Research & Current Projects

Book Manuscript

This project (i.e. turning my dissertation into a book) investigates gender relationships and the role of women in French rural society in the seventeenth and eighteenth century from two different perspectives —economic and socio-legal. I show the social importance of female peasants as I demonstrate that they had a prominent role not only within their respective households but also within their communities. Women were not as passive and submissive as traditional historiography and common assumptions have asserted. Female peasants had rights, prerogatives, and opinions of their own and consequently challenged the paradigm of patriarchy. This project emphasizes the huge gap between theory – a patriarchal society in which women had no power and no rights especially over money – and practice – women as moneylenders and borrowers, managing their households and their estates.

Using gender as category of historical analysis, this project explores how female peasants had an extremely significant position both in the market economy and within their households and communities, notably through the study of notarial and legal records. Throughout the eighteenth century, their role in the circulation of capital and property through the credit system and the land market contradicts the common assumption that early modern women had no place or say in the extra-domestic sphere. As the legal records indicate, female peasants were also very active in the defence of their assets, social position and prerogatives. They braved patriarchy and found a relative equilibrium in their relations with men. The experience of women in rural early modern France illustrates some of the ways emerging social practices modified and altered the traditional patriarchal model, thereby adjusting the social practices to the economic and social context while skirting around legal norms. The findings of this project undermine patriarchal ideology, indicating a change in gender relations during the early modern period and contributing to recent historiography analyzing the theory and practice of patriarchy.