The 1942 French marriage law reform abrogated the legal duty of a wife to obey her husband, but did not make spouses equal. Simone de Beauvoir presents it as a limited legal change within a longer history of married women’s subordination: the law’s language expanded women’s formal powers while leaving substantial authority and practical constraints in place.

Historical Background

In de Beauvoir’s account, marriage and property had long helped organize women’s dependence. In ancient Rome, a wife in a marriage with manus passed under her husband’s authority, while later arrangements could leave her property in the hands of guardians and divide authority between her father and husband. These changing legal forms did not erase the underlying problem: a woman’s situation depended not only on abstract rights but also on her economic role and the powers exercised within the family.

The French Revolution briefly disrupted established arrangements, but the reorganization of society brought renewed legal subordination. The Napoleonic Code restricted married women’s civil rights and required a wife’s obedience to her husband. De Beauvoir describes the Code as a decisive restraint on emancipation, with its marital authority governing both a wife as a person and her possessions. Subsequent nineteenth-century law maintained and reinforced this severity; divorce, abolished in 1826, was not restored until 1884, and remained difficult to obtain.

The Reform and Its Limits

The change came in stages rather than through a single break. In 1884, divorce was restored, though the rules preserved a sexual double standard: a wife’s adultery was an offense, while a husband’s was treated as such only if he brought a concubine into the home. Women’s legal capacities expanded further in the twentieth century, but de Beauvoir stresses how slowly the married woman’s status changed under the Napoleonic framework.

The reforms of 1938 and 1942 abrogated the wife’s duty of obedience. Yet the father remained head of the family and continued to determine the place of residence; a wife could oppose his choice only by advancing valid arguments. Her powers were increasing, but the law’s formulation remained internally qualified: the declaration that a married woman had full legal powers was limited by the marriage contract and by law. De Beauvoir therefore treats the reform as a real alteration in formal status, not as the achievement of equality between spouses.

Law and Everyday Power

The reform’s significance lies partly in the difference between legal recognition and the ability to exercise a right. De Beauvoir argues that long-standing customs can prevent formally recognized rights from appearing concretely in everyday life. Legal change must therefore be considered alongside economic dependence and the habits that preserve male authority; a change in the wording of the law does not by itself redistribute the resources and influence that make autonomy possible.

That distinction connects the reform to her broader account of women’s condition. She describes women as autonomous freedoms whom social arrangements nevertheless pressure to accept the position of the Other, restricting their ability to set their own projects and reach beyond assigned roles. The reform loosened one explicit legal requirement, but the continuing authority of the husband and father showed how much of that position remained embedded in family organization.

Significance

For de Beauvoir, the 1942 reform belongs to a history of uneven change, not a simple progression from subjection to equality. The removal of a wife’s formal duty to obey mattered, yet the husband’s continuing powers and the law’s qualifications exposed the limits of reform confined to legal status. Its significance is thus both practical and analytical: it marks a change in the rules governing marriage while clarifying why formal rights alone cannot secure women’s concrete independence.