In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

chapte thee Find the Fathers, Save the Children, 1870–1912 Demonstrating the power of the judiciary and of women, significant court rulings during the nineteenth century set the stage for enacting a law in 1912 to permit recherche de paternité. At issue were concepts of class, gender, the French family, and conflicting beliefs about duties and rights. The debates surrounding issues of paternal responsibility revealed a contest over male sexual domination and female sexual vulnerability, over ownership rights to female bodies, over bourgeois respectability and workingclass companionship, over individual male rights to property and privacy, and over gendered notions of sexual honor—all played out in the public arena for political ends. During the later nineteenth century, with women filing suits for reparations or child support and magistrates effectively legislating from the bench by interpreting the law in new ways, members of the Senate and Chamber of Deputies began to debate the possibility of permitting paternity searches. They argued many aspects of this complex issue, both symbolic and practical , and tabled proposals several times. As a result, passage of the law permitting paternity searches took more than three decades following the first significant legislative proposal in 1878. Jurisprudence formed a dialectic with legislative debates on the family, paternity, maternity, morality, and property. Legislative debates and opinions published in the reformist literature and legal tracts may have influenced court decisions, but jurisprudence took the lead in reflecting changes in culture and society. Although judges’ language during the nineteenth century resonated in the 1912 law in many instances, judges and jurisprudence showed more sympathy to women than did legislators and the law. In general, the law of 1912 ignored the mother except as agent for her child. During the first decade of the twentieth century, court cases involving reparations or child support differed little from those of the later nineteenth century. Judges did not require that the putative father provide the child with his name or a portion of his property, maintaining the divisibility of paternity that judges had long relied upon. Judges still required some written proof of paternity or evidence of fraudulent seduction or a broken marriage promise. Men’s letters remained crucial evidence, especially when embellished with phrases such as “I am so proud of the trust you have in me and await the happy day when I can show you that I am worthy”; “I promise you that I’ll make you very happy; fear nothing, my dear, I shall never abandon you”; and “Better days will come when we shall be united and not separated” (this one signed “your future husband”).1 In an emblematic 1905 case, an unmarried domestic servant, Estelle Mahler, went to court to claim child support and damages from the putative father, Léon Girard. Mahler and Girard had been nineteen years old in 1900 when they began a relationship. They had a son in 1902, whom they both legally recognized at their local city hall. In 1905, she gave birth to a girl, whom she recognized but Girard did not. Nor by 1905 did he provide for the needs of either the boy or the newborn girl. Mahler submitted Girard’s letters as evidence of his acknowledgment of his paternity. In 1903, when Girard was doing his military service, he had written to her expressing his great affection toward her and to the child. He even wrote to Mahler’s father saying that he looked forward to being his son-in-law. Despite these letters of 1903, the judge refused damages to Mahler because she could not bring proof that Girard’s marriage promise had led her to begin intimate relations with him. The judge determined that her relationship with Girard was purely voluntary, disqualifying her from winning a suit based on fraudulent seduction or a broken marriage promise. Furthermore, he denied her child support for the baby girl, since Girard had never acted as a father toward that infant. Girard’s recognition of, and paternal affection toward his first child, however, inspired the judge to find Girard liable for child support for the boy.2 The key in this case was Girard’s recognition of the child. Adèle Hartmann met Maurice Cohen on the street in Paris in April 1902. He was a medical student; she was a seamstress about ten years older. Intimate relations followed. They never had a dwelling in common, but in May 1903, they had a child. In one letter...

Share