotiated second marriages, we must appreciate the ways they chose their partners and the terms of these marital relationships. Several striking themes emerge from a consideration of widow marriages. We see that partners entering second marriages tended to behave more independently than first time brides and grooms. Also their motivations for marriage and the terms of their household relationships differed, due in part to the greater autonomy of partners in these relationships. Their knowledge about the give and take necessary to maintaining a good marriage also contributed to the different terms of their partnerships. Marriage contracts show the results of negotiations that took place on the occasion of a first or subsequent marriage, and help to suggest the process and motivations of those negotiations. In a sample of 73 contracts governing marriages involving at least one partner who had a connection to guilds, 27 were for firsttime marriages and 46 involved a bride who had been widowed and was remarrying. On the surface, these two groups of contracts appear to be quite similar. Every contract had the same goal, to govern a marriage between a bride and groom, despite the varied forms they might take. In drawing up the terms of the marriage contract the notary’s hand appeared as a heavy presence. All of these documents followed the same format, beginning by providing the names of the partners and witnesses, establishing the legal and spiritual process for marrying, and then explaining the financial provisions of the agreement.21 Furthermore, regardless of the status of the individual partners or the shape of their contract, all of the couples lived a married life that was similar, largely shaped by custom and law. Once remarried, even a widowed woman who had attained a high degree of independence and fiscal success would resubmit herself to the legal constraints of wifehood, most notably the subordination to her husband in terms of her legal rights and her ability to dispose of money. All wives, despite their status prior to their union, shared a comparable situation once they were married. The understanding that none of their power or wealth or independence would shield them from being legally subsumed by their husbands may very well have deterred some widows from remarrying. Their last independent act placed them in a permanent position of subordination. These contracts also illustrate some significant differences between those couples who married for the first time and those where one partner had already been widowed and was entering another union. Generally second marriage 21

On notarial practice see the essays in Jean-Paul Poisson (ed.), Notaires et sociétés: travaux d’histoire et de sociologie notarials (2 vols, Paris, 1985–90). Julie Hardwick’s The Practice of Patriarchy: Gender and the Politics of Household Authority in Early Modern France (University Park, 1998) discusses notarial families, and in chapter 3 explores the notary’s role in creating marriages.

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contracts tended to be simpler, and more streamlined, than those governing first marriages. In contrast, many contracts creating first marriages had dozens of witnesses, or at least several for each partner, implying that such occasions were momentous for the families involved, calling for a large celebration. The presence of so many witnesses symbolically inserted the future spouses into a community of friends and family who publicly supported the new family they were going to create. When Grégoire Retoré, a mercer, signed a marriage contract with Marie Anne Deslisle, the daughter of a deceased goldsmith and his widow, the couple had 35 people in attendance, 26 to stand up for the bride and 9 for the groom.22 Friends and family joined these two young people to support their married life. It was a moment for festivity and for new beginnings. Second marriages seemed like more private and independent affairs, emphasizing the singleness of the spouses rather than their integration in some kind of group. While first marriages emphasized the sense that the bride and groom belonged to a natal family and community that expressed a vested interest in the contract they were signing, the circumstances of most second marriages implied a different relationship between the community and the spouses. The solitary widow, speaking for herself on the occasion of her remarriage, emphasized the independent standing she had. In second marriages, there were rarely many witnesses and in some instances one spouse would have no one witnessing on his or her behalf. In about half of marriages involving a widow, the groom would bring witnesses on his behalf but the widow-bride had no one as a witness on her side. When Antoine Peron, a master cobbler, married Marie Jeanne Laval, the widow of Denis Chauvin, also a master cobbler, they had only two witnesses attend the signing of their nuptial agreement, two men listed as mutual friends.23 Legally she could marry without anyone’s permission, even if she had children. Apparently a widow’s family trusted that she would not sign a contract that disadvantaged her children, if she had any, or made improper use of her late husband’s property. The family’s faith was of course buttressed by the knowledge that any contract violating legal limits on the use of property could be challenged in court. With respect to the witnesses who attended, in addition to the presence of a greater number of witnesses at first-time ceremonies, all spouses who married for the first time needed their parents’ permission. Contracts noted parental consent even when the spouses explicitly stated that they were over the age of majority and could thus legally marry without parental consent.24 This habit would be less 22

AN, MC, étude LXXV/617, 18 January 1751. AN, MC étude XXXIV/582, 30 June 1751. 24 The edict allowing parents to disinherit children who married without their permission explicitly exempted children over the ages of majority. François André Isambert, Recueil general des anciennes lois françaises, depuis l’an 420 jusqu’à la revolution de 1789 (29 vols, Paris, 1821–33), vol. 13, p. 471. Barbara Diefendorf also notes that children over 23

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remarkable except that none of the widows, except for one young woman who stated that she was still a legal minor, sought parental permission when they contracted second marriages. While four other widows did have one or both parents present as witnesses, they all spoke for themselves.25 Widows’ behavior upon remarriage indicated some of the legal privileges and independence such women could exercise. The dissolution of a marriage by the death of a spouse liberated a woman, made her a legal adult, and in a way that even attaining the age of majority apparently did not do in this society. Another reason parents were not present at the signing of the second marriage contract, but were present at the first marriage, was that parents generally provided many of the assets included in the dowry or marriage portion of the bride and groom the first time they married and embarked upon the task of creating a new family. The parents thus attended to avow that they would indeed contribute certain resources to establishing the new couple’s household. For people marrying for the second (or third or fourth) time, parents made no contribution to the new household. A widow brought with her a share of the first marital community along with any real property she had brought with her to the first marriage. The groom might have his parents present if they were giving him assets for his new household, but if the groom were also contributing inherited property or the money he had earned his parents were also generally absent. In addition to the way that familial contributions differed from first to second marriages, property disposition and the amount of property mentioned in the contract also varied according to the spouses’ status. Overall, the amount each spouse entered into the marital community was smaller for those partners who had been married before. Dowers for widows who survived a second marriage were usually smaller and the dowries they brought were as well. The one provision that did not differ substantially from first to second marriages was the amount of the préciput, or survivor’s benefit, usually taken in goods, that was meant to ensure that the surviving spouse would have adequate household furnishings after the estate was settled and distributed. This amount, generally 200–300 livres for artisanal couples, may have reflected a baseline amount that an individual needed to set up an independent household that could not easily be decreased from a first to second marriage. Also, while the first marriage contract often spelled out in some detail the extent of the financial resources the bride and groom would bring with them, in the

the age of majority sought their parents’ permission in the marriage contracts she examined. Paris City Councillors in the Sixteenth Century: The Politics of Patrimony (Princeton, 1983), p. 187. 25 For the contract where the widow’s mother stipulated and spoke for her: AN, MC étude LXVI/504. In all of the other contracts signed by a widow they stated that they were there “en son nom d’autre part,” signifying that they were the party responsible for agreeing to the contract.

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form of communal property or lineage property, second marriage contracts were usually spare and gave little detail about the spouses’ economic positions. The schematic nature of second marriage contracts implies to some extent a desire not to allow the new spouse to know the extent of the other’s wealth. For widows, there seemed to be a reluctance to allow new husbands to know how much property they had inherited from a deceased husband. Legally, such non-disclosure made sense since a widow’s second husband could make no claims on the property that originated in a widow’s former household. After the dissolution of the marriage, he could only claim the fruits of his and his wife’s labor, or his half of the marital community, plus a small gift from his wife’s property. The lack of forthright revelation about wealth also enhances the sense that in second marriages each spouse operated as an independent person rather than someone who needed to fully immerse him or herself in the marriage or who needed the approbation of his or her family. This discretion underscores one difference between first and second marriages; in the latter, spouses remained separate from one another in a number of areas. There are other reasons why property provisions varied between first and second marriages. Property functioned differently in these two different instances. First marriages provided children with the initial resources they needed to establish an independent household. Even without achieving a particularly long union, partners could expect a first marriage to last an average of twenty years. As a result, the assets families contributed to their children upon the occasion of their first marriages were meant ideally to sustain that new household for several decades. They acted as a long-term investment in a child’s future. In contrast, second marriages could normally be expected to last for less than twenty years. While there are no statistics on the length of second marriages, given the average age at marriage and the average length of the first marriage, we can assume anywhere from a five- to fifteen-year duration for second marriages. Given such expectations, it is not surprising to find partners and their families committing fewer resources to later unions. It was quite possible that a marriage later in life could last for only a brief period, damping the inclination to invest in a relationship with such inherent risks. Such calculations highlight the ways in which partners entering second marriages sensed a weaker bond with their birth families than those marrying for the first time. Men and women marrying after being widowed were seen as adults, and treated according to that perception. All of these differences—the presence of parents stipulating for grown sons while their widowed daughters were allowed to speak for themselves, the variance in property provisions, the different levels of monetary contributions—raise a number of questions about the meaning of widowhood, age, and gender. Based on an examination of contracts, it seems that chronological age alone did not mark a child’s rupture from the birth family. Single adult children still maintained a primary connection with their birth families. There were no other ties, with a spouse or children, that could vie with parents and siblings for loyalty and

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obedience. The single child had no other kin group to which he or she was linked so tightly. But a child who had been previously married was in an entirely different situation. Even if a first marriage had produced no children, the widowed spouse had experienced a period when he or she was also a member of another kin group, tied to them by obligations, loyalties, and interests. A married woman had to reconcile her connection to her own family with the new bonds she needed to cultivate with her husband’s family and her desire to create a new household. The monetary contributions each family made to the new household exemplified the dual loyalties the new household was expected to nurture and maintain. Both sets of parents invested in the new couple and thereby expected their children to respect their obligations to both of their birth families.

Property arrangements We see how money issues and financial settlements comprised the heart of every marriage arrangement. The greatest concern of partners and their families dealt with property, and in particular with the enumeration and classification of property. There are several reasons why monetary arrangements dominated the clauses of the marriage contract. Most importantly, the careful wording of the marriage contract allowed the families of the bride and groom to have tight control over the way their wealth could be disposed of by their children. Although parents handed over nominal ownership of cash, furniture, annuities, and other valuables, the way a contract was written could significantly curtail the extent of that ownership and the ways children could employ those assets. Most of the larger family’s control over wealth came from the constraints imposed on wealth by the way it was named in the marriage contract. The way an asset was named determined how a couple could exploit it during their marriage and what would happen to it after the marriage ended. Real lineage property could not be permanently alienated because it was part of a family’s patrimony, and thus needed to remain under the perpetual control of the family from whence it originated. Here the name, the designation, of property was so crucial because the nature of the property was almost inconsequential. Of course, houses, land, venal offices, and other such clearly immoveable property were never considered anything but lineage property. But a great deal of what was clearly moveable property, cash and furniture, (incidentally the kind of wealth that made up most of the assets of artisanal families) was also designated lineage property in many marriage contracts. Such tactics allowed the spouse who brought these assets and her or his family to exercise tight control over all kinds of property, especially items like tools or cash that could be easily disposed of, thereby diminishing an important basis of the family’s wealth. Contracts helped to maintain family control over what were in nature very fluid assets.

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One interesting aspect of the widespread creation of fictional lineage property was the relative absence of real lineage property in marriage settlements of artisanal families; houses and land rarely figured in marriage endowments.26 Instead, cash, tools, and household goods, all valuable goods but definitely falling under the definition of moveable property, made up the lineage property allocated in these agreements. Given this situation, we must consider what happened to the real property of these families. Contracts suggest one answer; probate inventories suggest another. In marriage contracts, the total value of assets were provided, along with a statement of what amount of the contribution were to become community property and what amount would remain lineage property. The descriptions of assets were at times very precise, but they were just as often imprecise. In particular, parents often simply stated the value of the dowry they were providing for a child without explaining how that dowry was made up. The undefined nature of the dowry meant that real property could be included in the dowry without being specifically named in the contract. If that were the case, then this kind of property could move invisibly from one generation to the next via a marriage agreement. If a house made up part of a child’s dowry, it would not be necessary to stipulate that this piece of property be designated real property, as it was naturally a piece of real property. But this issue probably arose only infrequently as probate inventories suggest that few members of the Paris artisanal rank held a great deal of real property. Most of the inventories indicate that artisans rented their shops and premises rather than owning them. And while some families did own land in the countryside, undoubtedly vestiges of an immigrant past, they comprised the minority of urban workers. For artisans, most of their wealth was made up of tools, cash, household goods, and annuities and other similar financial mechanisms. The source of their wealth was urban in nature, being made up of items easily transferred from place to place. Such assets well suited businesses that required fungible resources, like raw materials or tools, that could be deployed in many different ways for varied purposes. But in terms of a strategy for enhancing and passing down familial wealth, such assets were problematic. The use of contracts to reshape the legal

26

I have two contracts that mention real property as part of the marriage settlement. In one, the groom brought part of land and a house his mother owned (presumably collecting rent on these properties) and in another a bride’s mother endowed her with half of a house she owned. In this case the contract explicitly stated that the new couple would profit from half of the rent collected on this house. XCII/371, 15 June 1751 and XXXVIII/391, 7 October 1751.

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identity of property answered the needs of affluent urban families without limiting their business interests.27 In addition to marking a moment of transition in distributing family wealth, marriage represented a threshold moment for an individual. By entering into a marriage, an individual stepped away from childhood and into new adult responsibilities. Marital partners made a commitment to establish a new familial unit, reproduce and bring new members into the kin group, and create an autonomous space for themselves. In a certain way, by receiving family assets, they also received a charge to enhance the family’s wealth and status. Marriage represented the first act of adulthood, the first stepping away from subjection to parental authority and establishing an independent existence. Martine Segalen, in her study of household dynamics in peasant society, also sees issues of authority being worked out in the rituals surrounding nuptial rites. She remarks that “the first gesture made by the couple being brought together…(was) a ritual symbolically enacting matrimonial authority,” although one in which both partners were complicitous.28 The symbolic exchange of dominance and submission that occurred between the groom and bride expressed the position of authority the man assumed in his new home and the woman’s transference of obedience from her parents to her husband. Individuals assumed these adult, gendered roles upon marriage. In another concrete way children assumed their adult independence when they married. The marriage contract served as the mechanism for transferring property from one generation to the next. By the eighteenth century wills had become primarily mechanisms for dictating burial wishes and bequests for masses rather than a way to portion out a family’s wealth. Small items of sentimental value, such as clothing, might be distributed by a will. But land, cash, houses and other valuable assets were largely allocated to heirs in the marriage contracts a family drew up over the years as their children married. Given this use of the nuptial ceremony, children assumed adulthood at that moment not only by severing certain symbolic ties with their birth families but also by taking control of assets from their fathers and mothers. After this point married children had a critical role to play in shepherding the family’s patrimony. They were no longer shielded from the responsibility of helping to maintain the family’s economic and social station, and they benefited from the measure of independence and esteem property-holding conferred. The widowed woman had experienced all of the liberation and responsibility that went along with getting married. She had already become a symbolic adult by 27

On the use of property by urban elites see Martha Howell, The Marriage Exchange: Property, Social Place, and Gender in Cities of the Low Countries, 1300–1550 (Chicago, 1998), pp. 110–11. 28 Martine Segalen, Love and Power in the Peasant Family: Rural France in the Nineteenth Century, trans. Sarah Matthews (Chicago, 1983), p. 25.

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taking care of her own family and she had already been granted her share of the family’s wealth to maintain and preferably increase. As such, a widow’s marriage presented a different set of considerations than did a woman’s first marriage. By no means was a widowed daughter independent from the social and economic concerns of her or her late husband’s families. In fact, her actions could have a noticeable impact on their material interests. But legally there was little a woman’s family could do to restrain her if she decided to remarry. Widowhood rendered a woman a legal adult, and as such she could sign contracts and make agreements on her own. Unless a widowed woman violated her children’s inheritance claims, there was little her family or her husband’s family could do to shape decisions about how she managed her household.29 A woman’s birth family had already entrusted her with part of their wealth, and she was entitled to use that property as she saw fit. Also, if her first marriage contract had granted her life use of her husband’s lineage property, through a mutual gift of one kind or another, or if she was acting as guardian to her children, the widow could manage her deceased spouse’s wealth as well.30 The widow was an adult, to the fullest extent possible for a woman in this society, and did not need the ritual of a remarriage to grant her greater autonomy or authority. When a widow remarried she did so for reasons besides ascending into adulthood, and as such her role in her second marriage differed from the role she played in a first marriage. The second time around the widow married for a reason that pertained to her individual situation. That impulse might relate to the widow’s financial situation, her need for another parent to help her raise small children, or a desire for emotional and sexual companionship. The ability to understand and act upon these wishes or exigencies on her own initiative marked her as different from a woman marrying for the first time, and often under the tutelage of her birth family’s guidance. But for those men marrying for the first time, even if their spouse was a widowed woman, there was the need for family input, for the deliberate transmission of property, and for the step over the threshold of adulthood. He was seen as less fully an adult, even if a man of legal age, than his future wife, an assessment that was acted out in the marriage contract. In this respect the widow had a knowledge that her husband did not; she had undergone the ritual of moving from her father’s to her husband’s house and did not need to repeat this journey. Her husband-to-be still had to make this transition for himself, and as such his parents accompanied him to sign his marriage contract. 29 However, a concerned family member did have the option of going to court over the terms of a remarriage. For an example of one such case, where a child’s uncle was concerned about his widowed mother’s remarriage since most of the family’s wealth consisted of merchandise and tools, see Sylvie Perrier, “The Blended Family in Ancien Régime France: A Dynamic Family Form,” History of the Family, 3/4 (1998): 466. 30 According to Denisart the childless widow enjoyed the benefits of either of these gifting provisions even if she remarried. Décisions, vol., 2, pp. 174–81, 196–203.

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170 Marriages under Contract

In addition to the information marriage contracts provided about witnesses, it also demonstrated the fiscal differences between first and second marriages. Jean Pierre Bancelin, a journeyman locksmith, married Etiennette Bonnardot, the daughter of a master locksmith, on 29 December 1783. Bancelin and Bonnardot lived in the same house as they are listed as living on the same street and in the same parish, and likely in the same house. From what follows, it seems that Bancelin worked in the shop of Bonnardot’s father and eventually came to ask for the hand of his master’s daughter. One of the striking aspects of this contract is the generosity of the bride’s parents. They endowed her and her future husband with a great deal of property, certainly enough to establish themselves in the locksmith business. The terms of the contract show it being used not only as a mechanism for creating a new household for the newlyweds but also as a way for the parents to dictate the terms of handing the family business from one generation to the next, and in that process to provide stable support for themselves. According to the marriage contract Bancelin furnished 1500 livres in cash as well as an additional 300 livres worth of household and personal goods. These assets represent a fairly sizable contribution but it pales in comparison to what the bride and her family gave to the couple. Her dowry consisted of 6000 livres in assets from her parents’ business as well as 800 livres in household and personal goods. In addition, Bonnardot’s parents promised “by way of augmenting the dowry, to have the future groom received as a master locksmith at their expense.”31 The contract further stipulated that the young couple would work in the Bonnardot shop until the following October, after which time they would take entire possession of the business. The delay was presumably meant to reassure the parents that the youngsters were prepared to manage a business on their own. At the time of the transfer, the parents would arrange for an inventory of the value of the entire business and after the total was known, they were willing to add another 3000 livres of tools and materials to Bonnardot’s dowry. Presumably the Bonnardot family believed that their business was worth in excess of 9000 livres, the amount of professional property they pledged their daughter in this contract. After that point, the children vowed to allow Bonnardot’s parents to live with them until their deaths and to delay an accounting of the estate, and the claiming of Etiennette’s inheritance, until after both parents were deceased. Not surprisingly the bulk of these assets were to be classified as lineage property. Each partner pledged 1200 livres to the marital community, with the rest of their wealth remaining real property claimed by the maternal family line. The bride’s dower was set at a rather generous 2000 livres and the survivor’s benefit was 1200 livres, also higher than the average amount. The contract provided for no donations between the future spouses, presumably due to the disparity between 31

AN, MC, étude XIV/483, 29 December 1783.

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what Bancelin and Bonnardot had contributed. However, Bonnardot’s parents did stipulate that if their daughter died without children, Bancelin could keep 1000 livres of her property to cover the cost of what they called “costs of marriage.”32 It was not only the bride’s family that might contribute a substantial amount to the new household. In some instances the groom’s family, looking to set their son up in a stable economic situation, would contribute far more than the bride’s family. This situation was more likely to happen when the bride’s mother was a widow and thus more reluctant to hand over property she might need to finance her own business or support herself. When Louis L’Abbé, a newly minted master ribbon maker, married Catherine Gravelle, the daughter of a master surgeon, the couple signed a lengthy marriage contract. Both of the groom’s parents were in attendance, as was the bride’s widowed mother. Each partner’s contribution to the new household was enumerated. L’Abbé was bringing rather substantial assets to the new marriage. His parents’ donation added up to 1500 livres, 150 livres in household goods, and 1090 livres in cash. Their donation was rounded up to 1500 livres by the addition of the 260 livres they had just paid for their son’s mastership. In addition, the contract was the vehicle for an eventual handing over of his family’s business. According to its provisions, L’Abbé fils and his wife were set to take over the boutique four years after they married. Until that time L’Abbé would work with his father, in order to become more familiar with the craft and his family’s enterprise. Finally, L’Abbé added 2063 livres he earned by his labor, to bring the total L’Abbé contribution to this marriage to a substantial 3563 livres in cash and goods, plus a business whose value would be determined by a later inventory. The bride’s contribution in this instance was less generous. Her mother was indeed a widow and a mistress midwife. The amount she gave her daughter for her marriage was quite modest, perhaps reflecting her own financial straits or her need to squirrel away capital for her own midwifery practice. The contract states that Gravelle brought a total of 2120 livres to her marriage. Gravelle’s mother provided a modest 300 livres dowry, specified as an advance on her inheritance, and Gravelle provided another 900 livres in cash and 920 livres worth of household and personal goods.33 Given how much wealth was being transferred from the elder generation to the younger generation, and the risk the L’Abbé family was taking should their son die prematurely, it is not surprising to see quite a few witnesses to this contract. Representing the groom and his family were 21 witnesses, all family members. Twelve witnesses appeared on the bride’s behalf, all members of Gravelle’s family. These arrangements, while generous, were apparently accepted by both families. The presence of so many family members, particularly from the L’Abbé side, meant that this transfer of wealth was less likely to be challenged by other heirs 32 33

Ibid. AN, MC, étude XIV/448, 29 October 1775.

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after the death of either the groom or his parents. Another detail of this contract that indicates the weight of such a transfer of wealth was the absence of a mutual gift. The groom did allow for a generous 1000 livres dower should Gravelle find herself a widow, and either surviving spouse could claim a 300 livres survivor’s benefit, however neither would have life-use of the other’s property without an explicit clause to that effect in their contract. When this provision was part of a marriage contract, it allowed the surviving spouse to use the property of the deceased until she or he remarried or died. This kind of bequest was nullified if the couple had children before the death, undoubtedly because if a widow or widower acted as the guardian of children, he or she also administered the whole estate on the children’s behalf, thus creating a property arrangement quite similar to a mutual gift. The absence of such a provision demonstrates the L’Abbé family’s reluctance to run the risk of allowing such a substantial amount of wealth, and in particular the source of the family’s livelihood, to be under their daughter-in-law’s control. Without this clause, Gravelle would be obliged to turn all of her husband’s assets over to his family, with the exception of her dower and survivor’s benefit, as well as her half of the marital community and her own property. This contract shows a family at a momentous turning point, both personal and financial. In a sense, this is not simply a marriage contract; it is also a blueprint for the family’s financial future. The son marrying here was designated to carry on the family business and take care of his parents. In these two marriages we see that the purpose of the contract was not only or even perhaps primarily to oversee the creation of a new household. Instead, most of their provisions pertained to establishing a new relationship between parents and children. These contracts served a purpose that wills could not achieve. While a testament could establish the disposition of goods after an individual’s death, it could not regulate the use of property to provide for sustenance in old age. In contrast, marriage contracts were pliable documents that stretched beyond their original purpose to shape a family’s financial plans. They could dictate how wealth would be used to provide for the aging of parents, rather than determining how assets would be distributed upon the occasion of a death. Wills could only serve to change the ownership of wealth after a death; marriage contracts could deploy the family patrimony during the owner’s lifetime. At least for master artisans and their families, it was more important to use their assets to assure themselves a comfortable living in their old age rather than allotting wealth to heirs who would claim it after their deaths. In addition to dictating the distribution of wealth to children, many marriage contracts also determined how a surviving parent would be supported after a spouse’s death. These two contracts governed first marriages. The shape of second marriage contracts differed in a number of significant ways. For second marriages the emphasis rested on creating a viable household while committing the least possible resources to the new domestic unit. It is important to appreciate this difference in

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order to understand meaning of second marriages and to be able to speculate on the reasons why a widow would remarry. The amounts spouses contributed to the marital community relative to the wealth they possessed were noticeably smaller in second marriage contracts as were dowries and survivor’s benefits. Another striking aspect of second marriage contracts was the vagueness that marked the description of wealth. Overall men, whether marrying for the first time or contracting another marriage, enumerated their wealth less frequently than women did. Both first- and second-time grooms declared the value of their contribution to the new household in about half of the cases. Out of 22 first marriage contracts, 11 men mentioned the value of their property, and 18 of the 39 men marrying a widow specified their financial contribution. The similar behavior of these two groups is not surprising given that the majority of men involved in these contracts were marrying for the first time, even if some of them were marrying widows. Men who drew up marriage contracts did not systematically tally up the property they contributed, regardless of their choice of spouse.34 For women, there is a striking difference between widows and single women. While women always made reference to their dowries and the nature of the wealth they brought with them, the way a contract described the dowry differed for nevermarried women compared to widows. Widows followed the male pattern of omission that other women did not mimic. 30 of 46 marriage contracts (59 per cent) pertaining to widows did not provide specific information about the nature or value of the dowry. Typically, such contracts stated that the widow’s dowry consisted of “rights and goods belonging to her and resulting from marital conventions and recovery (of assets).” Or, being less specific, a contract might simply state that she brought “that which is contained in the inventory of what she had after her husband’s death,” or a similar indeterminate description.35 With such nebulous phrases, widowed women frequently described their dowries rather than assigning them a concrete monetary worth. This vagueness suggests several characteristics of widows’ remarriages. In some ways these alliances were marked by what we might call coy concealment of assets. Such descriptions gave the widow’s husband-to-be a rather vague idea of the extent of his future wife’s wealth. It is likely that the widow’s suitor, during the time of their courtship, had gained some idea of his fiancée’s financial situation. But without a detailed inventory or enumeration of assets, a groom could not be entirely sure of his wife’s financial standing. In this way, widows asserted informational control 34 In their study of Parisian marriage contracts, Daumard and Furet also found that many of the men in their samples did not specify the value of their contributions, particularly for those men from the lower social ranks or those with little wealth. The behavior of the men in my sample conforms to the findings they drew from a far larger sample. Adeline Daumard and François Furet, Structures et relations sociales à Paris au milieu du XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1961), p. 120 and accompanying chart. 35 AN, MC, étude CI/447, 5 July 1751; étude XXXIV/582, 30 June 1751.

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over their deceased husbands’ wealth. They also implied that they would control its management by withholding knowledge from their new husbands.

Financial Motives The ways contracts were structured shed light on the motivations of remarrying spouses. There are a number of plausible reasons why spouses might attempt to keep their partners from knowing the extent of their possessions. The reasons depended on the widow’s economic situation, and to some extent on the reasons for her decision to remarry. Generally partners marrying for a second time seemed to use their financial independence, the small dowers and survivor’s benefits, the almost miserly contributions to the marital community, to express their adulthood and emotional independence. Such ploys also helped to keep assets out of a husband’s grasp, even if only partially and temporarily. Such concerns were perhaps compounded by the individual nature of second marriages. In a second (or third or fourth) marriage, the meaning of the ceremony differed for the partners. Few witnesses attended the ceremonies, reinforcing the notion that in a second marriage the family was less involved than in a first marriage. The imprecise description of the couple’s financial contribution, and the restrained amount of their contributions suggest that in a second marriage the partners wished to maintain a great degree of financial independence, even while they might be marrying for economic support. Furthermore, the kind of support a widow often looked for in a second marriage was not necessarily for wealth but for labor, for help with her business and in raising her children, rather than in providing her with capital or liquid assets. The remarrying widow was not looking to pool her wealth with that of her new husband, particularly if she had children from a prior union. She was seeking to find another partner to help her with the labor of the home and the business. While this generalization does not hold true for every second marriage, it does account for the terms of many of them. In some sense, the provisions of the civil law encouraged such an attitude toward a second husband. The Parisian custom of marriage contracts was extremely favorable to remarriage of partners of means because they could declare any property lineage property and thus never fear losing an inheritance. It was not the fear of losing control of family assets that inhibited widows from taking a husband. A handful of literary works explored the emotions behind widows’ marriages. What these literary works show is that when widowed women remarried there was a sense that they had leeway in choosing who they married and could make that decision without anyone’s permission, or approval. The dearth of witnesses at second marriages buttresses the sense of independence from family in drawing up these alliances. So too does their reluctance to mingle assets with a spouse, in marked contrast to the painstaking way in which first-time brides detailed not only

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their parents’ contributions to their new households but also what they could contribute from the wages they earned. Widows showed no such eagerness to entangle all of their possessions with a new husband’s. Of course, the widow could certainly have concrete reasons, beyond the emotional power that controlling money bestowed, for withholding financial information from her new husband. Widows with a great deal of wealth, acquired from a first husband, parents, or from the fruits of a first family’s labors, would certainly wish to prevent new husbands from squandering those assets. Indeed, if the widow had children by her first husband she was morally and legally obliged to shield that money from a second husband. But without vigilance and stealth, the law could not keep a husband from irresponsibly managing the household’s assets, and thus diminishing his wife’s and children’s assets. If assets were not scrupulously separated, they could be drawn into the funds used to maintain the household. In such a case, it might take a great deal of minute accounting, or even a lawsuit, to determine the original basis of the family’s wealth. Such financial arrangements also continued to express in some form the independence a widow formally renounced at her wedding. Recall that Jacques Ménétra married a master’s daughter, not widow. Some men may have hesitated at marrying a widow, used to her autonomy and unwilling to give that up at marriage. The opaque descriptions of assets represented in some ways the attempts widows made to control household affairs. Such an attitude emerged in the contract joining Jacqueline Loulliart, the widow of a master tailor, with her journeyman Pierre Lespiau. In the contract, she stated that her dowry “consisted of her matrimonial claims and conventions,” although the value of these claims were not yet fixed as the inventory of her late husband’s estate was finished just seven days before this second marriage contract.36 Much of Loulliart’s wealth consisted of materials and finished goods. Her future husband, Lespiau, also did not specify the worth of the property he brought to this union. His wealth consisted of 350 livres in personal and household goods as well as one-seventh of his deceased mother’s estate, which was not given a specific value or description. The couple decided that each would put just 150 livres into their marital community of goods and the rest of their wealth would remain lineage property. Another asset that Loulliart contributed to the household but that was not mentioned in the contract was her privilege as the widow of a master tailor. Lespiau had worked for Loulliart, and he could take advantage of his new wife’s relationship to the tailor’s guild to enhance his status and become a master. Part of the reason why the value of Loulliart’s claim on her late husband’s estate was not fixed was that she had been left with six children under the age of sixteen, all of whom could also claim part of their father’s estate. In addition, the estate could not have settled its debts so quickly after the dissolution of the marital community. At that point Loulliart and her children would not have even made the 36

AN, MC, étude VII/309, 7 August 1757.

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decision about whether they should renounce the estate or pay all of its debts and claim its assets. The cautious nature of this couple’s contribution to their new household is also illustrated by the minimal values of the dower and the survivor’s benefit. Lespiau agreed to provide his wife with a 300-livres dower, a rather minimal amount. The survivor’s benefit was also meager, 200 livres of goods to whichever spouse survived the other. These amounts suggest a certain level of wariness on the groom’s part about pledging property to a spouse who had other constraints on her wealth. Loulliart, with her six young children, could not promise much to her new spouse without running afoul of her obligations to her children. The formal aspect of her obligation was reflected in the shape of the donations these spouses made to one another in this contract. Lespiau and Loulliart made a mutual donation to each other, a provision that allowed the surviving spouse to make use of all marital assets until his or her death. This clause prevented the deceased’s heirs from claiming that property until the widow’s or widower’s death, thus ensuring the survivor some continuity in living situation. But any spouse who had been married before could only promise a new husband or wife the amount that a child could claim. Thus in this instance, Lespiau could only have life-use of one-seventh of his wife’s assets if she predeceased him, and he could not collect even that minimal settlement if the new couple had any children of their own. As we will see from an examination of other clauses of the marriage contract, this prudence about not transferring assets to an outsider, in this case the new spouse, permeated all of the provisions of the contract and not simply that pertaining to donations. One of the forces that kept contributions and survivor provisions modest in this case was the limited funds each spouse had at his or her disposal. The concrete information we have about this couple suggests that they were not wealthy. We see, however, that even for couples with greater resources, the amounts each contributed to the new marital community were relatively restrained. In the marriage of Jean Louis Saillier, a pin maker, to Marie Dufresne, widow of a master pin maker, the assets of the two were rather evenly matched. Sallier brought 3400 livres to this marriage, which was his first, while Dufresne declared assets of 4000 livres. Each partner contributed 600 livres to the marital community of property, a modest amount considering their relative wealth. If Saillier predeceased his wife, she would be entitled to a 300-livres dower, and the survivor of the two could collect 200 livres in benefits as a survivor’s benefit.37 While this couple had greater assets than many of the others whose contracts we have examined, their contributions to each other in marriage and after death were rather low. They endowed each other with the same bequests as Louilliart and Lespiau, despite the fact that this couple had far less wealth than Dufresne and Saillier. Again, the extent of marital benefits the widow in this marriage could 37

AN, MC, étude XXI/386, 28 January, 1751.

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bestow was limited by her six-year-old son, who had certain claims and rights over his mother’s property. In fact, this contract provides for no mutual donation, but simply adds an additional 400 livres donation to the other survivor’s benefits. This amount was certainly less than Dufresne could have claimed from her husband if they had added a donation clause, and it was even less than what Saillier could have claimed under the Edict on Second Marriages. This contract was marked by caution and restraint, a desire for each partner to maintain control over the majority of personal assets even while they were in the process of creating a new household and a new business. These contracts give us an idea of the different financial tactics and motivations that grounded first and second marriages. They also allow us to see how different couples handled their own situations and relationships in their marriage contracts. Each contract included a particular problem that needed to be solved, be it providing for a child from a second marriage, providing for the terms of a future inheritance, arranging for a parent’s upkeep in old age, or guarding personal assets within a marriage or for an inheritance. For first marriages, parents settled the monetary decisions and strategies a couple would follow; for second marriages, the partners decided for themselves and, often, their children. In some ways, emotional concerns played themselves out over matters of money. But the choice of partners also reflected partners’ sentimental inclinations.

Emotional Motivations While marriage contracts and inventories provide ideas about how widows and their husbands arranged their partnerships, they do not entirely answer the question of why such women wanted to take another spouse. They had to give up their primacy in the home and the shop. They lost their independent standing in the guild and the community. Remarrying widows forfeited a self that had enjoyed the advantages maleness granted in this society. For some women, rough financial circumstances made such a decision necessary. But for those who did not need a man’s income, emotional concerns shaped their decisions. We can glimpse these emotional and personal calculations in the records of the Parisian ecclesiastical court. These courts answered the need to obtain dispensations for certain marriages. These local bishop’s courts were meant to make it simpler for couples to obtain dispensations. They heard brief evidence from couples seeking a religious waiver for a marriage and made a decision immediately. Couples were generally required to perform some token penance to atone for the closeness of the marriage, generally consisting of a certain number of prayers and a request that the couple donate alms to the poor. The Catholic Church required dispensations for all couples who married within the forbidden degrees of closeness, within what was called the fourth canonical

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degree.38 This degree of closeness indicated that the two marriage partners had a common ancestor up to four generations back.39 Such a common ancestor could have lived a full century before the marriage partners, a remoteness that is attested to by couples who married in ignorance of the relationship, forced to go before the ecclesiastical court to rehabilitate what they imagined was a legitimate union.40 The Catholic Church also included reckoning of kinship based on sacramental bonds, or spiritual kinship. Spiritual kinship was a relationship created between godparent and godchild during the sacrament of baptism. Marriage also created ties of spiritual kinship between the two joined families. Marriage and godparentage created ties that were considered equal to blood ties because they both created socially recognized obligations between those who participated in those rituals.41 The Catholic Church had a number of motivations for asserting the equivalence of spiritual with blood relations. This position expanded the power of sacramental relationships, making them equivalent to relationships that had their basis in biology and blood, ones whose importance seemed to be entirely natural in origin. The strategic value of this doctrine lay in its seeming proof that the Church could determine not only matters of religious salvation, but could even dictate on matters of nature. The Church had the power to define and determine what the family meant, a power that it took beyond the one that biology conferred. In doing so, “such prohibitions enabled the Church to exercise a large measure of control in the domestic domain, as was also the case when they took over the protection of widows and orphans.”42 Such influence in the constitution of the household took on greater significance when placed in the context of state expansion into defining the terms of the domestic unit. While French kings were attempting to wrest control over marriage from the Catholic Church, and make its definition subject to secular norms rather than religious ones, the Church was vehemently attempting to shore up its power in this domain. Its prerogative over granting dispensations for marriage was never challenged by the state, and granted the Catholic Church a great deal of power over defining who could marry to create a valid marriage. 38

If a prospective bride and groom shared a great-great-grandparent, the marriage was considered illicit unless the Church granted special permission. Couples also needed certain kinds of dispensations if they were marrying outside of their dioceses and if they had ever taken any kind of religious vows. Pierre Toussaint Durand de Maillane, Dictionnaire de droit canonique et du pratique bénéficiale (4 vols, Lyon, 1770), vol. 1, pp. 237–40. 39 J.M. Gouesse, “Parenté, famille et mariage en Normandie aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Présentation d’une source et d’une enquête,” Annales. ESC, 27/4–5 (1972): 1142. 40 AN, Z1O 174, 8 April 1732; 181b, 14 August 1778 to name two such instances. 41 Jack Goody, The Development of Marriage and the Family in Europe (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 56–9. Jean-Louis Flandrin also notes the equivalence of blood and spiritual kinship in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century usage. Familles: Parenté, maison, sexualité dans l’ancienne société (Paris, 1984), p. 24. 42 Goody, Marriage and the Family, p. 59.

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It would be simple to dismiss such requirements as mere formalities, ones that held little significance for those couples who were forced into meeting them and that served only the purpose of enriching the Church through the fees required and contributing to their fading sense of relevance to the constitution of marriage bonds. But the evidence suggests a less cynical interpretation of the meaning of spiritual kinship. Of the 156 requests for dispensations made by widows between 1729 and 1790, 106 pertained to partners who wished to marry within the forbidden bounds of spiritual kinship. For this group of widows, godparentage created lasting and meaningful bonds for them, so strong that they chose marriage partners who were godfathers to their children or the fathers of their own godchildren. This preponderance of marriages among spiritual kin also suggests that godparents felt a sense of obligation to the children they had pledged to help raise in the Catholic faith. At times this category could overlap with that of blood relations, reinforcing the sense of obligation and interdependence. Aunts, uncles, and cousins often doubled as baptismal sponsors, although parents could also ask friends or neighbors to take on such a role for their child. When a man or woman stood as a godparent, he or she promised to ensure that the child would be brought up in the Catholic faith and that he or she would provide for the child if anything happened to the parents.43 The choice of blood kin from the male and female line helped to ensure closer ties to the family’s network of relations and perhaps mend over any conflict within the kinship group, especially between affines. It also allowed people to “vivre entre soi,” to use Claude Levi-Strauss’ formulation.44 The process of the officialité required the partners to explain why they wished to marry their partner despite the closeness of the relationship. These explanations, only a tantalizing sentence or two long, provide a glimpse into what motivated widows to remarry. Several examples will give us an idea of these motivations. Sixty-five-year-old Marguerite Laquese required a dispensation to marry 53-yearold Jean Gaston. She was the widow of a master tailor and he was her journeyman and the godparent to one of her children. In her request to the bishop’s court, she explained that she has three children from her first marriage, of whom two are still in her care, one of them is physically infirm and the other is mentally troubled, that the (prospective groom) also has a child he needs to establish, that (she) is obliged to marry in order to help her children and her business subsist, and that her children would prevent her from finding another suitor.45 43

Andrejs Plakans, Kinship in the Past: An Anthropology of European Family Life, 1500–1900 (Oxford, 1984), p. 41. 44 On affines see chapter 1; David Sabean, Power in the Blood. Popular Culture and Village Discourse in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge, 1984), pp. 31–3; Claude LéviStrauss, Les structures élémentaires de la parenté (Paris, 1967, second edition), p. 23. 45 AN, Z1O 176a, 1 September 1751.

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Undoubtedly her age also would have prevented her from finding another marriage partner. What went unsaid at the hearing was that Gaston would also benefit from this match by having access to the mastership that he had not yet managed to attain by the age of 53. The demands of parenthood figured prominently in the appeals for dispensation. Therese de Montet, widow of a master bookseller, offered such an explanation in her request for a dispensation to marry her journeyman Rombaud David. She stated that she is saddled with three young children and cannot support the continuation of her business and the education of her children by herself; that moreover for about a year they have sought each other out for marriage and have even had carnal relations, such that if the marriage did not take place it would cause considerable harm to the (prospective bride’s) reputation.46

Here we seen the addition of another frequently cited reason for needing a dispensation: sexual relations. Many of the couples who sought such marriages had already been engaged in intimate relations that were apparently known to neighbors. In such circumstances, the partners considered it imperative that they marry in order to maintain their reputations. When Marie Madelaine Berthier asked for a dispensation she admitted that “they have had carnal relations, that this would cause harm to her reputation and would prevent her from finding another suitor given the relations between (the prospective bride and groom) in the two years since her widowhood.”47 Here the partners were also initially acquainted because Etienne Raulhac, the prospective groom, worked for Berthier. The issue of reputation also arose in Françoise Boucher’s request. She explained that she needed to marry Pierre Antoine Paris because “they have had carnal relations, with the result that the (prospective bride) is actually pregnant; this would harm her reputation and prevent her from finding another suitor.”48 This was one of the few cases where the bride and groom did not work together and so their paramount concern was to regularize their sexual relationship and assure their child legitimacy, rather than seeking solvency for a business. In addition to the needs of children and the pull of intimate relationships, widows also frequently cited the need for help with business as incentive to enter these marriages. Anne Louise Boulanger wished to marry her journeyman Jean Baptiste Chevalier because she could not cope alone with the business she had inherited. She stated that “at his death her husband left his affairs in great difficulty. And she ran the risk of not finding a suitor given that it is the (prospective groom) who runs the shop.”49 Boulanger needed another experienced hand in the shop and Chevalier

46 47 48 49

AN, Z1O 176a, 20 April 1751. AN, Z1O 177, 19 July 1757. AN, Z1O 178, 14 June 1764. AN, Z1O 176b, 4 November 1755.

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answered that need. He too would benefit by the opportunity to become a master grocer. Marie Anne André, widow of a master tailor, found herself in a similar situation. She wished to marry her journeyman Jean Champelou who was her child’s godparent for several reasons, but the most pressing had to do with the demands of her business. André explained that for the two years she has been widowed, no suitor capable of supporting her enterprise has presented himself, besides the (prospective groom), also he is in the same profession; that moreover the (prospective groom) has lived for some time with her because he has been at the head of her business.”50

Champelou had informally taken over the place André’s husband had occupied and the two wished to regularize this arrangement. Without him, the widow believed her business would fail and the equilibrium in her home and business life she had established since her husband’s death would collapse. The brief testimony contained in the officialité cases do not provide a complete accounting of why widows remarried. Certainly these couples shaped their requests to what they believed would sway the bishop’s court. The ubiquitous mention of the fear of neighborhood gossip and the need to hush rumors of sexual relations seemed to appeal to the Catholic Church’s wish to confine sexuality to marriage. But such mentions of intimate relations also suggest that widows married sometimes not just for practical reasons but because they fell in love and wanted male companionship. Without the mediation of parents, women could choose their partners for reasons beyond practical ones, a privilege widows often exercised. But despite the questions these records raise, they do nonetheless give a sense of why widowed women took new husbands. Why did they give up the privileges and independence they gained in widowhood? A partial response is that for certain women other needs—be they financial, emotional, or physical—loomed larger. Widows weighed their options and sometimes opted for wifehood again, with its limitations and rewards. But for the second walk to the altar, widows had some leeway in choosing new partners and could make that decision without the permission, or even the opinion, of others. Coupled with the evidence of second marriage contracts, we can see that in contrast to first marriages, where partners married in order to fulfill concerns of their natal families, second marriages allowed brides and grooms more latitude in choosing their marital partners and in structuring marriage to suit their own needs.

50

AN, Z1O 178, 20 January 1761.

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Conclusion We can draw several conclusions from the evidence presented here on widow remarriage. Artisanal widows seem to have remarried less frequently than the general population of widows, a supposition that is borne out by evidence that shows a great many independent widows running shops in eighteenth-century Paris. Even widows who did remarry diverged from the patterns of remarriage that held true for the general population. Widows chose partners who could assist them in running their businesses, rather than men who were members of their extended families. In contrast to smaller cities and rural areas where family ties were paramount in creating marriages, a practice attested to not only by demographic data but also by folklore dealing with marital practices, these urban women saw professional ties as most important factor in choosing a good husband.51 The role that professional concerns played in these remarriages is supported by the evidence on age and reasons for marriage presented in the officialité cases. In this sample, the women were on average older than the men they married—a mean age of 44 for widows and 37 for the men they married. This pattern suggests that widows married the men who worked for them, who were generally younger than they were, in part so they could be more tightly integrated into the enterprise. The reasons that partners forwarded for marrying nearly always mentioned the exigencies of work. The widows who brought their cases to the bishop’s court wanted to marry their chosen partners in great measure because they needed a helpmeet. The evidence presented in marriage contracts buttresses this image of the independent widow, especially in those unions where the partners contributed little to the household’s property but instead guarded most of their wealth for themselves. Although some of the widows who remarried out of necessity did not have the resources to retain any measure of meaningful independence, most of them did have ways to maintain some fiscal separation from their new husbands. We see here that widows maintained at least some level of independence, even in remarriage, due in great measure to their continued influence over the resources of a master artisan.

51

Arnold Van Gennep, Manuel de folklore français contemporain (4 vols, Paris, 1937), vol. 1, p. 228; Germaine Tillion, Le harem et les cousins (Paris, 1966), pp. 120–27; Paul Cuzacq, La naissance, le mariage et le décès. moeurs et coutumes: usages anciens (Paris, 1902), p. 97.

Chapter 6

The Trap of Poverty

Introduction Although many widows survived and prospered after the death of a husband, for many of these women material want was the end of a long and difficult trajectory. Widows were not predestined to become destitute. Many of them had assets that they employed shrewdly to support themselves and their families. Simply being alone did not dictate that a woman would inevitably fall into destitution. Nor was a widow of means sure to squander her wealth through ineptitude or naiveté and end up poor. But the situation of widows presents a puzzle, an instance when perception and experience did not coincide. In the minds of contemporaries, widows brought to mind images of poverty. So too the emphasis for historians has been the poor widow.1 Because both Church and secular authorities saw them as the most deserving of the poor, they generally enjoyed a privileged relationship to relief even as resources for other ranks of the poor diminished. Yet in spite of the expectations of their contemporaries, many widows managed to support themselves even in the face of difficulties. But poor widows remained a part of the early modern landscape, along with the successful women we have looked at. This chapter examines widows and poverty from two perspectives. First we need to consider the financial precariousness of widowhood. Poverty had multiple meanings in the early modern period, so not every poor person fulfilled the same criteria. In early modern parlance, “poor” was a sweeping category that included anyone who had to support himself or herself though work, although within this large group contemporaries did make certain distinctions. As Daniel Roche puts it, “there is a sense in which the majority of the Parisian population was on the poverty line at any given moment, because all it had to live on was its own labor.” Thus anyone without wealth ample enough to generate an income was deemed poor.2 Such a definition, obviously, includes nearly every one of the women who 1 See for one example the collection Jan Bremmer and Lourens Van den Bosch (eds), Between Poverty and the Pyre: Moments in the History of Widowhood (London, 1995). 2 Daniel Roche, “A Pauper Capital: Some Reflections on the Parisian Poor in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries,” French History, 1/2 (1987): 188. This definition of poor appears in many works on poverty in early modern France. See, for one example of such an explanation of the notion of “poor” Jean-Pierre Gutton, La société et les pauvres en Europe (XVIe–XVIIIe siècles) (Paris, 1974), p. 54. Olwen Hufton in her The Poor of

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make up the subject of this study. But while this definition may have been meaningful at that moment, highlighting the precarious and difficult nature of survival in early modern society, it does not present us with a particularly useful means of understanding the financial challenges widows faced. A better way to understand poverty with regard to artisanal widows is to look at the failure of work, rather than its necessity, as the path to misery.3 In trying to understand the meaning of poverty, we also need to keep in mind that it was a relative phenomenon. For those used to scraping by with scanty wages, poverty meant not having enough to buy bread and provide shelter. For artisanal widows, impoverishment did not necessarily mean starvation, although in extreme cases it certainly could. These women generally seemed to have the ability to cobble together some kind of minimal living situation, by calling on family and friends as well as some small assets. Instead it denoted a relative downward movement from married life, a gray area where a woman could not support herself and continue her livelihood in a way that approximated her status during marriage. As we shall see, truly destitute widows were poor precisely because they could not support themselves by their own labor. Such widows found that their businesses had failed them, circumstance forced them to give up their trades, and while they may have preserved shelter and food for themselves, they lived in greatly reduced circumstances in comparison to their married situations. In looking at the contours of poverty for this social group, we need to consider the resources a destitute woman was able to call upon after she had exhausted all of her personal monetary funds A widowed woman could tap into help offered by her family, always a first choice, or her neighbors. Guilds offered some measure of rudimentary assistance to poor masters and widows, although it was generally just enough to get by in the most bare manner. The Catholic Church offered formal relief to widows, usually through the parish where a woman would be known and could thus be judged as worthy (or not) by her community. Finally, the royal government offered a certain amount of relief, commonly in the form of a bed at the Hôpital Général, but that was certainly a refuge of last resort.

Eighteenth-Century France, 1750–1789 (Oxford, 1974), pp. 18–19 invokes such a workcentered definition of the poor for the eighteenth-century sensibility although in her own analysis she problematizes such a materially-based notion of poverty. Mary Elizabeth Perry contextualizes her notion of poverty, seeing it more as a phenomenon that creates relations of necessity, Gender and Disorder in Early Modern Seville (Princeton, 1990), p. 173. 3 Christian Romon, “Le Monde des pauvres à Paris au XVIIIe siècle,” Annales ESC, 37/4 (1982): 735. The notion that the failure of work generated the conditions of poverty was beginning to take hold at the end of the eighteenth century. However, in most instances the failure to work was seen as a sign of indolence on the part of the individual rather than a structural problem. See for example, Montesquieu’s often-quoted declaration that “(a) man is not poor because he has nothing but because he does not work.” The Spirit of the Laws, trans. Thomas Nugent (2 vols, New York, 1949), vol. 2, p. 25.

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The other side of poverty for widows was on the giving side. We cannot understand the role of poverty, and the idea of poverty, in the lives of widows without taking this behavior into consideration. A more common relationship to poverty for artisanal widows was in providing assistance to the poor rather than taking that assistance. Most widows, whether of modest or more substantial wealth, provided for the poor in their wills.4 The strong urge to give to the poor tapped into a number of elements of female experience in the early modern period. As we have seen, women tended to have stronger attachment to religious practices than men did in the early modern period. Part of the practice of piety included giving alms to the poor or tending to their needs in order to achieve spiritual satisfaction and uplift.5 Assisting the poor also tapped into anxiety and fears about the seeming inevitability of female poverty. Widows must have understood, from their daily interactions, that many women left without men and their wages were destitute, and barely scraped by. They undoubtedly dreaded meeting such a fate themselves, and the act of giving, documented in wills, may have been a way to manage and control that fear. In a very practical way, when widows provided funds for the poor in their wills they demonstrated that, in contrast to their beneficiaries, they were not poor. Such women, possessing a surplus that they could use to endow the less fortunate, had themselves escaped the rigors of poverty. Finally, we might speculate that widows, because their experiences had placed them close to death at certain moments, were more consciously aware of the finite nature of life than other men and women. Being mindful of human mortality may have prompted them to tend to spiritual duties in order to be prepared for their inevitable demise. In order to understand this impulse to provide for the less fortunate that widows expressed, we can explore how poverty was ideologically gendered in a way that seemed to push widows to fear impoverishment. While historians have documented the place of widows in the population of the poor, none have looked at 4 All but twelve of the widows in my sample provided for the poor, in one form or another. Both Daniel Roche, working with data provided in the unpublished thesis of MarieChristine Lorang, and Michel Vovelle chronicle a decline in charitable giving. Jacques DePauw finds that the women he encountered in his study of charity and spirituality in seventeenth-century Paris consistently gave alms. This is an instance where gender and age shaped charitable giving and concern for the poor, thus showing how widows’ practices diverged from that of the general population. Roche, “A Pauper Capital,” pp. 194–5; Michel Vovelle, Piété baroque et déchristianisation en Provence au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1973), pp. 288–90, 610–13; Jacques DePauw, Spiritualité et pauvreté à Paris au XVIIe siècle (Paris, 1999), p. 305. 5 Muriel Joergen notes the relationship between seventeenth-century Catholicism and increased almsgiving to charitable institutions, as counter-Reformation priests reminded the faithful of their duty to the poor. “The Structure of the Hospital System in France in the Ancien Régime,” trans. Elborg Forster, Robert Forster and Orest Ranum (eds), Medicine and Society in France (Baltimore, 1980), p. 122.

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the ideology as a gendered language, one where ideas of sex difference and the cultural connotations of that difference served as an important way to classify and deal with the poor.6 The association of widows with the honorable and deserving poor, as evidenced in contemporary writings, seemed to send the message that most such women would fall into such a fate, that being female made indigence inevitable. It created a strong link between widowhood and poverty. While the strong evidential association between widowhood and poverty is undeniable, the impact these kinds of representations had on women is not clear. A number of widows chose to sell their businesses or invest their wealth in ways that would ensure them a small but steady living. Were such behaviors shrewd financial decisions made to stretch thin assets as far as possible? Or were they ways in which widows voluntarily curtailed their activities, even ones they were permitted to undertake by the law and their families, to avoid becoming impoverished? Did they seek out what might be called in modern parlance very conservative investments, trading off better returns for greater security? By offering representations of poor suffering widows, by stressing how handicapped a woman was if she tried to survive alone, contemporary writers and moralists subtly pushed widows to hem in their independence out of fear. Such fears might be particularly debilitating for artisanal widows who, by and large, did not live in the poverty so customary for many of Paris’ working population. Most of the widows here had husbands who during their lives had accumulated some level of material security, even if they never became comfortably well-off. We can imagine, then, that for such women it was quite shocking to fall into destitution, making widowhood that much more difficult, urging them to take action to avoid such a fate.7

Institutional Solutions to Poverty The institutions that existed to diminish and control the problems of poverty have been well-documented for the eighteenth century. Subsidized work projects, charity hospitals, and religious foundations all provided limited resources for the poor. However, widows and other honorable poor were put at a disadvantage by the new definitions of poverty becoming prevalent in the eighteenth century. 6

For example, William Olejniczak discusses the various strands that shaped the language of poverty and the poor of eighteenth-century France without reference to the assumptions about gender that underpinned such a project. Gutton’s discussion of different categories of poor also gives little consideration to issues of gender. Olejniczak, “Royal Paternalism with a Repressive Face: the Ideology of Poverty in late Eighteenth-Century France,” Journal of Policy History, 2/2 (1990): 160; Gutton, La sociéte et les pauvres, pp. 9–11. 7 Romon, “Le monde des pauvres,” p. 729.

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Increasingly government projects to alleviate poverty took the form of work houses, hospitals, and even prisons. A number of royal initiatives enacted throughout the eighteenth century targeted the able-bodied poor, making control, rather than relief, a priority. The government initiated its first major anti-mendicancy campaign in 1724 which represented the first state attempt to declare begging a criminal and punishable activity.8 In 1764 public begging became a criminal offense, signaling increasing intolerance for the poor. In the 1780s the royal government committed even more money to the fight against the poor with a work program. This program establishing charitable workshops was “explicitly intended to target the ablebodied wage-earning poor who were perceived as most easily slipping into indigence, and, worse, begging and vagrancy.”9 However, such measures were not suitable for the honest poor, and particularly not for the old and invalid widow who occupied the public imagination.10 As such, there were few appropriate channels of state assistance unless widows became so ill and destitute that they were admitted to a charity hospital.11 The honorable poor had to rely on different sources of charity, primarily from neighborhood and community sources.

The Place of the Widow among the Poor Widows’ anxiety about poverty was, without doubt, firmly based in experience. For residents of early modern France, the widow was the most emblematic of the poor. Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, in his Études de la Nature, characterized the beloved prince as one who showed all the admired virtues, including performing “an act of justice given unexpectedly and without pomp, to a poor widow.”12 To show kindness to his most vulnerable subject demonstrated the prince’s worth. Likewise, and following the example set by the good ruler, a widow’s neighbors and friends were also supposed to assist her in her need. Historians also emphasize the precarious nature of widowhood and the prevalence of widows in the rolls of the destitute. As Kathryn Norberg notes in her study of poverty, while the composition of the acceptable poor changed in important ways over the course of the seventeenth century, “widows still remained, 8

See chapter 1 of Jean-Pierre Gutton, L'état et mendicité dans la première moitié du XVIIIesiècle: Auvergne, Beaujolais, Forez, Lyonnais (Saint-Etienne, 1973). 9 William Olejniczak, “Working the Body of the Poor: The Ateliers de Charité in Late Eighteenth-Century France,” Journal of Social History, 24/1 (1990): 89. 10 Pierre Deyon, “A propos du paupérisme au milieu du XVIIe siècle: Peinture et charité chrétienne,” Annales ESC, 22/1 (1967): 137–53. 11 According to Robert Schwartz, the poor feared the Hôtel-Dieu and avoided admission. Policing the Poor in Eighteenth-Century France (Chapel Hill, 1988), p. 72. 12 Jacques-Henri Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, Études de la Nature (5 vols, Paris, 1804), vol. 3, p. 321.

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as they had for centuries, among the primary victims of impoverishment.”13 James Farr also found that a disproportionate number of people at the bottom of the tax rolls in Dijon were widows, and even widows of skilled tradesmen who might be expected to have a certain amount of wealth in their possession.14 Broad studies of poverty observe a similar phenomenon: widows, even if they enjoyed a relatively secure place in society, were more likely to suffer from want than others. For example, in his wide-ranging study of the poor in early modern France, Jean-Pierre Gutton remarks that “among the misfortunes due to age, the most numerous, also perhaps the most serious, are those of widows.”15 In part, their ubiquity among the destitute meant that widows constituted the most worthy of the honorable poor according to those who handed out relief in early modern France.16 But their vulnerability, the difficulty single women had in earning a living, the burden of fatherless children, also added to the worthiness of the claims of widows. However, in spite of the evidence that shows widows representing the majority of those categorized as impoverished, we need to interrogate these figures to get a more nuanced sense of widows’ place in the ranks of the poor. This question is complicated by two factors. First, the threshold of poverty was not strictly determined at this moment so it is difficult to know exactly how to judge the lots of these women. The term “poor” might cover the widow who worked but needed bread assistance from her parish once or twice a month as well as the utterly destitute woman with no resources to call upon seeking a place in the Hôpital Général.17 While these two women might have fallen into the same expansive 13

Kathryn Norberg, Rich and Poor in Grenoble, 1600–1814 (Berkeley, 1985), p. 184. James R. Farr, Hands of Honor. Artisans and Their World in Dijon, 1550–1650 (Ithaca, 1988), p. 91. 15 Gutton, La société et les pauvres, p. 54. Gutton also discusses definitions of poverty on pages 9–11. Maureen Flynn, Sacred Charity: Confraternities and Social Welfare in Spain, 1400–1700 (Ithaca, 1989), p. 86; Hufton, Poor of Eighteenth-Century France, pp. 115–16; Robert Jütte, Poverty and Deviance in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1994), pp. 24, 40; Merry Wiesner, Gender in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1993), p. 189; Bronislaw Geremek, Poverty: A History, trans. Agnieszka Kolakowska (London, 1994), p. 26; Olejniczak, “Royal Paternalism with a Repressive Face,” pp. 158, 173. 16 Sandra Cavallo sees heightened concern for poor women reflected in patterns of poor relief in late seventeenth-century Turin. She posits that this concern was due to an awareness of female vulnerability brought on by anti-marriage rhetoric. Other historians do not find such a distinct rise in concern for women in this period, although Cavallo’s findings are certainly consonant with these other works in terms of seeing women as particularly vulnerable to poverty. Charity and Power in Early Modern Italy: Benefactors and Their Motives in Turin, 1541–1789 (Cambridge, 1995), p. 5. 17 The register Les pauvres veuves kept in the parish of Sainte-Marguerite detailed assistance given to widowed women who worked to maintain themselves outside of charitable institutions but nonetheless needed assistance. AN LL 839. On the state of widows in the Hôpital-Générale de Paris and the Hôtel Dieu see, among others, Robert Schwartz, Policing the Poor, esp. pp. 43–5. Muriel Joerger also delineates the role of 14

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category of “poor,” and received assistance to help them in their plights, their material environments and practical problems differed greatly. Second, the definition of who had a right to claim relief was somewhat fluid, depending on financial situation. For example, the “shamefaced poor,” those who had fallen from an elevated social status to poverty, could lay claim to assistance on different terms than the day laborer who could not find work.18 Deciding who was poor, and whether they belonged to the worthy or unworthy poor, meant understanding not only an individual’s destitution but also his or her status prior to this misfortune. Given these questions, we cannot assume from such pieces of information that all widows did indeed represent the majority of the poor. Indeed, women whose husbands had been day laborers surely suffered a great deal when they lost their husbands. For such widows, the loss of their husbands’ wages coupled with a lack of assets and inferior wages for unskilled work precipitated a family financial crisis. This problem connects with the idea of the family economy explored earlier. As I have suggested, for widows of master craftsmen the calculus of the family economy did not so clearly circumscribe their material situation. In possession of assets, both material and social, these women often had enough to support themselves. As such, the realities of poverty were both more frightening and more remote than they were for the ranks of the true working poor who had no wealth save what their hands brought them on a daily basis. Veuves-maîtresses might have no internal coping mechanism for navigating true destitution, never having confronted it in practical terms. Of course, some widows did have to face this fear after the death of a husband. And certainly there were artisans who could not earn adequate wages to support their families well. But in general artisanal widows were more protected from poverty than women of the working poor, although they were nonetheless concerned with the challenges of maintaining financial solvency.19

various charity hospitals in the tending of the poor, noting that Paris was particularly wellendowed with hospitals to care for the sick-poor. See her “The Structure of the Hospital System,” esp. p. 116. 18 Linda Martz, Poverty and Welfare in Habsburg Spain: The Example of Toledo (Cambridge, 1983), pp. 8–11. Mary Elizabeth Perry also uses the notion of the “shamefaced poor” to distinguish levels of impoverishment. See her Gender and Disorder, p. 175. 19 Daniel Roche echoes this generalization that the artisanal classes, by virtue of the productive means they controlled, were more immune to poverty than the unskilled laboring poor. See his “A Pauper Capital,” pp. 183, 188, and 206, as well as The People of Paris, pp. 22–4. Christian Romon has charted the occupational standing of poor accused of begging and finds that while journeymen were to be found among the poor population of Paris, it was very rare to find master artisans in such straits. Presumably the assets a master could call upon sheltered him from this exigency. Christian Romon, “Mendiants et policiers à Paris au XVIIIe siècle,” Histoire, Économie, Société, 2 (1982), annex 5.

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Moral Dimensions of Poverty One of the factors that such a material definition of poverty did not address, and one that was critical to assessing the widow’s need, was the question of moral standing. In the extended vocabulary of early modern poverty, which included a dozen terms each one a shade different from the other, the individual’s moral worthiness often determined how his or her financial need was understood.20 The worth of an individual’s claim to charity rested in great measure on his or her vulnerability, on the perceived level of support he or she could claim, and on the individual’s culpability in creating his or her difficulties.21 Thus widows, orphans, the aged, the infirm comprised the most worthy of the poor and had few problems in claiming what relief was available. In fact, because the definition of poor was tied up with moral as well as economic standards, it was possible to create a definition of poverty that shut out some who were materially impoverished based on the gendering of acceptable poverty. For example, a 1667 survey of Seville found 297 women and children listed among the respectable poor as opposed to only 23 men, all of whom were “cripples, blind, ill, or very old.”22 The worthy poor were often rendered so because they had no family support to help keep them financially solvent. They fell into their misfortune through no fault of their own, by the hand of fate and time rather than through their own folly. These categories of the poor enjoyed a sense of authenticity, and presented few of the problems of fraudulent representation that plagued those who distributed poor relief. The status of an orphan or a widow was easily verified, especially as most alms were given locally. Neighbors and friends could confirm their status. The state of the aged or ill was apparent in the claimant’s physique. The inability of these unfortunates to earn a living through their work was manifest. The problems that confronted charitable givers when they had to assess the needs of the able-bodied unemployed, especially in times of famine and mass displacement, generally did not apply when giving to these privileged categories of the poor. The worthy poor did not arouse suspicions and fears the way beggars and wanderers did. The range of terms applied to various segments of the impoverished population reflected the importance of such distinctions in the provision of poor relief, and 20

Hufton, The Poor of Eighteenth-Century France, p. 18. Cavallo cautions that changes in the identity and motivations of givers “contributed toward shaping the very perception of poverty itself and thus influenced definitions of the worthy recipient to a much greater extent than has previously been recognized: in many cases, the definition of who was and was not deserving of relief can be seen as a metaphorical transposition of discourses which reflected tensions within the world of the elite.” Charity and Power, p. 5. I share Cavallo’s concern with assuming that there was no nuance in the plight of the poor beyond their raw material circumstances. Their situation, and poor women themselves, responded to changes in the surrounding society. 22 Perry, Gender and Disorder, p. 172. 21

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authorities employed these many different terms to distinguish the situations of the poor people they were called upon to assess. The push to rationalize categories of the poor emerged most clearly in the seventeenth century with the beginnings of the use of confinement in workhouses to solve the problem of the wandering poor.23 Even at this moment of great change in attitudes toward poverty, and in the concrete system of poor relief, widows saw little change in their status as “honorable poor.” One question that arises as a result of widows distinctive, and largely unchanging, status in the ranks of the poor, is why did attitudes toward these impoverished women remain static in the face of what appears to be a deep and fundamental shift in attitudes toward other segments of the poor population. I would suggest that the answer has two parts. For Christians, the obligation to care for widows came from the Bible. Both Old and New Testament books exhorted the faithful to care for society’s most vulnerable members, most prominently widows and orphans. The sanctity of widows’ poverty in Christianity’s holy text preserved these women as eternally worthy of charity. Second, part of the patriarchal ideology that informed ideas about gender in French culture emphasized the vulnerability of women who did not have a man to care for them. By emphasizing the worthiness of the poor widow, charitable institutions and the State reinscribed the notion that women alone were in a constant struggle for survival. Writings by religious figures reinforced the idea that solitary women, especially older widows, were always on the brink of destitution and as such needed the Church’s intervention, with its concomitant moral obligations, to save them from that fate. But such notions of widows’ poverty needs to be nuanced. Certainly after the loss of their husbands, usually the primary wage earner, many women would be extremely uncertain about their economic future. But widows of master craftsmen, with their control over the assets of the family business, would be in a very different position from that of widows of day laborers. The latter would be in serious financial jeopardy, with little hope of finding employment that would pay her a living wage. But the widows under examination here were not so desperate for the most part. However, the representational equalizing of widowhood with poverty did not take into account such differences in status. I would argue that such depictions, along with the legal restrictions that placed certain theoretical limits on female agency, were meant to frighten women about their chances of being prosperous without the assistance of a man. Such images were meant to encourage 23 Geremek, Poverty, pp. 221–5. This shift in attitudes toward certain segments of the impoverished population, often regarded as stemming from the religious clashes engendered during the Reformation, have been documented by many other historians of poverty. See in particular Norberg, Rich and Poor, chapter 5 and Olejniczak, “Working the Body of the Poor,” pp. 90–92. Jean-Pierre Gutton chronicles this process in great detail for early modern Lyon in his La société et les pauvres: l’exemple de la généralité de Lyon, 1534–1789 (Paris, 1971), especially chapter 2.

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them to seek out the shelter of another marriage, the home of a male relative, or a life in the Church. However, despite the examples of success that have emerged in this study, many widows unfortunately found their lives bound up with the struggle against poverty. While this book has focused on the ways that widows could find ways to live prosperous and autonomous lives, we cannot deny the grimmer reality that faced some women, through a combination of circumstance, accidents, and bad luck. These stereotypes of poor widows did unfortunately reflect the experiences of some women after their husbands died. We need to ask what the factors were that pushed some widows into misfortune as well as the resources they could call upon to assist them in this situation. We will also look at poverty as linked to a specific social and economic context, rather than being inherent to widows, and women in general.

Poverty as Religious Calling Before moving into an examination of the material reasons for female poverty under these circumstances, we need to speculate on some of the ways that widow impoverishment was ideologically created. As we saw in the discussion of religion, widows exemplified the deserving poor. They were seen as fragile, vulnerable, without personal resources and eminently worthy of help from the Church and the community. This notion of widows as the most meritorious of the poor endured for centuries even while attitudes toward other indigents and poor relief transformed dramatically. By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the definition of poor, and more importantly who should receive institutional relief, had become more rigid.24 Even within the ranks of the religious, sympathy for the destitute was on the decline. Such changes in attitudes toward the poor formed part of a larger shift toward what historians have termed a period of enclosure, when a growing State apparatus sought to categorize the poor according to the validity of their claim on assistance and then rationalize that assistance through the use of newly formed secular institutions. But despite this fundamental change in the understanding of the place of the poor in society, widows continued to be seen as a protected group, worthy of assistance simply because they were vulnerable solitary women. While this notion of widowed women as needy certainly reflected their experiences, as we shall see shortly, it also reflected the view that such women 24

Historians of poverty have discussed at length the idea of the deserving versus the undeserving poor. For an overview of the question in the early modern period see Jütte, Poverty and Deviance, especially chapter 7; Gutton, La société et les pauvres: Lyon; Olejniczak, “Working the Body of the Poor,” Natalie Zemon Davis, “Poor Relief, Humanism, and Heresy: The Case of Lyon,” in Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford, 1974) and Norberg, Rich and Poor, especially chapter 5.

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should ideally place themselves under male authority. The biographer of Madame Pollalion, widow of a minor office holder, extols his subject as a woman who “wanting nothing not in God’s plan, found it thus in Him and in submission to his will.”25 In order to achieve this submission, Madame Pollalion sought solace in piety and humility. As a result, “her condition did nothing but get better, in taking Jesus Christ as her only spouse and in devoting herself to Him entirely.”26 In following a path set out by her priest and her God, Madame Pollalion assured her salvation, met her material needs in a religious house, and lived an orderly life. By presenting widows with the specter of poverty and suffering, writers and religious leaders nudged women to reinscribe themselves in a stable patriarchally-based relationship, with another husband, in a religious order, or in the household of a male relative, that would protect them from such a fate. Stirring up the fear of poverty was another means to handle the ambivalence that independent women invoked. If women believed the representations they heard and saw, of poor pious widows scraping by but never having enough to support themselves and their families, perhaps they might more readily trade in their independence for security. It is hard to imagine that a widowed woman would not be fearful of destitution, given the real difficulties she faced and the images of poverty presented to her. The law revealed ambivalence on the question of how to deal with fears about independent women. In many ways the legal disposition of property within marriage furthered the likelihood that a widow would face financial difficulties after her husband’s death. Within the confines of the conjugal household, the husband held entire legal control over the family’s assets. Although a wife contributed her wages to the family and the earnings on her dowry helped to provide further wealth, she had little say in how her husband employed the wealth she contributed. For the most part, the same held true for her dowry. While the primary purpose of the dowry was to provide a steady stream of income to help support the new household, a husband was free to dispose of the principle of his wife’s dowry under certain circumstances. A dowry that took the form of real property, like a house or a piece of land, could not be alienated. But if the dowry took the form of cash or moveable goods, and was given a precise monetary value in the marriage contract, the husband could use it as he wished, provided that he restore the same sum at the dissolution of the marriage.27 When a woman died her family or heirs demanded restitution of the dowry, a claim on her estate that trumped all others. Similarly, the widow’s demand for her dowry was the most pressing claim on the estate after her husband’s death. But 25

M. Collin, Vie de la venerable servante de Dieu Marie Lumague veuve de M. Pollalion, gentil-homme ordinaire du Roy, Institutrice des filles de la Providence (Paris, 1744), p. 26. 26 Collin, Vie de Lumague, p. 27. 27 Jean-Baptiste Denisart, Collection de décisions nouvelles et de notions relatives à la jurisprudence actualle (4 vols, Paris, 1771) , vol. 2, p. 204.

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until that moment of final reckoning, the husband enjoyed complete freedom over how he administered his family’s assets. While we can assume that a wife would have some informal influence over financial decisions, she had no legal means to demand a voice in how her husband spent money and was forced to rely on his willingness to listen to her opinions.28 This ceding of all decisions to the husband created a situation where a woman could be saddled with debts or be spent into penury without her assent, creating a situation where a wife was utterly dependent on her husband to provide the family with financial stability. But while the assignment of all financial authority to the husband created a situation where a woman could become poor without her active participation, the law also included provisions that mitigated her dependence during marriage. While other ideological discourses, like religious tracts, had an abiding interest in maintaining the widow’s subservience, customary law did not share that unwavering commitment to keeping women from exercising independence. It did, of course, have an interest in establishing a clear, male, authority in the intact household But the law also grasped the importance of giving the widow some way to support herself after her husband’s death. The empowerment of the widow also maintained a single authority in the family even in the absence of the father. Once her husband died, the widow could press her claims on the estate, and in ideal circumstances recover her dowry and any other contribution she had made to the household, as well as one-half of the household’s communal property and her dower rights. At this point, if her husband had not left her with excessive debt, the widow had a reasonable chance of using those assets to support herself. And even if he had left an indebted estate, the widow could protect herself from her husband’s financial failure by renouncing the debts and her half of the communal property, and simply pursue her claim to her dowry and dower. So while customary civil law evidenced an interest in privileging the husband within the family, after his death its provisions did not maintain the woman’s subservience. The ideological interests of the law, in contrast to those of the Church, did have limits imposed by practical concerns about the well-being of the family and the integrity of its assets.29 28

We can also assume that the wife’s family exerted pressure on her husband to be fiscally responsable. If the situation became intolerable, a women could request a séparation de biens to wrest control of her assets from her husband, although this was an exceptional act, as well as a costly one. See on these points David W. Sabean, Power in the Blood. Popular Culture and Village Discourse in Early Modern Germany (Cambridge, 1984), p. 32; Martine Ségalen, Mari et femme dans la société paysanne (Paris, 1980), pp. 44–5. The works of Sarah Maza and Sarah Hanley trace the use of lawsuits by women and their families to wrest control of property from husbands. Sarah Maza, Private Lives and Public Affairs: The Causes Célèbres of Prerevolutionary France (Berkeley, 1993). 29 More generally, the autonomy granted the widow under the law points out a potential weakness in the patriarchal system that structured this society. A man’s domination of his wife ceased when he died, and often in order to conserve the accomplishments of the

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Relationships to Poverty There were other ways in which the relationship of widows to poverty was ideologically shaped. Besides falling into poverty through the force of events, widows had the option of embracing poverty for its own sake by entering religious houses or convents, facilitating their pursuit of piety with the renunciation of material goods. When widows adopted such an existence, they placed themselves in a socially approved position. They became part of institutions directed and controlled by men where their daily movements and activities were managed according to regulations of the Catholic Church. As such, widows who entered religious houses did not provoke the anxiety that other independent women did. Poverty, and ceding of control over their material existence, represented in a sense the widow’s willingness to become a passive member of a communal group, one that would replace her patriarchal family that had just dissolved. The life of the convent appealed to widows for a number of reasons, and, in fact, “(m)any pious women vowed their widowhood to God, even before the death of their husbands.”30 Widowhood freed religious-minded women to devote their entire lives to worship and prayer. Such impulses were buttressed by the teachings of religious leaders. François de Sales advised women not to remarry, but to devote their widowhoods to God. He wrote “your duty as a wife and your worldly responsibilities were your hindrance and your obstacle. Now that God has taken him away, bury your heart entirely in His.”31 Poverty of the body could free the mind and the spirit for higher purposes, and some widows looked forward to the opportunity to be free of the burdens of marriage to pursue a spiritual existence. Religious communities for women required postulants to make a number of promises meant to enhance their efforts at achieving spiritual enlightenment. Those who entered convents, whether as never-married women or as widows, “must pledge themselves not only to a life of poverty, or of obedience, or of modesty, but to manual labor and to the education of poor children.”32 In fact, widows who retired to these pious communities promised to live a difficult life, one perhaps more arduous than they would have experienced living independently on their incomes. The guarantee of food and shelter came at a high price. It was the challenge that life in a convent presented that led Jeanne de Chantal, founder of the community of the Visitation in Annecy, to remark that poor women

family, women were empowered to act in the place of deceased men. On this point, see particularly Francis E. Dolan, “Household Chastisements: Gender, Authority, and Domestic Violence,” in Patricia Fumerton and Simon Hunt (eds), Renaissance Culture and the Everyday (Philadelphia, 1999). 30 Elizabeth Rapley, The Dévotes. Women and Church in Seventeenth-Century France (Montreal, 1990), p. 17. 31 François de Sales, quoted in Rapley, Les Dévotes, p. 18. 32 Léon Abensour, La Femme et le féminism avant la Révolution, (Geneva, 1977), p. 272.

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were not suitable to the religious life as “it is quite rare for women of this condition to have the necessary talents and dispositions to acquire the spirit of our vocation.”33 While this remark reveals much about the socio-economic biases of many religious communities, it also calls attention to the rigor posed by a life devoted wholly to prayer and devotion. The biography of Madame Pollalion, held up as an ideal widow, describes the difficulties of the Christian life. Suffering accompanied spiritual enlightenment, represented when she took “the habit of the Tertiary Order of Saint Dominique, and for the rest of her life she wore habits which were always very modest, like those of a Christian widow.”34 The habit represented the promises Madame Pollalion had to fulfill, and the thankless tasks that would fill the rest of her life. Despite the burdens inherent in a religious life, women of high rank often found themselves in religious houses in their widowhood, particularly if they were beyond childbearing age. For many of them, the expression “maritus aut murus” (a husband or a convent) encapsulated the only options available to them.35 This phrase also hinted obliquely at the other way a convent could function, as a place for women to flee from abusive and bad marriages. In such instances, women had few options. Even an order of bodily separation (séparation de corps), issued rarely by judges, had little value if a woman could not find a safe place to hide from her enraged husband.36 Convents sheltered abused wives, if they had the means to take refuge there. The convent had a range of functions: as a place for women who could not or did not want to marry, as a place for widows, as a place for refugees from a husband’s physical violence. In the social landscape, women who did not fit into a family unit ideally placed themselves in a structure created by the Church to protect and govern them. While this option exercised a hold on the social imaginary of the time, where the convent was imagined to be a most suitable place for the unmarried woman, one where her virtue and reputation were guarded, it was not a place where widows of master craftsmen took retreat.37 It seems that a quiet, contemplative life devoted 33

Jeanne Françoise de Chantal, quoted in Roger Devos, L’origine sociale des Visitandines d’Annecy aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles. Vie religieuse féminine et société (Annecy, 1973), p. 121. 34 Collin, Vie de Lumague, pp. 29–30. 35 Rapley, Les Dévotes, p. 19. 36 Roderick Phillips, Family Breakdown in Late Eighteenth-Century France: Divorce in Rouen, 1792–1803 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1980), p. 6; Julie Hardwick, “Seeking Separations: Gender, Marriages, and Household Economies in Early Modern France,” French Historical Studies, 21/1 (1998): 157–80; Alain Lottin, La désunion du couple sous l’ancien régime. L’exemple du Nord (Lille, 1975), pp. 113–14. 37 On the convent as a place of refuge for vulnerable women see Pierre Choderlos de Laclos, Les Liaisons Dangereuses, trans. Douglas Parmée (Oxford, 1995). In this novel the young Cécile Volanges boarded in the convent so that her virginity would be unimpeachable at the time of her arranged marriage. The bereft ersatz-widow Madame de Tourval also took

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to pious works and prayers did not suit the needs of such women. Taking vows meant renouncing any opportunity to manage family affairs or take a part in a family business.38 However, the esteem placed on a contemplative life presents another way in which poverty and widowhood were allied in representation. It also showed widows a way to escape the difficulties and worries of their independent state by urging them to place themselves under the authority of a bishop as part of an order. Their obligations would then turn on spiritual rather than material concerns.

Charitable Giving Of course a woman did not need to enter a convent to incorporate more religious discipline in her life. Many widowed women engaged in almsgiving in their wills. Some of this charity could be connected to a widow’s funeral mass. In her will Françoise Bellanger, widow of Pierre Treillard, specified that she “wanted to be buried in the church of St. Germain l’Auxerrois,…and that eighteen poor attend, to whom she wished and intended to give twenty sous and a candle.”39 Another widow, Jeanne Bouton, provided even more substantial sums of money to support masses for her soul. She granted 200 livres to the Church of the Capuchins in the Marais to be used for masses for her soul. Bouton gave another 24 livres to the confraternity of the charity of Issy to pay for church services.40 Other widows provided generous donations to charitable foundations, rather than simply hiring poor mourners to pray for their souls. Marie Caillié included a clause in her will that would provide “alms to the honorable poor of St. Sauveur, in the sum of fifty livres.” Caillié wished the curé of the parish to administer the gift as he saw fit.41 Louise Françoise, the widow of a prosperous merchant mercer, displayed her wealth by providing 200 livres to the parish of St. Landry to pay for funeral masses. She also specified in her will that 50 livres be given to the poor of her parish, to be used at the discretion of her curé, and another 200 livres donated to the city’s foundling hospital.42 Such gifts served as religious acts as well as acts of gratitude

refuge in a convent so that she could repent of her sinful affair and die at peace. Wendy Gibson discusses the function of the convent in her Women in Seventeenth-Century France (London, 1989), pp. 210–11. Geneviève Reynes, Couvents des femmes. La vie des religieuses cloîtrées dans la France des XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles (Paris, 1987), pp. 228–9. 38 See Roger Devos’ analysis of social background of initiates which finds no women of the artisanal ranks entering the Visitandine order in Annency. L’Origine sociale, pp. 109; 153–69. 39 AN, MC étude CXVIII/279, 29 November 1712. 40 AN, MC étude CV/1236, 28 May 1751. 41 AN, MC étude XXXVI/390, 18 May 1722. 42 AN, MC étude XXIV/960, 18 October 1787.

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from women who were thankful they did not need to rely on charity at the ends of their lives. These kinds of gifts were not unique to artisanal widows or the women of Paris. Sandra Cavallo, in her study of Turin, also sees a large number of charitable bequests coming from women. She estimates that women’s bequests made up 22 per cent of total bequests for the period 1670–1790.43 Most of Cavallo’s sample seems to have been comprised of aristocratic women who tended to give to convents and other formal religious institutions, such as the Compagnia delle Umiliate, whose lay members ministered to the poor in Turin’s hospice.44 But she also finds that after the 1760s more women from across the city gave small bequests for masses, an act of charitable giving within reach of even modest levels of society. This pattern of giving contrasted with the charity provided by Parisians who generally provided support to the poor of their local parish rather than to citywide or larger institutions. This difference in giving suggests that for widows of the artisanal classes, in contrast to aristocrats, it was more important to provide for local needs rather than larger and more comprehensive institutions. As businesswomen, such widows were part of the fabric of the neighborhood, and their livelihood had depended on the commercial health of their local neighborhoods. By providing for the local poor, widows would contribute to the long-term vibrancy of their community. In part, this also reflected the fact that if these widows became impoverished they were likely to call on local sources rather than city-wide ones that existed to serve the abjectly destitute. So they were perhaps providing for people like themselves, almost as a talismanic safeguard against living that fate themselves.

Involuntary Poverty: Assets and Wealth Certainly of greater concern to most widows than the rigors of a vow of poverty was poverty not freely chosen, entered by way of loss or accident. The widow was already in a precarious position since she had been deprived of her husband’s labor power and his monetary contribution to the household. We can also imagine that a widow might have greater difficulties in negotiating with creditors or clients accustomed to dealing with the man of the house. Illness, slow business, or excessive debt could all conspire against her already weak position to throw the widow into true destitution.45 A number of approaches can help to assess the 43

Sandra Cavallo, Charity and Power in Early Modern Italy, pp. 153, 172. Note, however, that Cavallo does not discuss whether husbands left bequests in the names of an entire family, a fact that might increase the number of women who participated in charitable giving. 44 Ibid., pp. 155–6. 45 Romon emphasizes the gradual nature of the widow’s descent into indigence. “Le

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causes and impacts of such contingent or involuntary poverty. On a most basic level, one way to evaluate a widow’s relative level of material ease is by estimating her assets and household goods. This method is impressionistic, but it does show the extent to which widows were able to participate in consumption of goods.46 One of the most fruitful sources for estimating standards of living is the probate inventory. A generally exhaustive list of the contents of a household, this document provided the basis for dividing an estate. Historians have used the information provided in probate inventories to evaluate the penetration of consumer goods into households and the changes such goods precipitated in patterns of everyday life.47 As Daniel Roche points out, the probate inventory can also give the historian a rough idea of what he calls “popular misfortunes.” He emphasizes that it is difficult to use these documents to know exactly how people lived. He points out, for example, that while all homes in early modern Paris included beds, “(f)or the poorest of the poor crude palliasses stuffed with straw, cheap ticking bolsters, thin, patched woolen blankets, and for the others good woolen mattresses, thick wool blankets, warm counterpanes, feather pillows.”48 In some ways, then, the language of probate inventories can obscure the precise nature of material surroundings. But they do provide some basis for understanding an individual’s standard of living and the comfort of the home. Many artisanal families requested a probate inventory from a notary in order to establish the personal and business property in a household. In the 72 probate inventories drawn up for widows who died between the years 1698 to 1790, there is a wide range of professions and wealth. A comparison between a husband’s

monde des pauvres,” p. 729. 46 Historians have increasingly turned to the study of consumer goods as a way to understand everyday life in the past. The essays in the volume Consumption and the World of Goods, edited by John Brewer and Roy Porter (London, 1993) examine this issue using a variety of methodologies. For understanding the meaning of Parisian popular consumption see in particular Cissie Fairchilds’ contribution to that volume, “The Production and Marketing of Populuxe Goods in Eighteenth-Century Paris.” A more recent collection that examines these same problems is Maxine Berg and Helen Clifford (eds.), Consumers and Luxury: Consumer Culture in Europe, 1650–1850 (Manchester, 1999). Grant McCracken’s Culture and Consumption: New Approaches to the Symbolic Character of Consumer Goods and Activities (Bloomington, 1988) provides a theoretically informed approach to understanding consumer behavior. 47 The two historians who have most recently and most fruitfully employed these documents are Daniel Roche in several of his works: The People of Paris: an Essay in Popular Culture in the Eighteenth Century, trans. Marie Evans and Gwynne Lewis (Berkeley, 1987) and Histoire des choses banales. Naissance de la comsommation XVIIe– XIXe siècle (Paris, 1997). Annick Pardailhé-Galabrun’s La Naissance de l’intime 3000 foyers parisiens XVIIe–XVIIIe siècles (Paris, 1988) also uses a large sample of probate inventories to ask questions about the material structure of Parisian life. 48 Roche, People of Paris, p. 132.

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probate documents and those of his widow provides a basis for assessing the woman’s ability to live comfortably on her own over a period of time. The most interesting examples are those where the probate inventory of both the husband and his widow are available. The picture presented by these sixteen cases is suggestive. In most cases she possessed nearly all of the household belongings listed in her husband’s inventory and in terms of her material surroundings had not suffered a noticeable setback. In addition, all of these widows had invested in at least one annuity to provide a cash income. This finding lines up with Roche’s evidence that all those in his sample with assets above 500 livres had at least one investment in some kind of annuity.49 Of course, such an observation does not fully answer the question of the widow’s standard of living. In homes where the furniture made up a significant proportion of household wealth, a twenty-year-old bed was worth far less than a five-year-old one. So while a woman’s inventory could reflect the same material surroundings, and the same use value, that she had shared with her husband, its monetary value often dropped considerably. Nonetheless, it seems that a woman who sustained such a loss would not suffer much in her level of comfort, as she continued to have the use of a furnished home. As such, we need to use a certain amount of flexibility in assessing privation, rather than simply looking at the probate’s cash value. If we examine the inventories of several couples we can see how the value of a widow’s possessions could fall even while she lived in the same material surroundings that she had shared with her husband. When Martin Aubert, master button maker, died the assets he had shared with his wife and two children totaled a rather modest 247 livres 12 sous of household goods, with an additional 218 livres in business materials. The inventory showed that the couple had no outstanding debts and were owed just 336 livres by two master tailors.50 Given that the couple’s marriage contract provided a survivor’s benefit of 150 livres and a dower of 300 livres, there would be little left after these debts were paid for the children’s needs. This inventory, while devoid of the details surrounding its production, provides several hints about what the family’s situation might have been when Aubert died. Most notable was the absence of tools listed among the workshop assets. All that the notaries found there were finished products, mostly buttons made from precious metals. Once Widow Aubert sold these buttons she would have been free to close her husband’s shop. She would not need to go through the more lengthy process of transferring tools and raw materials to other masters. These surroundings suggest that Aubert had not engaged in the trade in that shop right before his death. The almost total lack of debts contracted with providers of raw materials or with customers also support the idea that Aubert had not been an 49 50

Roche, People of Paris, pp. 82–3. AN, MC étude XXXVIII/230, 8 March 1725.

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active button maker at that time, since credit was an essential component of operating a business.51 No active business would function with so few recorded financial exchanges with customers and suppliers. Most likely, the family had decided to wrap up the business during the illness that preceded Aubert’s death.52 In addition, the family’s relative lack of wealth bolsters this interpretation. An ailing father, incapable of working, would certainly drain the family’s wealth, depriving his heirs of cash, annuities that might have been redeemed, and property. At his death, we would expect to see little in the way of wealth. The nature of the assets Marie Goubette, widow Aubert, possessed at her death 22 years later supports this interpretation. She had many of the same objects described in her husband’s inventory, although they were described with markedly different adjectives. A chest of drawers described as “small” when Aubert died was by the time of his wife’s death described as “old.”53 Her clothes also seemed to be in poor repair, judging by the notary’s evaluation. All told, the value of assets included in her probate inventory totaled only 257 livres, all of these household goods and clothing. Goubette had no identifiable trade goods in her possession at the time of her death. But her wealth differed significantly from her husband’s in that she had an annuity worth 100 livres per year. She had apparently converted her small dowry into a source of minimal revenue. While this would have provided her with at best a very modest living, it did assure Goubette a small cash income each year. Since Goubette’s husband did not leave her in a position to continue the family business, and support herself through her work, she was forced into impoverishment. She was able to furnish a home and live but in extremely difficult circumstances, it seems because her work failed her. The probate inventories of Jean Baptiste Gambier and Marie Sabatier present a markedly different picture. At his death, Gambier’s inventory gave evidence of a very prosperous household, one that his widow maintained until her death 14 years later. Gambier was a master doreur sur métaux. Members of this trade specialized in applying gold filigree to metal objects, and required precious raw materials as well as a high-degree of training. It is evident from the inventory that he remained deeply engaged in the trade to the time of his death. Several pages of the probate inventory list the items found in the shop and their value as assessed by two other master doreurs brought in for the occasion.54 In addition to trade materials, 51

Michael Sonenscher, Work and Wages: Natural Law, Politics, and EighteenthCentury French Trades (Cambridge, 1989), p. 139. 52 Such behavior also emerges in the records of several business failures that were initiated by widows immediately following their husbands’ deaths. See for example, AS D4B6, carton 6, dossier 274; D4B6, carton 9, dossier 453; D4B6, carton 16, dossier 779; D4B6, carton 24, dossier 1217. 53 AN, MC étude LXXII/307, 22 March 1747. 54 Gambier’s inventory is to be found in AN, MC étude XLII/382, 23 December 1737. It was not uncommon for a family to ask masters to assess the value of business materials, rather than the notary who recorded the rest of the estate. Such experts provided a more

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Gambier’s papers show that he was also involved in an extensive network of credit relations, necessary for any functioning business. The probate inventory documents 22 debts owed to him, as well as records of 14 debts he owed others at the time of his death. The household was well equipped with furnishings, both utilitarian and more luxurious. For example, Gambier had paintings of family members itemized among his possessions, as well as dozens of books and several tapestries. He had also invested heavily in annuities, thereby providing a substantial cash income for his widow. Marie Sabatier, widow Gambier, benefited from the wealth she and her husband had amassed during their married life. Based on her probate inventory, she was not only able to continue running the family business, but also continued to live in very comfortable surroundings.55 Among Sabatier’s probate records were papers regarding 18 debts owed to her as well as 12 debts she owed others. Her household and shop also included materials for the business as well as finished products. Sabatier’s son had requested the notary’s services, suggesting that he had worked with his mother and stood to benefit from a clear reckoning of the state of the shop. In terms of her personal quarters, at the time of her death she owned jewelry, religious art, and books, all items of a household beyond the worries of subsistence. She also continued to hold annuities, monetary contracts that had clearly served her well during her widowhood. What is striking in this case is the way that work provided a prosperous living for both Gambier and his widow, and their children. Because their trade did not fail them, both were able to maintain a comfortable standard of living, and were certainly beyond fears of poverty.

The Failure of Work If the widow had few or no family resources to bolster her fortunes—no continuing business, no annuities or savings—she might well plummet to the ranks of the indigent. That descent often occurred very soon after her husband’s death, as evidenced by certain cases of business failures. In these instances the husband’s physical decline would inevitably place a strain on the smooth continuation of the business. His inability to work and the financial burden of doctor’s bills could easily overwhelm a couple’s material resources, often resulting in a declaration of insolvency. Jean Calviac, a master wine merchant with enormous debts, filed for insolvency shortly before his death. His widow simply continued this process, giving up any hope of profiting from his trade connections.56 Even in cases where precise market value for the family business. 55 AN, MC étude LXXXVI/649, 26 August 1751. 56 AS, D5B6, register 4147, 2 December 1784. For a similar case see also D4B6, carton 86, dossier 5674.

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the widow managed to run the shop successfully for some time, there was always the possibility that she would not be capable of continuing for long by herself. When Barbe François, mistress farrier, declared insolvency she was still carrying significant debts that her husband left at his death. She had attempted to continue the business herself for about two years, as evidenced by the separate debts she had contracted with carriage makers, but could not shake the financial burden her husband had bequeathed her.57 Of course, the danger of insolvency existed for every business, especially given the sometimes tenuous networks of credit that undergirded almost any business transaction.58 But, for many reasons, the struggle to continue a successful enterprise was more difficult for a widow. These reasons could include a more limited access to primary materials or supplementary labor than male masters. For while the guild theoretically ensured that widows enjoyed equal access to the materials needed to practice a trade, there were informal barriers to the widow. We see in the records of widows’ business failures that they had contracted more debts than other master artisans who had fallen into similar circumstances. But those loans provided smaller amounts of capital for the widow. This credit pattern suggests that the widow had to seek more sources of capital because she could generally not persuade customers or suppliers to forward her the same sums they would advance to male craftsmen. These creditors showed their doubts about a woman’s ability to run a successful business by failing to provide the level of monetary support they showed to men. Creditors refused to extend the same terms to women, with the same flexibility and confidence, as they did to men. In addition, a widow often encountered more subtle problems presented by the challenging nature of certain trades or problems of managing the process of production. Contemporary observers were well aware of these kinds of difficulties, and perhaps held a certain skepticism about any woman’s ability to run a successful business. This concern about the viability of a business run by a widow, and the anxiety about women who were not under a man’s control, worked to shape the idea of the widow who would either fall into debauchery and disorder or poverty without a man’s guidance and help. Such notions of female capability undermined the belief in a woman’s ability to function as an independent businesswoman. And for a widow, the failure of work often doomed her to a life of true misery.

57 AS, D4B6 carton 83, dossier 5602. 30 January 1782. His debts totaled 3146 livres, hers and the shop’s combined were 1290 livres. 58 Sonenscher, Work and Wages, especially pp. 132–48.

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The Impact of Poverty: Criminality The descent into poverty had a range of outcomes for how widows lived. Certain widows, as we have seen, were forced to declare business failures and give up their livelihoods and their incomes. Some women found themselves living in unsavory surroundings, experiencing their poverty as the loss of physical comfort and security. Others who were less fortunate found themselves resorting to criminal behavior in an attempt to scrape by. Prostitution was one of the ways that widows, particularly young ones, could devise to support themselves. While the most prevalent discourse of poverty that addressed widows emphasized their vulnerability, a certain number of writers realized that women without any means of support might resort to selling themselves to solve the problem of destitution.59 Such suspicions found echo in the literature that characterized widows as sexually bold and without the restraints that male governance usually placed on women.60 Several eighteenth-century writers, seeking ways to bring about the end of prostitution, suggested that celibacy was one of the paths to libertinage. Montesquieu proposed creating inducements to marriage as did Mercier. Such notions were informed by the idea that “unmarried women are so much eventual prey and men so many clients attracted by women of poor character (mauvaise vie).”61 This kind of thinking positioned women as the lynchpin of debauchery. Either they were too weak to prevent themselves from becoming prey to prostitution, or women who had already embraced such a moral decline pulled men down with them. Given widows’ sexual experience, and lack of legitimate outlet for the strong urges contemporaries imagined they felt, they were particularly vulnerable to the pull of lasciviousness and, in the worst cases, prostitution. The most complete study of eighteenth-century prostitution affirms that widows, young for the most part, were among those arrested for this illegal activity.62 Often from the very artisanal class under examination here, they tended to cluster in the apparel and luxury trades, both of which were vulnerable to booms and busts depending on the dictates of fashion.63 This finding stands in contrast with my own evidence on widows, suggesting that some of the widows arrested for prostitution had been the wives of journeymen or workers without formal standing 59 James Brundage, Law, Sex and Christian Society in Medieval Europe (Chicago, 1987), p. 464. 60 Guy Spielmann, “Viduité et pouvoir dans le discours comique, 1683–1715,” Dixseptième siècle, 47/2 (1995): 331–43; Christian Biet, “De la veuve joyeuse à l’individu autonome,” Dix-septième siècle, 47/2 (1995): 307–30; Deborah Hahn, “The School for Widows: Gender, (Re)marriage and Comedy on the Absolutist Stage,” (Ph.D. Dissertation, Brown University, 2000). 61 Erica-Marie Benabou, La Prostitution et la police des mœurs au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1987), p. 463. 62 Benabou, La Prostitution, p. 271. 63 Benabou, La Prostitution, pp. 285–90.

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in the guild, ouvriers sans qualité. Among widows whose husbands had been sworn in as masters, prostitution did not seem to be widespread. It is also possible that for these widows, unlike the women Benabou emphasized in her study, prostitution was an infrequent activity, one they resorted to only when the revenues of a business or investments absolutely failed. Under these circumstances, it was much less likely that a women would be caught and arrested for prostitution. Although we do not know the extent of such periodic activity, veuves-maîtresses did not seem to use prostitution as their sole source of income. In one rare case, a widow and her brother were arrested for allowing debauchery and prostitution in their home, after numerous complaints by their neighbors. Marie Lafillé, the Widow Martin, was the widow of a master shoemaker, and her brother Louis provided no indication of a profession. These siblings lived together to pool resources, finding that even this measure did not provide them with enough to survive. The testimony of neighbors sheds little light on the decisions that led this truncated family to engage in this profession. But the record notes that they lived in a “chambres garnies,” lodgings described by Mercier in his tales of Paris as “dirty, (with) crude beds, windows that stifle all breezes, half ruined tapestries, stairs covered in human waste,” suggesting a fairly poor standard of living.64 Another widow who turned to prostitution to support herself did so under even more risky conditions: without any other family member to protect her or procure clients, as Lafillé’s brother must have done. Jeanne Gravois had been the wife of Quentin Allais, master joiner. Her neighbors made a complaint to the police commissioner that men entered her furnished room for what appeared to them to be “commerce de débauche.”65 Without anyone to protect her from clients, Gravois’s lot as a prostitute must have been dangerous. But for women left without means of support, prostitution was the last stop before out and out vagrancy. The general absence of masters’ widows among these unfortunates suggests that these women were able to find ways to safeguard themselves from the very worst outcomes of poverty. Theft constituted another means for the poor to illegally seize the means to survive. Within the general population, women frequently resorted to criminal acts to help support themselves. At a time when women’s wages equaled roughly half of what men earned, it is not surprising that women could not always support themselves by honest labor alone. Female suspects made up a significant minority of those arrested for theft and other such petty crimes. For example, in Paris it seems that between twenty and thirty per cent of those arrested were women.66 But 64

AN Y 9523b, 5 October 1741. Louis-Sébastien Mercier, Tableau de Paris (8 vols, Amsterdam, 1782–88), vol. 1, p. 157. 65 AN Y 10996, 12 April 1758. 66 The larger estimate comes from Arlette Farge, Fragile Lives: Violence, Power, and Solidarity in Eighteenth-Century Paris, trans. Carol Shelton (Cambridge, 1993), p. 144,

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the evidence we have shows that widows of artisanal social status were almost never arrested for stealing. One exception was Marie Drouin, widow of a gardener, who had lodged with a master wine merchant for just eight days when she and her three children disappeared with a tablecloth and an apron.67 This incident notwithstanding, the absence of widows among the ranks of thieves prompts a number of explanations. Most widows of master artisans were not so pressed that they resorted to crime in order to support themselves. They also, as members of guilds, had been socialized to consider the honor of the corporate body. Stealing, committing fraud, or engaging in other illegal acts would sully the reputation of the guild and its members. But other factors also helped save these widows from resorting to criminal acts. As members of guilds, widows had certain resources they could call upon. They made up part of a community at least theoretically pledged to care for its members. As well, they had assets like those discussed above that they could use to cobble together a living, meager as it might be. In another way, widows of master craftsmen did not correspond to the typical thief whose misfortune the police archives recorded. In general, most of those detained for petty criminal activity in Paris had migrated to the city in search of all that the capital city could offer, particularly economically.68 Such individuals were not well integrated into the life of the city, had few or no resources to fall back on in their need, and as such found themselves resorting to crime to survive. Master artisans and their families tended to be natives of Paris, and as such were hooked into family, religious, social, and economic networks that provided them with support.69 As we will see, many widows in danger of falling into poverty found ways to survive precisely because they could depend upon kin, church, and guild for assistance. In such circumstances, criminal activity was not the only option for a widow. 70

while P. Petrovitch, “La Criminalité à Paris,” in A. Abbiateci (ed.), Crimes et criminalité en France sous l’Ancien Régime. 17e–18e siècles (Paris, 1971), pp. 234–5 gives the lower estimate. 67 AN, Y 13290A, 9 March 1788. 68 Petrovitch, “La Criminalité,” pp. 238–41; Arlette Farge, Le vol d’aliments à Paris au XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1974), pp. 118–19. 69 Sonenscher, Work and Wages, p. 203. 70 Arlette Farge, La vie fragile. Violence, pouvoirs et solidarités à Paris au XVIIIe siècle (Paris: Hachette, 1986). On criminality outside of Paris see Nicole Castan, Justice et répression en Languedoc à l’époque des lumières (Paris, 1980); A. Abbiateci (ed.), Crimes et criminalité en France sous l’ancien régime (Paris, 1971).

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The Impact of Poverty: Daily Life As noted, most needy widows did not resort to illegal activities to alleviate their impoverishment. Rather, they lived with few comforts, and even in conditions of hardship, in their widowhood. The most common indication of a fall in fortune was a small, ill furnished, home, reflected in “the probate inventories, which permit us to go through the doors of the poor, (and) suggest that the furnished room was the lot of many.”71 Of the widows whose probate inventories I have found, only 12 of them lived in a single room. But the belongings catalogued in these instances bespeak poverty. Old furniture, no books, little clothing—widows occupying a single room had likely experienced a drop in the way they lived. In addition, the misery of such widows was at times reflected in police records. For example, Marie Duhamel, widow of a grocer, made a complaint to police because the building that housed her single room was in such poor repair that she described it as “en péril.” According to the police commissioner who took Duhamel’s complaint “the said house, on the said dead end, is very old, it buckles and slopes a considerable amount, and it appears to be in very imminent peril.”72 The commissioner took several concrete steps to try to resolve this dangerous situation. First, he ordered the owner of the building, Monsieur Rambuteau, to appear before the lieutenant-general. He also furnished an assessment of the damage and recommended that Rambuteau be forced to pay for necessary repairs.73 Ideally Duhamel would have her home repaired, although there is no way to know if the owner heeded this warning. Widows’ poverty could, of course, manifest itself in other ways. Widows who did not pay rent could have their belongings seized by the owner of their home. If a proprietor requested it, a police commissioner could arrive at a tenant’s door with a locksmith. The latter would force the lock open and the commissioner then oversaw the removal of personal effects to offset debt. Suzanne Boujart, widow Brun, lived in a room rented to her by Martine Baudin, also a widow. Baudine asked the commissioner for permission to open Boujart’s door so she could confiscate her belongings against the rent money owed.74 Widow Boudet, who rented a room from a Monsieur Legros, entered a complaint with the police commissioner because she was being menaced by her landlord. She reported that Legros menaced her continually, adding sexual and physical threats to his verbal abuse.75 Of course, for some women their living situation was graver still. The widow of a master printer lived in the stall along the Quay des Grands Augustins where she 71 72 73 74 75

Gutton, La société et les pauvres en Europe, p. 63. AN, Y 14955, 19 May 1740. Ibid. AN, Y 10986, 26 June 1739. AN, Y 14436, 17 May 1741.

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attempted to ply her late husband’s trade in a very small way, by selling second-hand books. Other merchants along the quay noted Claudine Bourdereau’s behavior and reported it to the police commissioner. She explained that she had “nothing to live on” and had nowhere else to go.76 Elisabeth Villaume, left with two young children and one yet to be born at the time of her husband’s death, asked the commissioner of police to take her children to the Enfants-Trouvés. She explained that she was “in extreme misery not being able to attend to her own subsistence nor to that of her children who ran the risk of dying.” and hoped that the city could provide the means for their survival.77 Nicolle Aubert, Veuve Sandrier, signaled her extreme desperation by killing herself. Marguerite De Gouy, neighbor of the deceased, found Aubert in her small room, “throat slit in her bed.”78 De Gouy knew that Aubert was troubled by grief for her late husband and money problems and tried to help her through these difficulties, but ultimately Aubert could find no way out of her situation.

Familial Solutions to Poverty Although some women faced undeniable misery, it was not the usual end for artisanal widows. They were not thrown into a life of crime nor forced to experience the misery of true deprivation and the Hôtel-Dieu or the street. Most widows could call upon resources that saved them from extreme poverty. The majority depended upon either the material wealth they inherited at their husbands’ death, or upon relatives. Certainly having a business, and the cachet of a mastership, also made a widow a much more attractive candidate for remarriage, and widows could choose that option in order to leave behind the challenges of the single life. One of the ways for a family to handle a mother left alone was to work out an agreement to provide her support. Such arrangements were not strictly poor relief, but rather an individual plan, worked out for a particular situation, that addressed a widowed mother’s insufficient resources. What we find in reading contracts that set up such familial arrangements is that a widow would often be left with a sum of money after her husband’s estate had been reconciled. Such amounts could be fairly significant, and yet not enough to support someone for the rest of her life if she could not work. Rather than live on this money until it was gone, a widow could set up a sort of contract with her family or neighbors, lending cash in return for perpetual bed and board and a small yearly sum. While such arrangements did not use any of the institutions in place to deal with the relief of poverty, such as hospitals or parish confraternities, families often did formalize them. Of course, 76

AN, Y 11334, 14 August 1757. I am grateful to the late Nan Karwan-Cutting who so kindly passed this reference to me. 77 AN, Y 15054A, 12 January 1750. 78 AN, Y 12400, 9 June 1743.

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many families undoubtedly took care of their poor members by simply taking them in and caring for them.79 But often, widows and those who would support them went to a notary and signed a contract that spelled out the obligations of each party. In such cases, provisions for the poor widow were generally straightforward. In one such agreement, Noel Lemelin and his wife Félicie Binard promised to pay her mother, Marie Jeanne Chantelu, Widow Binard, 250 livres per year, plus room and board, in exchange for a lump sum of 3600 livres.80This fairly short contract required nothing else of the parties, and would last until the end of Widow Binard’s life. Margueritte Hubauls, Widow Godefroy, made an arrangement with her son and daughter-in-law that would provide her with room and board in exchange for the small amount of 1780 livres.81 Widow Hubauls received no yearly income, but the arrangement was beneficial nonetheless. This small sum of money could not have supported her for long without supplementary assistance. In another case, Simonne Boutet, widow of Pierre Dodin, a master lemonade seller, made a contract with Jacques Beaulieu, a master in the same guild. In exchange for the transfer of the materials in Boutet’s boutique and 3000 livres, Beaulieu agreed to house, feed, and care for Boutet until the end of her life. She was not obliged to work in the trade. Her contribution to this transaction was capital; Beaulieu provided labor and support.82 In these instances the widows arranged fairly simple terms for using their limited assets to the best long-term advantage. As we have seen, widows often leased the rights to their businesses, along with the materials in shops, in exchange for income. But the arrangements under examination here were not business contracts. These agreements represented another way for widows to profit from some of the assets of a business without working herself. These widows did not have sufficient capital to maintain a working shop. They also include one component lacking from straightforward commercial agreements. These contracts include room and board for the widow who surrendered her assets. As such, these women were assured support for the rest of their days. They no longer had to shoulder the responsibility for taking care of themselves without adequate resources. Instead, these widows had given over what little they had to someone who pledged to keep them out of destitution.

79

Robert Jütte notes the importance of family assistance in helping poor relatives, adding as well that when children aided indigent parents it was often in view of an eventual inheritance as well as a function of emotional attachment. Poverty and Deviance, p. 89. 80 AN, MC, étude XXX/321. 17 March 1751. 81 AN, MC étude LXXI/307, 28 July 1745. 82 AN, MC étude LXXXVII/235, 3 March 1751.

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The Guild as Resource Despite the existence of this and other parish resources, it was difficult for poor widows to find adequate formal assistance. This was the main reason families and community were such an important resource for them. Another place poor widows could find some help was within the guild community. Guild policy allowing widows to maintain their late husbands’ businesses tacitly acknowledged the connection between work and well-being. If a woman could continue to produce income, she could continue to provide for herself and her family, even without a man in the house. But guilds also assisted their poor members, masters and widows, in a more direct way. In order to provide directly for the needs of their members, guilds created, as adjuncts to their communities, charitable institutions called confraternities.83 The confraternity was a religious institution that formed a more general part of lay Catholic life in the early modern period throughout Europe, particularly during the Counter-Reformation.84 Each one was associated with a specific patron saint, and lay members organized and controlled the confraternity often in conjunction with a parish church. Confraternities formed an important part of Christianity in this period in part due to their “appeal to only a restrained (social) category: class, profession, city… The confraternity often reinforces particularism and esprit de corps.”85 These groups answered to the spiritual and practical needs of distinct social groups, and many Christians found a sense of belonging in these associations. Upon joining, members signed “a contract of mutual assistance which guaranteed the same rights to all its members: eligibility, enfranchisement, spiritual and temporal support; suit, status, funerary rites.”86 Members provided the financial resources for these services with their entry fees, penalties assessed for breaking rules, and legacies provided in members’ wills.

83 All guild statutes included provisions for the support of a confraternity through members’ dues. Lespinasse, Les métiers. 84 The classic work on confraternal organizations in old regime France is Maurice Agulhon, La Sociabilité méridionale, confréries et associations dans la vie collective en Provence orientale à la fin du 18e siècle (Aix-en-Provence, 1966). See as well his Pénitents et francs-maçons de l'ancienne Provence (Paris, 1968). In his work, Louis Guibert emphasizes the universal appeal of confraternities and emphatically denies any particular connection to guilds. Les Confrèries de pénitants en France et notamment dans le diocèse de Limoges (Marseille, 1978), p. 139. On the place of the confraternity in CounterReformation Catholicism, see Natalie Zemon Davis, Society and Culture in Early Modern France (Stanford, 1975), especially chapters 2 and 3 and Samuel Cohn, Women in the Streets. Essays on Sex and Power in Renaissance Italy (Baltimore, 1996), p. 63. 85 Gabriel LeBras, “Les Confréries chrétiennes, problèmes et propositions,” Revue historique de droit français et étranger, (1940–41): 334. 86 LeBras, “Les Confréries chrétiennes,” p. 338.

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The confraternities affiliated with most guilds and supported by the contributions of masters were designed to provide direct financial assistance to widows and disabled masters. Only masters could become members of these guild organizations, but the utility of such groups meant that journeymen also created similar mutual-aid societies as part of their clandestine compagnonnage system.87 In guild confraternities, only masters enjoyed full membership, but their wives and children enjoyed the benefits of membership as well. Not much is known about how guild confraternities functioned. The classic works on the guilds all mention their existence, but no descriptions of practice are available. Confraternities did provide for masses to be said for deceased members, and beyond that provided small sums to needy masters and their widows. Records dating from 1791 document charitable donations by the confraternities of the grocers, tailors, masons, and carpenters. For the year 1790–1791, these guilds provided fairly small sums. The grants from the grocer’s guild, the most generous of these four professions, ranged from 30 to 100 livres of assistance for the year.88 Tailors provided just over 32 livres to each of 13 recipients of their charity.89 The masons gave 80 livres each to six members of their confraternity, and the carpenters gave only 24 livres to 26 people.90 Of these guilds, only the masons and grocers provided detailed information to the Parisian government about their recipients. All six from the masons guild were widows, as were ten of the thirteen grocer recipients. Widows, in many instances with greater challenges and fewer resources than other masters, merited aid more than other members of these groups. For them, this bit of supplemental aid formed one more segment of what they cobbled together for their subsistence. So although a widowed woman could rely on the assistance of the guild in burying her husband, she could not necessarily count on much financial help after that moment. The guild provided for the needs of its masters who fell on hard times, and ensured their needs at death as well. But this care did not extend too far, and the families of guild masters could not count on much support after the funeral. Even so, a small sum and the assurance of a decent burial did provide some peace of mind to members of these groups.

A Space for the Marginal: The Faubourg Saint-Antoine Widows could find another informal kind of relief in the faubourg Saint-Antoine, a neighborhood on the eastern edge of Paris. This area of the city attracted many 87

See Cynthia Truant, The Rites of Labor. Brotherhoods of Compagnonnage in Old and New Regime France (Ithaca, 1994), pp. 53–5. 88 AN, F4 1241. 89 Ibid. 90 Ibid.

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poor, for a number of reasons. Historically, it was a neighborhood of recent arrivals who were looking for a familiar face, cheap lodging, and work in this overwhelming metropolis.91 It was a quartier populaire where most of the residents worked to eke out a precarious living. All but one of the widows discussed above whose behavior gave witness to their misery hailed from the faubourg Saint-Antoine. And these women were not alone in their poverty.92 During the Revolution this neighborhood was the most modest quarter of the city. According to surveys commissioned for the purpose of allocating charity, “the faubourg Saint-Antoine, with a population of 42,666 inhabitance in the Year II (of the Revolutionary calendar), alone accounted for 14,742 assisted poor, about onefifth of all of the poor in Paris.”93 This element of the faubourg’s character is due partly to the conditions of its foundation as a zone of unregulated work, a boundary space both intimately linked and independently antagonistic to Paris. Its status as a space where workers could practice a trade outside of the corporate system was officially confirmed by Letters Patent granted in 1657, and the workers there continued to enjoy these rights up to the Revolution, although the faubourg existed as a haven for poor workers from at least the time of Henry IV.94 Craft guilds constantly attacked the privileges of the faubourg and, in 1642, successfully persuaded the king to promulgate an edict requiring the masters and workers of the faubourg Saint-Antoine to register themselves with Parisian corporate officers. The workers of the faubourg protested vigorously, and enlisted the assistance of the abbess of the Abbey of Saint-Antoine to lobby for the reinstatement of their traditional right to work.95 The king, reacting to this opposition as well as the threat posed by the great poverty resulting from the wars of the Fronde rebellion, reversed this edict and granted the Letters Patent in 1657. At this moment, poverty, source of disorder, preoccupied the government. Thousands of unscrupulous people inundated the capital. How to contain an aimless population of the unemployed, the miserable and the delinquent? A two-pronged politics of social control was instituted: on the one hand, imprisonment, marked by the creation of the Hôpital-Général in 1656, and on the other hand, an opening, marked by (the sale of) letters-patent in the following year. 96

91

Roche, People of Paris, p. 22. Jütte, Poverty and Deviance, p. 59. 93 Raymonde Monnier, Le faubourg Saint-Antoine, 1789–1815 (Paris, 1981), p. 91. 94 Steven L. Kaplan, “Les Corporations, les ‘faux-ouvriers,’ et le faubourg Saint-Antoine au XVIIIe siècle,” Annales: ESC, 43/2 (1988): 357; Alain Thillay, “Le faubourg St. Antoine et la liberté du travail sous l’Ancien Régime,” Histoire, Economie et Société, 11/2 (1992): 218. 95 Kaplan, “Les faux-ouvriers,” p. 358. 96 Ibid., p. 358. 92

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From its official inception the faubourg was envisioned as part of an attack on poverty, and, in a sense, as a space of social experimentation where the government could observe the efficacy of a free-labor market policy on the problem of poverty. The King’s ministers put forth this argument when they opposed the extension of the corporate apparatus into this space. In the King’s reply to the corporate request that the faubourg be placed under tighter control, he argued that “instead of begging for their livelihood, as they have been doing, they retreated to the said faubourg Saint-Antoine, permanently exempt from the said masterships, to work in their trades.”97 The logic behind this social experiment echoes the challenge widows faced when their husbands died: when work failed, poverty followed. This governmental policy attempted to provide more work to prevent greater poverty. Guilds objected to a faubourg freed from trade restrictions for a number of reasons. Corporate rhetoric revolved around purported fears that the quality of work produced in an unregulated space would of necessity be inferior and defective. Jurés expended much effort in enforcing quality standards, and participated in numerous search and seizure missions with the goal of confiscating shoddy goods, as well as goods produced by illegal workers. Once the faubourg gained its independence from the control of the corporate apparatus, in addition to being exempt from the training requirements and fiscal demands of the guilds, the workers there were also freed from the quality standards articulated by the guilds. Artisans could produce according to market considerations rather than following the dictates of the guild. Guild jurés often attempted to effect seizures on the workshops of the faubourg, but the proprietors of the faubourg resisted these incursions as much as possible, by making formal complaints to the police and guild offices, and more informally by exploiting the capricious whims of their neighbors and using the incursion of these officials as the catalyst for an impromptu protest.98 The archives give evidence of the substantial danger jurés courted when they ventured into the faubourg to enforce guild regulations. Masters and workers were never pleased to see officials approach their shops, and hindered their missions whenever possible.99 But when guilds tried to enforce their regulations in the faubourg Saint-Antoine, they were interfering with the experiment in using work to alleviate poverty that this domain was meant to address. As such, these incursions particularly menaced faubourg workers whose attempts to support themselves were thwarted by guild inspections. When Nicolas Peplin and other masters visited the faubourg Saint-Antoine on behalf of the guild of turners, they were seeking to halt work of poor quality that did not conform to trade standards. As a result of this visit, they rendered a complaint against Augustin Brouet, an illegitimate turner, that 97 98 99

Quoted in Thillay, “Liberté du travail,” p. 220. Kaplan, “Les faux-ouvriers,” pp. 367–8. Farge, La vie fragile, pp. 149–50.

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is, a worker without proper standing in the corporation, who ran a shop in the faubourg with his wife and other family members.100 According to these guild masters, the workers in this workshop were making chairs that violated regulations. In response to this complaint, Brouet and two of his workers began to shout at the officers. When these verbal threats proved insufficient to chase them away, Brouet dropped the chairs and allowed the seizure of goods to take place. But the matter did not end there. Peplin visited a fellow master in the faubourg the following day, and was spied by Brouet’s aggrieved wife. She raised neighbors and family to attack Peplin physically, violently, according to his description. He claimed that they attacked him with “kicks on his legs with their clogs and punches to his face that they also scratched bloody in different places and broke his teeth.”101 This beating avenged the harm Brouet’s wife believed the juré had done to her husband’s business and their livelihood. Jurés who visited Sieur Cassot’s grocery to prevent him from selling distilled beverages received a similar reception. As they were seizing the illegal products they found, “Cassot’s wife on the steps of the shop seeking to rile up the populace against the said jurés with her insults and shouting that the jurés were wretches who came to her house to arrest a man for debt.”102 By presenting herself as a victim of a crime neither she nor her husband committed, Madame Cassot hoped to prevent the seizure by raising a crowd. Her zeal to protect her livelihood only served to draw the attention of the city’s guard and police commissioner. In terms of its relationship to the poor, the freedom masters enjoyed to produce a range of goods, from the luxurious pieces commissioned at the workshops of the rue St.-Antoine to the cheap pieces of furniture carelessly knocked out, meant that the shops of the faubourg had the freedom to produce for the entire range of the market, including affordable products for the modest consumer. Over the eighteenth century, consumers from even the most modest levels of society bought more furniture and personal goods, creating demand for modestly priced home furnishings.103 In this way, too, the faubourg served the needs of the poor. As one widow explained when jurés from the furniture makers guild raided her shop: “she does not deny the defects and poor craftsmanship that can be found in the said pieces inasmuch as she does not sell them at the prices of perfect pieces.”104 Many masters of the faubourg, freed from cumbersome regulation, responded to this need for moderately priced goods, a market that was not always served by legitimately licensed guild workshops. All of these factors—the freedom from the guild structure, its history as a space where ordinary people could attempt to support themselves without having to rely 100 101 102 103 104

AN, Y 15048, 19 January 1742. Ibid. AN, Y 9528, 14 March 1771. Roche, People of Paris, pp. 145–9. AN, Y 15365, 23 August 1755.

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on public, charitable institutions, the recognition that there was a market for goods catering to those with moderate means—converged to make the faubourg SaintAntoine a popular, poor, and working quarter.

Parish Assistance: The Example of Sainte-Marguerite In addition to the church’s inherent interest in matters of charity and poverty, the prominent role played by the abbess of Saint-Antoine in urging the creation of the faubourg as a space to alleviate poverty reveals the large presence of religious institutions there. This interest in poor relief was aided by the church’s holdings in the faubourg: “at the time of the Revolution, convents, with their vast gardens and outbuildings, occupied still a considerable area: the possessions of the clergy covered more than 20 per cent of the total area of the faubourg.”105 The religious establishments of St. Antoine were major economic institutions in the faubourg, and thus important to the life of its inhabitants; they played a critical, and often direct, role in providing assistance for the poor and indigent. For many poor, it was often the informal network of the neighborhood, or the more formal apparatus of the local parish, that stepped in to provide relief and assistance when there was no other adequate formal support.106 An important source of assistance for poor women, the local parish often provided money or food for the indigent. Parish assistance became more prevalent for people like widows for several reasons. In part, local institutions filled a need that royal institutions, meant to control the unworthy poor, did not address. As well, parish assistance seemed most appropriate to give relief to the worthy poor because the parish priest, by virtue of membership in the local community, could assure the probity and morality of those who received assistance.107 In addition to supervising the comportment of the poor, parish priests also urged parishioners to care for their own by contributing alms and other materials for their unfortunate brethren.108 Local poor relief helped the faithful carry out their Christian duty to care for the less fortunate and to ensure that the less fortunate lived in a way worthy of such assistance. In another way, the continued dependence on parishes to distribute charity deflected criticism from Church leaders who saw increasing royal legislation to control the poor as a renunciation of the Christian duty to give alms. By combining reliance on, and praise for, local, parish-based relief with new 105

Monnier, Le faubourg Saint-Antoine, p. 112. David Garrioch, Neighborhood and Community in Paris, 1740–1790 (Cambridge, 1986), p. 212. 107 Hufton, Poor of Eighteenth-Century France, p. 11. In some places, priests undertook regular visits to the poor, Jütte, Poverty and Deviance, p. 112. Geremek, Poverty, p. 202. 108 Geremek, Poverty, p. 135. 106

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ambitious poor legislation, royal governments avoided charges of secularization at the cost of piety.109 In addition to concerns over charges of secularization, the royal government became increasingly interested in the parish as a locus for poor relief because of its seeming efficiency. In considering the benefits of a parish-based model for controlling poverty, government officials were deeply impressed by the example of Holland, England, even Switzerland, where poor legislation was based on the work assistance coordinated by the parish and used institutional assistance (l’assistance hospitalière) as little as possible.110

In these places, local charity cost the royal government next to nothing since the church and its parishes paid for this assistance. Also, administering charity on a local and restricted basis abetted the close and constant regulation of beggars that governments increasingly wished to impose. For Paris, as we have seen, the area most associated with the poor and attempts to alleviate their misery was the faubourg Saint-Antoine, whose largest parish was Sainte-Marguerite. This parish was closest to the city boundary, and it included the largest concentration of workers, both skilled and unskilled. By examining the extant records of this parish, we can get a glimpse of how localities responded to the needs of the impoverished. One of the projects the members of this community undertook was to distribute alms, both in money and in kind, to the poor of the neighborhood, in particular to poor widows. The evidence of this activity is a register entitled “The Poor Widows” that recorded relief donated to poor unmarried women, the vast majority widows, between 1719 and 1740.111 This register provides the names of committee members, the names of each recipient of charity, and the amount each woman received. This operation was unremarkable in terms of the kind of assistance they furnished. Camille Bloch’s description of the program of other Parisian parishes accurately depicts the work of the women of Sainte-Marguerite: assistance consisted first in taking care of the physical needs of the honorable poor. Subsidies were rarely given in cash; they preferred the distribution of foodstuffs (soup, bread, meat), of linens and clothing, of medications and supplies… Children were put into apprenticeships and entrusted to masters in the trades. They also made distributions of the trade tools and raw materials (wool, silk, leather, thread).112

109 110

Ibid., pp. 238–9. Camille Bloch, L’assistance et l’état à la veille de la Révolution (Paris, 1908),

p. 154. 111 112

AN, LL 839. Bloch, L’assistance et l’état, p. 126.

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This emphasis on constructive aid, which encouraged recipients to work, fits in with the larger desire to encourage all beggars to be useful, and to discourage them from taking alms, lest they develop a taste for idleness. We have limited evidence from parish records of what motivated SainteMarguerite to alleviate widows’ poverty in particular. The first focused discussions about helping the parish poor took place in 1718, when the marguilliers set aside the third Sunday of every month for allocating resources to relieve poverty.113 The group also appointed a treasurer to oversee and allocate funds. In terms of the mechanism and rationale for giving assistance, the group decided to appoint “an ecclesiastic and a layperson to visit the said poor and distribute assistance in each of the said neighborhoods.”114 But at this point, there seemed to be no formal decision to limit relief to widowed women. What seemed to have pushed the parish in this direction were two factors. In March of 1719, one of the former marguilliers of this parish left 200 livres to the parish to be used for the sick and for poor children.115 With these funds in hand, the parish’s committee on poor relief gave alms primarily to indigent mothers with children to assist in their care, most of whom were widows. The church council expanded that mandate not long after the gift to include widows without children as well. Also, in the following year, this parish council turned their attention to the refurbishment of the church building: “the curé entrusted Monsieur Briot with the rebuilding project.”116 From that point forward, the meetings of the marguilliers were dominated by discussions of building materials, budgets, and other related matters, with no further attention devoted to the issue of poor relief. So the priorities of 1719 remained in place for the following two decades during which the church handed out alms. Recipients of aid were exclusively women, overwhelmingly widows. About 25 per cent of the recipients had children.117 While the register does not provide the ages of recipients, the general absence of children on its rolls suggests that most of these women were old and alone, deprived of the help children might offer a widowed parent. The mothers had children under the age of 10, too young to work and help support the family. The register offers no explanation of the criteria used for handing out aid or any formal requirements. Given the parish framework, we can assume that these women were members of the neighborhood community, known to those determining eligibility for assistance. In addition, widowed female poor conformed to the definition of worthy poor, suggesting that this parish acknowledged a distinction between the worthy and the unworthy poor. In spite of

113 114 115 116 117

AN, LL 834. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid. AN, LL 839.

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the absence of certain information this register does offer some suggestive details about poverty in Paris. The aid this parish offered was overwhelmingly in the form of bread. Virtually every recipient, even if she also got money or other goods, received bread. The parish also tried to give those women with trades or jobs the means to continue those enterprises. Many of the widows received cloth, soap, or thread so they could engage in laundering or repairing clothing. The other small trades that many of these poor women engaged in were the victualling trades—selling fruit, eggs, butter. Several of the women, identifying themselves as the widows of artisans, received more specialized resources—flour to bake, leather to craft, even tools to use for sculpting.118 However, the majority of these women were not employed and apparently depended on charity, probably from a few different sources, to remain solvent and independent. Out of 803 recipients for the years 1719 to 1727, only 315 had identifiable employment.119 But of those 315, only about 40 of them appeared to have a skilled profession. The rest sold comestibles, repaired or laundered clothing, gardened a small bit of land. These activities yielded a scanty living, but could not be considered a real source of income. These women cobbled together several sources of income, and the assistance offered by the parish was indispensable for them. Many of them returned month after month for a ration of bread. Even those who did not ask for assistance regularly often came every November and December, those months when expenses undoubtedly rose and even those widows who managed to scrape by most of the time needed extra help. A widow’s fortunes could fluctuate a great deal throughout the year, or from year to year, and the existence of resources for assistance certainly kept many of these women from complete destitution. As another part of their effort to relieve poverty, and relieve poor widows of an important burden, this parish also placed girls (and a few boys) in apprenticeships, mostly with linen drapers and seamstresses. In addition to paying the entry fee, the parish also provided money and bread to help support these children through the years of apprenticeship. For the needy women of SainteMarguerite, these subsidies provided a way to maintain themselves.

118

AN, LL 839. Very few widows formally declared a profession, perhaps because they had none or perhaps because they felt estranged from the work they used to perform due to poverty. But it is possible to guess at their employment in many cases based on what assistance they received from the parish. AN, LL 839. 119

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Conclusion While the stereotype of the aged and destitute widow does describe many of the women who were left alone in the eighteenth century, that image needs to be examined critically. The life of a widow depended very much on her social and economic standing, her family, and her friends. There were a number of paths a widow’s fortunes might follow. If she were lucky she would maintain a modest living from the money she retained after her husband’s death. She might even continue to run a shop or business she and her husband had run together. Many resourceful women used their cash and goods to ensure support for the remainder of their lives. Such arrangements between a widowed mother and her children ensured a flow of capital from the older to younger generation, but in a way which benefited both and left the widow independent. However, many widows did not have the option of continuing a trade or purchasing an annuity to maintain an income for them for the rest of their lives. These women had to work small jobs, seek assistance from family and friends, and sometimes rely on charity. Their husbands’ deaths represented a complete breakdown of the family economy from which they never managed to recover.

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Conclusion Just as we began our consideration of widows with a fairy tale, we close with another tale, aptly entitled “La veuve et ses deux filles.” In this story, a widow with two daughters receives a supernatural judgment on how she raised her children, and thus indirectly on her ability to serve as head of household after her husband’s death. An old woman appeared at the door of a house inhabited by a widow and her two daughters, Blanche and Vermeille. In response to the woman’s request for something to eat, Blanche brought some scrawny plums to the table, while Vermeille brought her pet fowl.1 After supping with the family, the woman revealed herself to be a fairy, and presented each daughter with a reward commensurate with the food she had offered. For Blanche that meant life as a queen and, for Vermeille, as a farmer’s wife. Each girl accepted the fairy’s offering and passively accepted her fate. While this arrangement might be puzzling to the reader, by the end of the tale the true value of these gifts becomes clear. Blanche found herself increasingly unhappy and alienated in her position as queen. In an attempt to escape the suffocating life of her court, Blanche visited her sister and was astonished to find Vermeille living a tranquil and contented life in a pastoral utopia. Each sister stood for judgment and received her due.2 In this fairy tale, the widow failed in her attempt to take over as the head of the household. She had raised her elder daughter to be greedy and ungenerous, demonstrating her unsuitability to stand in for her deceased husband. At the end of the story the failings of the mother to run her household properly were punished by a supernatural entity. This ancient tale reflected traditional concepts of widowhood and, more broadly, female character. The literary device of a fairy serves to unmask the widow’s incompetence as a mother and ineptitude as a patriarch. Evidently persistent stereotypes appearing in stories hundreds of years old continued to shape perceptions of widows. However, as this book makes clear, the behavior and experiences of widows belied the message of these tales, despite considerable doubt as to whether women could manage alone. In its laws and sermons, French society urged widows to reattach themselves to men, reflecting the concerns of social and cultural elites about the propriety and desirability of allowing women to act as independent persons. Without the tempering influence of husbands or priests, it seemed that widows might do as they pleased, with potentially disruptive effects. But even in 1 Charles Perrault, Histoires du temps passé, ou les contes de ma Mère l’Oye avec les moralités (London & Brussels, 1786), pp.167–8. 2 Ibid., pp. 169–74.

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the face of cultural norms and representations that sought to confine them as pious recluses or remarried wives, widows frequently escaped social conventions and strictures. This study has sought to describe and understand the lives of widows in early modern Paris. But it presses beyond this subject to explore how Parisians imagined notions of gender, law, and economic activity. In examining the conduct of widows as mothers, heads of households, and entrepreneurs, we see that they did not conform neatly to gendered stereotypes. The concept of liminality, of operating between social categories rather than in delimited and clear roles, aids in understanding how Parisian women navigated their world. In many ways, widows constituted a group apart. Their experiences did not mirror those of either single women or wives. Indeed, in many ways married women did not enjoy the level of independence that widows did.3 A wife’s attachment to her husband, the subordination of her legal person and her actions to those of her spouse, meant that she could not engage in the same activities as widows. Unlike married women, widows could and did make decisions for themselves in most circumstances.4 Widows shared some characteristics with single women. Like unmarried women, they had a legal status independent from that of men; they were emancipated adults. Both widows and single women could sign contracts and claim legal standing. Widows, however, controlled family assets inherited from husbands and took over their position as heads of household when they died. Even when an inheritance was meager, widows exercised a certain amount of economic autonomy as a result of their stewardship of family wealth. They could determine not only children’s marriage partners, but also their own marital prospects. They decided the amount of a daughter’s dowry and a son’s contribution to his new household. A widow could place her children in apprenticeships or employment, choosing their futures for them. In such instances, widows took on authority, responsibilities, and powers generally granted only to men; they made significant, binding decisions for themselves and for others. These independent women stood apart both in how society conceptualized their position, and in how they could function as women unencumbered by the demands of marriage. In terms of both representation and practice, widows formed a discrete social category—that is, a group that contemporaries saw as distinct based on their behavior and actions. As

3

On single women, see Arlette Farge and Christiane Klapish-Zuber, Madame ou Mademoiselle?: Itinéraires de la solitude feminine, XVIIIe–XXe siècle (Paris, 1984). For England, Judith M. Bennett and Amy M. Froide, “A Singular Past,” in Judith M. Bennett and Amy M. Froide (eds), Singlewomen in the European Past, 1250–1800 (Philadelphia, 1999); Amy M. Froide, Never Married: Singlewomen in Early Modern England (Oxford, 2005). 4 In certain circumstances, women could designate themselves as femmes marchandes with their husbands’ permission.

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we have seen, that sense of distinctiveness provided widows with opportunities and pitfalls. It was in the domain of the law that the special character of widowhood emerged most clearly. While the ideology undergirding the law appeared to support a patriarchal conception of the family, in practice, royal legislation and local custom often empowered widows to defend their families’ interests. For example, Louis XV’s ministers may not have intended the 1729 law allowing widowed mothers to inherit from their deceased children as a way to give women more control over family wealth. The language of the law constructs these mothers as guardians of family stability whose task could be endangered by lack of resources.5 However, an alternate reading of this law shows that it provided women a way to exercise substantial control over their surviving children and collateral relatives as guardians of these additional assets. In another instance, the Edict on Second Marriages appears to deprive a widow who remarried of the use of some of her deceased husband’s assets.6 The wording of the law explicitly singled out women and their inappropriate remarriages as threats to their children’s prosperity. But legal commentaries, reflecting the ways that men and women used and understood laws, undercut this interpretation of the edict. While it did name widows’ second husbands as major rivals to the children of a first marriage, the limits on the assets that a widowed spouse might contribute to a new household applied to both men and women. Indeed the misogynistic rhetoric of this law pilloried women in particular by imagining that they would be seduced by the charms of gold diggers, but as the law was used, its terms applied to all who remarried. Women seemed to be aware of the slippage between rhetoric and application. Transactions governed by notarial contracts bear out the assertion that women used these laws, despite their patriarchal didacticism, as a basis for managing their families’ assets after their husbands had died. Such laws did not deter women from remarrying, exercising control over their children’s inheritances, or using assets to run businesses. By skirting the edges of the law—as when a widow like Madeleine Tixerand did not draw up a probate inventory for years after her husband’s death so that she could continue to control all of the household’s property—widows could enhance their authority without apparent interference from family or community.7 Such behavior buttresses a reading of the law as capable of being employed for varied reasons, even those seemingly at cross purposes with the rhetoric of texts or the intentions of royal legislators.

5

Jacques-Antoine Sallé, L’Esprit des ordonnances et des principaux édits et déclarations de Louis XV, en matière civile, criminelle, et bénéficiale (Paris, 1771), p. 519. 6 François-André Isambert, Recueil général des anciennes lois françaises, depuis l’an 420 jusqu’à la Révolution de 1789 (29 vols, Paris, 1821–33), vol. 14, pp. 36–7. 7 AN, MC étude XI/574, 27 January 1751.

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The independence that widows could exercise in such circumstances raises important questions about the merits of the family economy model of relations between gender and subsistence in early modern European society. According to this model, families survived financially only through the united effort of all their members. Without a father to provide, much prevailing scholarship seems to envision the impoverishment of the household, since the loss of his labor, the most valuable in terms of wage compensation, would leave the family with a broken economic machine.8 But we have seen that widows were by no means universally impoverished. They were frequently capable of independent economic action without reduction of their financial standing. The economic well-being of these families depended not on the presence of a father but on access to a family shop and its resources. A widow trained in the family trade could function and even prosper without her husband. Expertise and capital proved to be more crucial to survival than a husband’s legitimizing superintendence and labor. The idea of the family economy thus does not encompass the experiences of widows. These findings also suggest that the shop itself, not the patriarch, constituted the central element of familial survival, at least for those in the artisanal ranks. We need, then, to consider the shop, rather than or alongside the workers, as a primary site of analysis. This alternative framework for envisioning the family’s moral economy permits women to survive, and even thrive, so long as they operated a healthy enterprise. It also sheds light on ways that guilds, by embracing notions of the family as the foundation of a master’s commerce, empowered women. An interpretation of guild structures and practices as manifestly patriarchal does not fully fit with the ways people worked within the corporate system. The model of the family economy has strongly shaped the ways that historians have analyzed female work, obscuring the ways that women could in fact prosper economically under certain conditions. One starting point for a bleak view of the family economy has been the assertion that skilled trades increasingly excluded women. Several historians of women have argued that beginning in the late medieval period, guilds and other trade organizations began systematically to shut out women.9 From Lyon to Nuremburg to the Low Countries, they assert, women were pushed out of trades in response to a number of economic and social pressures. At the leading edge of that transformation, in this view, were guilds, whose ordinances began to forbid female apprentices, eventually resulting in the absence of women from the ranks of journeymen and masters. According to this trajectory, women, pushed out of the most remunerated and skilled types of work, 8

Olwen Hufton, “Women and the Family Economy in Eighteenth-Century France,” French Historical Studies, 9/1 (1975): 1–22; Joan W. Scott and Louise A. Tilly, Women, Work and Family (New York, 1978). Barbara Hanawalt, “Introduction,” in Barbara Hanawalt (ed.), Women and Work in Preindustrial Europe (Bloomington, 1986), p. xvi. 9 Martha Howell, Women, Production, and Patriarchy in Late Medieval Cities (Chicago, 1986), p. 179.

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eventually found themselves working on the margins of the economy. The work they undertook was increasingly defined by poor wages and some kind of connection to domestic space, as women found themselves confined more and more to work like washing, mending, cooking and the like—all devalued economically and ideologically.10 Along with growing exclusion from the workplace, women also found that when they worked, their labors were clustered at the bottom of trades and compensated accordingly.11 While the mechanism for these changes in female economic status varied from location to location and across time, the results remained the same: first, women were excluded from high-status, highly remunerative occupations. Second, women’s situation also diminished their expectations. By the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, even while women participated in the French economy in great numbers, they seemed to be clustered primarily in typically female occupations—those dealing with food, textiles, and domestic goods. Even granting the importance of women’s wages to the financial soundness of the household, women supposedly could not aspire to most kinds of skilled work and the higher wages that went along with it.12 This decline in the labor status of women seemed to mirror a perceived decline in the political and social possibilities for women. One of the elements of the decline in women’s roles and status were attempts to reaffirm gender roles at the end of the French Old Regime. Concern that gender relations were being renegotiated arose in a number of different arenas. One space where such anxieties surfaced was the legal court system. Parisians at the end of the eighteenth century witnessed several scandalous trials that garnered publicity in part due to the women involved. A number of prominent pre-revolutionary judicial cases swirled around problems of gender construction and perceived threats to male privilege. From the Diamond Necklace affair to high profile divorce cases, the problem of women stepping out of their sanctioned roles caused social disruption and a backlash against women in public.13 Critics of public female voices worried that “if gender differentiation was no longer guaranteed by a divinely sanctioned chain of being that placed men above women…how could sexual difference, the 10

Merry Wiesner, Working Women in Renaissance Germany (New Brunswick, 1986),

p. 3. 11

Natalie Zemon Davis, ”Women in the Crafts in Sixteenth-Century Lyon,” in Barbara A. Hanawalt (ed.), Women and Work in Preindustrial Europe (Bloomington, 1986), p. 71. 12 James B. Collins, “The Economic Role of Women in Seventeenth-Century France,” French Historical Studies, 16/3 (Autumn, 1989): 466–4. 13 Sarah Maza, Private Lives and Public Affairs: The Causes Célèbres of Prerevolutionary France (Berkeley, 1993); Sarah Hanley, “The Jurisprudence of the Arrêts: Marital Union, Civil Society, and State Formation in France, 1550–1650,” Law and History Review, 21/1 (2003): 1–40; Jacques Revel, “Marie-Antoinette in Her Fictions: the Staging of Hatred,” in Bernadette Fort (ed.), Fictions of the French Revolution (Evanston, 1991).

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masculinity of men and the subjection of women, be ensured.”14 While the scandalous show trials at the end of the Old Regime presented sensational cases of women run amuck, widows, through their frequent exercise of male authority and assumption of public roles, contributed in a quotidian way to perceptions of gender’s malleability and the ways that women’s behavior could undermine traditional male and female roles. The hostility to women’s public activities has led some historians to see evidence of a decline in women’s status in several arenas. Elite women, like the protagonists in court cases, often found places of privilege and autonomy in Old Regime society. Paris and its environs, with the royal court and numerous literary salons, provided a space for such women to take on public roles. In these spaces, women acted as both intermediaries between different groups of men and shapers of the messages they conveyed. Women were able to seize such a role because of the way that “social practice and the construction of history supported each other in giving women a particular and central role in the formation of modern, civilized society, defined as peaceful, gentle, sociable and—eventually—enlightened.”15 This central and valued role that women played in leading the institution of salons and shaping elite intellectual and cultural norms began to be curtailed in the 1780s as society embraced emerging notions of private and public spheres. Women would be confined to the former space, knocked down from a position of influence to one of dependence on men. By the end of the century, elite literary men “designed and marketed new institutions of intellectual sociability for the male citizens of an expanding Republic of Letters … But women were not to be the active centers of these new institutions.”16 Just as the demise of salons led to female intellectual and social marginalization before the French Revolution, increased hostility toward the perceived decadence of court life and the eventual collapse of the absolutist monarchy also led to loss of status for aristocratic women. The royal court was a particular institution in Old Regime France given the lack of other sanctioned political spaces. The court became a place where the restrictions on straightforward political action that applied to both men and women allowed the latter to find ways to access both the king and a network of influence at court. At Versailles, “through sexual intrigue or marriage, women achieved a jealously guarded intimacy with the monarch or his personal representatives. They often served as conduits or mediators for aspiring courtiers and socially ambitious gentlemen.”17 Here, women’s bodies provided entry to the workings of political power in ways that were shut off to men. But the 14

Maza, Private Lives and Public Affairs, p. 322. Dena Goodman, The Republic of Letters: A Cultural History of the French Enlightenment (Ithaca, 1994), p. 8. 16 Goodman, Republic of Letters, p. 275. 17 Joan Landes, Women and the Public Sphere in the Age of the French Revolution (Ithaca, 1988), p. 20. 15

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theorization and then the establishment of a Republic in the 1790s resulted in the exclusion of court women, as well as salonnières, from participation in an increasingly politicized and masculinized public realm. For the new French society that developed in the last decade of the eighteenth century, “society women best typified the evils of artificial conduct, dress, speech and masquerade which the revolutionaries sought to exorcise…[b]y assigning women wholly and entirely to the family, the possibility of women’s independent participation must have appeared to contemporaries to have been permanently suppressed.”18 These tales of women pushed out of highly paid work, forced into domestic labor, or turned away from intellectual, literary and political roles propose a golden age for women that faded away during the eighteenth century as the male notion of republicanism signaled the end of both the Old Regime and female possibility. But not all women found themselves caught up in this declension. Certain women bucked this trend, finding satisfying and well-paid work, as well as a place in the public life of French Old Regime society. Such women included mistress seamstresses and some of their workers. Seamstresses supported themselves by their own labor, as powerful and independent actors who did not merely engage in the employment that was the lot of the vast majority of Old Regime women, but also controlled the terms of that work through their own guilds. Other guild-based artisans, such as midwives, linen-drapers, and flax merchants, also provided certain women the opportunity to support themselves through skilled labor.19 Through membership in the guild, seamstresses, in particular, created an identity for themselves that offered them standing in public, if not in the public sphere as defined by Jürgen Habermas.20 Further, while some who worked in the business of making women’s clothes and selling linen cloth earned little, many mistresses were able to amass respectable fortunes and support themselves without the need for male labor. For working women like seamstresses and, I argue, widows of master craftsmen, options and wages did not necessarily contract in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Armed with skill, capital, and connections, women could and did earn a living without having to rely on a family economy. The experiences of widows, seamstresses, and other skilled female workers demonstrate the scope of female activity in Old Regime France, and the ways that women prevailed despite the loss of husbands and incomes. Widows did not fit into the trajectory of loss and decline that other historians have laid out for women of Old Regime Europe. While widows faced challenges connected to gender norms, and could not function in the home and shop just as men did, they did nonetheless find ways to function and 18

Landes, Women and the Public Sphere, p. 165–7. On women’s work within corporate structures, see the essays in Daryl M. Hafter (ed.), European Women and Preindustrial Craft (Bloomington, 1995). 20 Clare Haru Crowston, Fabricating Women: The Seamstresses of Old Regime France, 1675–1791 (Durham, 2001). 19

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even thrive in their society. Far from marking a nadir of female work possibilities, the eighteenth century provided well-paid, high-status work to some women. For these successful women, just as for the salonnières and women of the court, the eighteenth century ended with a moment of possibility, and ultimately disappointment. Dramatic changes in the political and economic arenas presented women with a number of challenges. Positing the citizen not only as male but also as a rational actor served to exclude women; the idea, after all, was that women “were not perceived to be either capable of self-governance or of reasoning about general rather than particular interests.”21 With a biological roadblock thrown up to bar women from political participation, they struggled but eventually failed to achieve citizenship rights that men had gained during the Revolution. In economic terms, certain women saw a decline in their prospects after the Revolution, one that particularly challenged their ability to work in a range of skilled trades. As this study has shown, certain women had opportunities and successes in a wide range of trades throughout the early modern period, in the heart of the male-dominated guilds. But concerns over promoting transparency in all transactions between citizen and state spilled over into the economic realm. Institutions such as guilds came to viewed as yet another barrier between individuals—in this instance between employers and those who worked for them. They represented another kind of pernicious privilege, to be discarded by the National Assembly just as the privileges of nobles and clerics had been eliminated.22 In ideological terms, the elimination of the guilds represented the triumph of “a liberal vision of the world, a vision founded on an atomistic way of understanding society, supposedly composed only of individuals acting alone, and on the primacy, the efficacy and the sacrosanct character of liberty considered as the autonomous idée-force of social action.”23 Given this emphasis on the individual basis of economic activity, women found themselves excluded. Widows had carved out a role for themselves within the collective identity of the guild; now they were excluded from such work because, according to patriarchal and Revolutionary ideology, women could not function as political, social, or economic individuals as men could. The abolition of the guilds thus did not merely take away widows’ claims to husbands’ places in the workshop. They also made evident the larger challenge that women faced in trying to assert individual personhood in a liberal regime that denied it to all women based on their supposed biological and intellectual shortcomings.

21

Carla Hesse, The Other Enlightenment: How French Women Became Modern (Princeton, 2001), p. xiv. 22 Gail Bossenga, The Politics of Privilege: Old Regime and Revolution in Lille (Cambridge, 1991), p. 168. 23 Steven L. Kaplan, La fin des corporations (Paris, 2001), p. 503.

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229

With the passage of the Allarde Law in 1791 and the rapid dismantling of the guilds, strengthened later that year with the Le Chapelier Law which forbade all worker associations, widows of master craftsmen found themselves in a precarious financial situation. For artisanal women in early modern Paris, the abolition of the guilds in 1791 destroyed the economic basis on which they had built their lives, as well as the sociability and identity that these bodies provided. No longer protected in their exercise of skilled trades, these women found themselves increasingly, but not entirely, excluded from high-status work. Instead, these widows, and other workers as well, found themselves in a situation, structured by the Allard and Le Chapelier laws, where “society is made up solely of atomized individuals, each one free to pursue his own interests within certain approximately defined limits.”24 Furthermore, revolutionary debates on gender and citizenship emphasized the power of the market and the interaction of individuals within that marketplace, thus narrowing the space where widows of masters had been able to claim privileges as members of groups that intervened between workers, owners, and the marketplace. The question over how women fit into the new model of interaction between the individual and the state or public was one that preoccupied nineteenth-century thinkers.25 While women in the artisanal ranks found themselves economically dispossessed, other changes also affected the overall status and activities of women. Some of the legal reforms enacted during the Revolution served to grant greater personal autonomy and rights to women—the legalization of divorce, for example. But many such changes were rolled back when the Civil Code took force in 1804. In general, the Civil Code subordinated women to men in the interest of promoting family stability and reasserting patriarchal authority at home. The drafters of the Code clearly embedded “gender differences” in revised divorce procedures. For men, one case of adultery on a wife’s part became grounds for divorce, while women could only divorce a husband whose mistress lived in the family home. 26 While the example of divorce exemplifies the gender distinctions written into the Civil Code, women were disadvantaged in other respects as well. They lost the kinds of influence over property that had marked early modern Parisian households as well as rights over their children. Women could, and surely did, work through the interstices of the Civil Code, just as they did for customary law. But the parameters of the Civil Code made it more difficult. As Suzanne Desan notes, 24

Ibid., p. 547. On gendered understandings of the marketplace in the nineteenth century, see Victoria Thompson, The Virtuous Marketplace: Women and Men, Money and Politics in Paris, 1830–1870 (Baltimore, 2000), especially the introduction. 26 Suzanne Desan’s The Family on Trial in Revolutionary France (Berkeley, 2004) analyzes the myriad changes in family law that took place over the course of the French Revolution. On divorce, see p. 303. 25

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“(f)or the codifiers, paternity needed to be ensconced by the legitimate family and upheld by both law and honor… In sum, the Code articulated a new alliance between state, father and conjugal family.”27 Opportunities for assuming a position of authority and leadership within the family home seemed to be diminished at the hands of the drafters of the Civil Code. Another development of the nineteenth century worked against widows’ ability to act as heads of their households. Notions of domesticity and the division between a private, female sphere and a public, male sphere coalesced into a powerful ideology of gender relations after the Revolution. While many women worked out of necessity or choice, there was more ambivalence about women engaging in such public activities.28 In the nineteenth century, “the gendered distinction between public and private was more an ideological construct and contemporary worldview than an accurate description of actual social relations.”29 While this did not change the reality that widows had to support and lead their families in the wake of the father’s death, it did mean that in comparison to the early modern period, when the women examined in this study could exercise privileges within the guilds, widows in the nineteenth century faced new tests in finding remunerative and acceptable work. The increased hostility toward women in the marketplace meant that widows encountered more challenging, although not insurmountable, barriers to their exercise of autonomy after the Revolution.30 The moment when widows could become masters, accept risks, succeed or fail based on their resources and skill, lead their families, and enjoy positions of authority in their homes and communities, faded after the Revolution. While widowhood in Old Regime France often meant poverty, uncertainty, and marginalization, it could also mean independence, wealth, and influence. Widows faced ideological barriers to their exercise of such roles in early modern France, but those barriers changed, becoming in some ways more formidable, after the great shifts of the Revolution. What is not clear is how these women met the challenges of the new century as Europeans adapted to an ideology of liberal individualism that pushed women aside. The question remains: what new strategies emerged then among women coping with the challenges of life without a husband.

27

Ibid., pp. 296–7. There are many studies of female work and public activity in the nineteenth century. See, for example, Tessie P. Liu, The Weaver’s Knot: The Contradictions of Class Struggle and Family Solidarity in Western France, 1750–1914 (Ithaca, 1994); Judith Coffin, The Politics of Women’s Work: The Paris Garment Trades, 1750–1915 (Princeton, 1996); Gay Gullickson, Spinners and Weavers of Auffay: Rural Industry and Sexual Division of Labor in a French Village, 1750–1850 (Cambridge, 1986); Laura L. Frader and Sonya O. Rose (eds), Gender and Class in Modern Europe (Ithaca, 1996). 29 Frader and Rose, Gender and Class, p. 16. 30 Thompson, The Virtuous Marketplace, introduction. 28

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Index Alloués 86, 103, 119 Annuities 41, 136–8, 200–202 Assier-Andrieu, Louis 11 Bossuet, Jacques 67–9 Bourdieu, Pierre 11, 50 habitus 14, 22–3 and law 21, 50 builders 123 Caen 156–7 Canon law 24, 27, 52, 57–8, 61 and Patristic writers 56 Catholic Church confraternities 208 doctrine 27 ecclesiastical courts 24, 177–82 Consanguinité 24, 177–8 dispensations 177–82 spiritual kinship 178–9 and marriage 177–81 poverty 184, 191, 215–18 and widows 18–19, 51–2 Charivari 158 Civil Code 229–30 Clandestine marriage 31–2; see also Edict against Clandestine Marriages and parental consent 63–4 Convents as shelter 196 Council of Trent 28–9, 63–5 and funeral rites 72 and remarriage 65 credit and business 139, 201–3 and marital estate 133, 135–6

curriers 108–12 jurés 110–12 wives’ participation 109–12 customary law 24, 45 Coutume de Paris 27, 34, 46, 174 wills 75 Dancourt, Florent 7, 154 demographics and loss of spouse 4 marriage 153, 155, 165 remarriage 115–17, 156–7, 161 Edict of Blois 32–3 Edict against Clandestine Marriages 27– 30, 34 Edict on Second Marriages 27, 31, 34–7, 39, 159, 177, 223 fairy tales 5–6, 221 family; see also Widows gendered labor 160–61 family economy 10, 121–2, 189, 219 and shop 224 Faubourg Saint-Antoine 147, 211–15 and unregulated work 211–15 Femme marchande publique 101 funerary rites 3, 71–3, 197; see also sacraments extreme unction 2 gender definition 12–13, 225–6, 230 and guilds 84, 86, 118 goldsmiths 101, 108–10, 112–15, 130 unsanctioned workers 113

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widows hallmarks 113–14 masters 114–15 Gonzague, Anne de 67–9 guilds 8; see also curriers, goldsmiths, hatters, printers, sword masters, vinegar makers, wine inspectors 1776 abolition of 90, 126, 228 Allarde Law 229 apprentices 97–8, 100, 119 confraternity 3, 72, 210–11 female 128, 224 funerary rites 17 mastership 91–2 moral standards 105 patriarchal institutions 83 poor relief 117, 184, 211 and remarriage 101–2 social hierarchy 85–6, 98 statutes 89, 140–44 and widows 9–10, 19 and wives 122–3 Hanley, Sarah 37–8 Hatters 122 Henry II 28–30 Henry IV 212–13 Hôpital Général 184, 188, 212 journeymen 91, 150; see also JacquesLouis Ménétra Jurés 130 election of 119 guild seizures 139–47, 213–14 and widows 144–5 and wives 123–4 law 23; see also Customary Law, Royal Law as analytic category 10–12 and gender 49–50, 194 marriage 30 and patriarchy 15–16, 18, 22

Lyon 157 marital dispensations 154, 177–81 marriage choice of partner 153–5 first versus subsequent 162, 165, 169–70 , 173, 177, 182 guild ties 125 parental consent 30, 47–8, 163–4, 169 rituals 168 as sacrament 27, 63 marriage contracts 25, 33, 44, 162–4, 170–76; see also Property and marital community 35, 40–41, 45, 16, 170, 175 mutual gift 159, 169, 172, 176–7 parental contributions 164 and property 48, 134, 166–7 witnesses 163, 171, 174 mastership 18; see also guilds access 89–90, 92–3 and marriage 93–4 masters’ sons 90, 93 as property 43–4 rental of 103–4 socialization 125–6 Ménétra, Jacques-Louis 92, 104, 121–3, 128, 175 Mercier, Louis-Sébastien 204–5 Mésalliance 29, 33 New Testament 53–6 remarriage in 55 poverty 191 notary 26, 38, 44–5, 49 marriage contracts 162–4 as mediator 25 and probate inventory 4, 72, 131–4, 200–202 wills 75 Old Testament 52–6 levirate marriage 53–4

Index poverty 191 Paris 8 Parlement of Paris 26, 126–7 patriarchy 5, 9, 39, 191, 223 police commissioner 3 Pothier, Robert-Joseph 42 poverty criminality 205–6 definition 183–4, 186–8, 191 as failure of work 184, 202–3 and family relations 207–9 gendered 185–6, 190–93 honorable poor 187, 189 and moral standing 190 policy 187, 190 religious orders 192, 195–6 practice theory 13–15, 18 printers 43 widows 117, 149 probate inventories 19, 131–4, 199–202; see also Notary and devotional objects 79–82 and family relations 132, 208 and wealth levels 132, 207 property 39; see also marriage acquired 39 and artisans 167, 172 classification 39, 166, 193 dower 45–6, 164, 170, 172, 176 dowry 164, 167, 170–73, 193 inherited 39–40, 165 moveable 39, 43 real 39, 41, 44, 133 fictional 41–2, 48–9, 167 survivor’s benefit 164, 172, 176–7 religious orders 68, 74–5 remarriage 19 Catholic position on 58–60 children 158–61 demographics 70, 156–9 and early Christian Church 57 economic opportunity 157

251 nuptial blessing 58–9 sacramental nature 60–62 and Saint Paul 65 Reynière, Grimod de la 1 Roche, Daniel 183, 199–200 Royal law 16, 24–9, 36, 215, 223 Sacrament extreme unction 2 of marriage 59–63 Sainte-Marguerite parish 215–18 Saint Paul 55–7 and sexuality 55, 66 seamstresses 227 Segalen, Martine 160, 168 Séparation de biens 38 Séparation de corps 196 shop labor issues 104 stone cutters 72 sword masters (maîtres d’armes) 87–9 Tametsi 28, 64 Tour de France 126, 128 Turgot, Anne-Robert-Jacques 90, 126 venal office 42–3, 166 Villethierry, Gerard de 66–7 vinegar makers 117–18 widowers remarriage 155–8, 160 widows; see also demographics, remarriage apprentices 97–101, 103 authority 1, 126–7 book ownership 80–82 burial wishes 76–8 business failures 99, 202–4 business partnerships 147–52 business practices 97, 143–5, 203, 227

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charitable acts 78, 185, 197 and local needs 198 and children 146, 148, 150–52, 222 money 152 and debt 198 estate claims 194 financial investments 186, 189 gender roles 7–9, 222–3 guild governance 106, 116, 119 guild life 118–21, 144 guild violations 140–46 guild statutes 89, 101 honorable poor 186–8, 190–92, 217– 18 identity 154 labor issues 104, 141, 147, 161 legal status 34, 46, 164, 168, 222 literary representations 6–7 and local parish 77–9 and mastership 17, 43, 84, 87, 95, 102–3, 150 and material resources 131, 134–5, 138 as mother 32 mourning 4, 159–60 poor relief 206

poverty 20, 183–4 prevalence in trades 107–8, 129 prostitution 204–5 religious practice 71, 73, 185, 195 remarriage 32–3, 35, 130, 154–5 and access to capital 94–5 motivations 169, 174–5, 177–81 reorganized guilds, post-1776 90–91 sexuality 66–7, 69, 104–6, 180–82, 204–7 suicide 208 training 96, 145 usufruct 16 wills 75–9, 168–9 workshop 84, 127–8 wills 25, 172, 185, 197; see also notary wine inspectors (jaugeurs de vin) 87–8 wives 130; see also curriers and property 194 women charitable acts 198 education 124–5 guild ideology 87 politics 226–9 sexuality 226–7 as workers 87, 225