4th century CE

In Simone de Beauvoir’s account, the 4th century CE marks the writing of canon law that treated marriage as a concession to human weakness and situated women under male authority. The period matters not as an isolated turning point but as one stage in her account of how religious doctrine and legal institutions helped make women’s subordination appear permanent and divinely warranted.

Canon Law and Christian Doctrine

The discussion links canon law to the authority of Christian teachers who defined the wife’s position through her relation to her husband. Saint Paul’s teachings supplied an argument for female subordination, while later church writers described marriage as incompatible with Christian perfection. Saint Thomas Aquinas continued this tradition, presenting women as incomplete beings destined to live under men’s authority. Canon law gave these teachings institutional force: it recognized marriage by dowry, restricted women’s access to male functions, and denied their court testimony legal weight.

Marriage and Women’s Legal Position

The legal arrangements described around this period constrained women within the family rather than recognizing them as independent authorities. Beauvoir contrasts those restrictions with elements of Justinian’s legislation, which recognized a mother’s authority over her children and rights to inheritance, while still limiting her control over dowry property and her ability to contract on her husband’s behalf. The comparison underscores that legal protections and subordination could coexist: a woman might receive certain family rights without acquiring equal standing as a person before the law.

Historical Significance

The 4th century CE belongs to Beauvoir’s broader history of institutions making a contingent social hierarchy seem natural. Her account argues that women’s position cannot be explained by a timeless feminine essence; it is shaped by religious teaching, legal systems, property, and social arrangements. Canon law is therefore significant as one instrument through which male authority was translated into rules governing marriage and women’s agency.

Beauvoir’s analysis also resists treating historical change as a simple progression toward equality. Legal provisions could recognize women in some capacities while confining them in others. The period’s place in the argument is to show how doctrines and institutions reinforced one another, and how the historical situation of women was produced rather than dictated by biology.