Penser la famille au XIXe siècle (1789 –1870) (review)

In view of the increasing amount of scholarly attention being paid to the theme of the family in nineteenth-century France, this book brings us a timely and valuable collation of some of the different waves of nineteenth-century thought on this all-important social institution. Bernard’s study scrutinizes the way in which intellectuals viewed and shaped the developing idea of the family at this time. To achieve this ambitious end, the material contained in this volume is organized into two parts. The first contextualizes the subject matter and then assesses the state of the institution both leading up to and during the nineteenth century. Here, Bernard examines how the family was approached as both a maisonnée or household and a lignée or line at different moments in history. This leads on to a close analysis of filiation and how the family links, renews and expands itself. The author traces the development of the various sexual, economic, authoritative and emotional functions of the family. In some respects, parts of this first section retread the socio-historical path famously forged by Philippe Ariès, but Bernard expands on and develops Ariès’ discussion in a most useful and insightful way, bringing us to a deeper understanding of the history of the family. The consideration of the semantic origins of much of the family-related terminology, for example, is particularly informative. The second part of the volume focuses in detail on the work of some of the key writers and thinkers who tackled the family question between the end of the Revolution and the dawn of the Third Republic. The series of close readings of individual authors will prove a useful resource not only for scholars working on the nineteenth-century family, but also for academics and students seeking to gain an overview of the work of particular writers and thinkers. Scholars working on figures as diverse as George Sand, Rousseau, Fourier, Flora Tristan and a number of other less mainstream authors will find a wealth of detailed information here. Through such writers, Bernard traces the development of both primarily conservative schools of thought (including such standpoints as patriarcalisme and phallocentrisme) and alternative points of view which challenged these approaches, such as utopisme in its various forms. This second part closes with a detailed examination of a more progressive standpoint that encompassed le paternalisme des Lumières, le réformisme libéral and le familialisme romantique. Bernard concludes this thorough and impressive volume by reminding us of the inevitable paradoxes inherent in the notion of ‘family’ (at once a biological fact and a social conception), and shows how twentieth-century theorists have been influenced by many of the waves of thought dealt with in this volume. Read in its entirety, this volume will provide a thorough overview of the state of the family at this time and of the way it was perceived. The density of this study probably makes it better suited to the more experienced academic, though the concise detailed discussion of individual authors may still make it accessible to students.