“I was Wife and Mother”: French Widows Present Themselves to the Ministry of Justice in the Early Nineteenth Century

Abstract

Royal ordinances of 1814 and 1815 gave judges and other fonctionnaires of the Ministère de la Justice the right to demand retirement pensions; they also gave widows the right to demand a portion of such pensions. In making those demands, individuals explained their life histories, summed up their careers, made claims about merit and need, and expressed their hopes for retirement. This article explores female self-images through the study of letters found in career dossiers in the Archives Nationales (Paris) series BB25.