Patterns of Conflict in Eighteenth-Century Parisian Families

Abstract

Using records of complaint to the police and requests for lettres de cachet, this article explores the structure of conflict that existed in eighteenth-century Parisian families. In contrast to earlier work, it finds that the vast majority of complaints were lodged against spouses, not children, and that it was wives above all who used the state's relatively new coercive capacity in Paris to buttress their position in the family. The article concludes that the impact of the French state on social structure and relationships was a complicated one that cannot be reduced to the reinforcement and protection of those, like fathers, already advantaged by cultural and economic circumstance.