Family Composition and Remarriage in Alsace, 1750-1850

Because the rural European family of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was based on an essential complementarity of roles, the death of a spouse created a void in the household that left the surviving partner with many pressing problems to solve. Sometimes remarriage could help the family to deal with the demands of everyday life. But remarriage also had its drawbacks. Many widows and widowers preferred to rely instead on such strategies as using the labor of older children, enticing other relatives to work in the household, or hiring domestic servants or day laborers. Taking its evidence from five rural villages in the French region of Alsace, this study examines the influence of a range of material and cultural factors on the probability of remarriage for widowers and widows from 1750 to 1850.¹

Recent research on both Europe and North America has identified some of the most salient issues that faced widowed men and women. First and foremost, they needed help in doing the work that constituted the economic foundation of the household. For men, an additional challenge was to make sure that the tasks usually handled by a wife—including cooking, laundry, and child care—did not go undone. It was not simply a case of men finding the time to do both their own and their deceased wife's work. Men who took on household chores were often open to ridicule, making them reluctant to do such work themselves. Widows also encountered barriers that prevented them from taking on their late husband's responsibilities. In some cases, the nature of the work itself—a blacksmith's, for example—might constitute a serious hurdle. In others, legal problems intruded. Widows were sometimes prohibited from renewing a lease on farmland or blocked from exercising certain trades by guilds or corporations.²

The difficulty that both widows and widowers faced in trying to do the work of two people was an incentive at least to consider remarriage. Whether remarriage was the best option, however, depended on the available alternatives. Segalen noted that widowers could often rely on female relatives for household and child-care duties. Widows, too, might have been able to find help from a relative. The wealthiest among them might even have been able to hire someone. The variety of circumstances confronting widows and widowers weighs heavily against making firm predictions about their behavior. Perhaps the safest conclusion is that the greater the difficulty faced by widowed persons in carrying on the work of the household, the greater was the motivation to remarry.³

As important as it was to ensure that work be done and bills paid, decisions about remarriage were affected by other factors as well. Although marriages in European villages of the past involved important material considerations, sexual desire and the need for companionship played a role as well, perhaps especially for those widowed at a young age. A wish for additional children might have been an added incentive for some to seek a new mate, again, especially among younger widows and widowers. Set against these potential gains, however, were worries about how a new spouse might change family life. A woman, for example, would likely have to submit to her new husband's authority. Moreover, new spouses often brought along their own baggage, whether children from a previous marriage or a new set of in-laws.

In trying to decide on the wisdom of a new marriage, widows and widowers were subject to a variety of influences and opinions from inside and outside the household. The decision to remarry was never a purely individual one because remarriage inevitably raised important questions about the control of property. Children of the first marriage might well have feared the loss or dilution of their inheritance. They might also have feared contending with stepparents and stepsiblings. Those old enough to do so would likely have voiced their opposition to any proposed remarriage...