1.

Record Nr.

UNINA9910815556003321

Autore

Desan Suzanne <1957->

Titolo

The family on trial in revolutionary France / / Suzanne Desan

Pubbl/distr/stampa

Berkeley, : University of California Press, c2004

ISBN

1-282-35849-9

9786612358494

0-520-93976-X

1-59734-612-8

Edizione

[1st ed.]

Descrizione fisica

1 online resource (475 p.)

Collana

Studies on the history of society and culture ; ; 51

Disciplina

306.85/0944/09033

Soggetti

Families - France - History - 18th century

Families - Political aspects - France

Domestic relations - France - History - 18th century

France History Revolution, 1789-1799 Women

France History Revolution, 1789-1799

Lingua di pubblicazione

Inglese

Formato

Materiale a stampa

Livello bibliografico

Monografia

Note generali

Description based upon print version of record.

Nota di bibliografia

Includes bibliographical references (p. 325-425) and index.

Nota di contenuto

Freedom of the heart -- The political power of love -- Broken bonds -- "War between brothers and sisters" -- Natural children, abandoned mothers, and emancipated fathers -- What makes a father? -- Reconstituting the social after the terror -- Toward the civil code.

Sommario/riassunto

In a groundbreaking book that challenges many assumptions about gender and politics in the French Revolution, Suzanne Desan offers an insightful analysis of the ways the Revolution radically redefined the family and its internal dynamics. She shows how revolutionary politics and laws brought about a social revolution within households and created space for thousands of French women and men to reimagine their most intimate relationships. Families negotiated new social practices, including divorce, the reduction of paternal authority, egalitarian inheritance for sons and daughters alike, and the granting of civil rights to illegitimate children. Contrary to arguments that claim the Revolution bound women within a domestic sphere, The Family on Trial maintains that the new civil laws and gender politics offered many



women unexpected opportunities to gain power, property, or independence. The family became a political arena, a practical terrain for creating the Republic in day-to-day life. From 1789, citizens across France-sons and daughters, unhappily married spouses and illegitimate children, pamphleteers and moralists, deputies and judges-all disputed how the family should be reformed to remake the new France. They debated how revolutionary ideals and institutions should transform the emotional bonds, gender dynamics, legal customs, and economic arrangements that structured the family. They asked how to bring the principles of liberty, equality, and regeneration into the home. And as French citizens confronted each other in the home, in court, and in print, they gradually negotiated new domestic practices that balanced Old Regime customs with revolutionary innovations in law and culture. In a narrative that combines national-level analysis with a case study of family contestation in Normandy, Desan explores these struggles to bring politics into households and to envision and put into practice a new set of familial relationships.