Family, Gender, and Law in Early Modern France

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction

1. Making and Breaking Marriage: An Overview of Old Regime Marriage as a Social Practice

Suzanne Desan

2. Marriage Choice and Marital Success: Reasoning About Marriage, Love, and Happiness

Dena Goodman

3. Family Affairs: Wives, Credit, Consumption, and the Law in Old Regime France

Clare Crowston

4. Between State and Street: Witnesses and the Family Politics of Litigation in Early Modern France

Julie Hardwick

5. Marital Conflict in Political Context: Langeac vs. Chambonas, 1775

Jeffrey Merrick

6. Gender, Kin, and Guardianship in Early Modern Burgundy

Christopher Corley

7. On the Contested Margins of the Family: Bastardy and Legitimation by Royal Rescript in Eighteenth-Century France

Matthew Gerber

Suggested Readings

Contributors

Index

“This is one of those rare edited volumes greater than the sum of its parts. Each chapter is a fine work of historical synthesis, document analysis or close archival research. Yet, together, the essays paint a rich picture of marriage and family life in early modern France, uncovering startling new facets beneath old assumptions.”

—Jennifer J. Davis, European History Quarterly