French Restoration

The French Restoration is significant in The Second Sex as a moment when the promise of women’s freedom after the French Revolution gave way to renewed legal and social constraint. Beauvoir singles out the abolition of divorce in 1826: divorce did not return until 1884, and even then remained difficult to obtain. The episode belongs to a broader history in which women’s status was shaped not by an unchanging feminine nature, but by institutions, law, and the interests of those who held power.

Historical Setting

Beauvoir describes the aftermath of the French Revolution as a reversal. During the Revolution’s liquidation, women had enjoyed what she calls an anarchic freedom; as society was reorganized, they were subjected again to strict controls. France had been ahead of other countries from a feminist perspective, yet the modern French woman’s status was determined under a military dictatorship. The Napoleonic Code then held back emancipation for a century, making the post-revolutionary restoration of order a decisive constraint on women’s civil and family lives.

Marriage and Legal Authority

The Restoration’s clearest measure in this account was its 1826 abolition of divorce. The constitutional assembly of 1848 refused to reinstate it, and divorce was not restored until 1884, when it was still difficult to obtain. This extended interruption helped sustain the ideal of the family as an indissoluble social unit, with women confined to domestic life and the husband placed at its head.

The surrounding legal order assigned husbands authority over wives’ lives and property. Under the Napoleonic Code, a wife owed obedience to her husband; he determined the family’s residence and held greater rights over the children, while her contracts generally required his authorization unless she managed a business. The law treated marital power as reaching both the wife as a person and her possessions. Beauvoir’s account presents the Restoration’s divorce policy not as an isolated change, but as part of a system in which marriage restricted women’s ability to leave or act independently.

The Family as a Social Hierarchy

Nineteenth-century defenders of social order framed the family as a miniature hierarchy. Joseph de Maistre and Bonald grounded order in divine will and opposed changes to inherited family principles. Bonald’s formulation placed the husband in the role of governor, the wife as administrator, and the children as those who obeyed; he also argued that women belonged to family life rather than politics or public service. The renewed rejection of divorce supported this conception by making the family’s hierarchy difficult to escape.

Beauvoir contrasts this domestic ideal with the economic pressures of the century. The bourgeoisie asserted its authority amid anxiety about the Industrial Revolution, while the freedom of ideas inherited from the eighteenth century made little difference to family morality. The result was not a straightforward return to an earlier world, but a modern social order that combined economic change with persistent restrictions on women’s status.

Place in Beauvoir’s Historical Argument

The Restoration forms one episode in Beauvoir’s larger argument that women’s history has been written through institutions and interests controlled by men. She rejects the idea that women’s subordination follows from a timeless essence: the legal arrangements governing marriage and family change across history, and those changes serve particular social projects. The return of restrictions after revolutionary upheaval demonstrates how quickly political possibilities could be narrowed when society was reorganized.

This history also clarifies the difference between formal declarations of liberty and women’s concrete opportunities. Beauvoir judges institutions by the freedom they make possible for individuals, not by claims that a prescribed situation is happy or natural. In that framework, the Restoration’s long suspension of divorce is consequential because it reinforced women’s dependence within marriage and curtailed their ability to pursue an independent future.