History of the Family 15 (2010) 283–297

Revisiting the decline in remarriage in early-modern Europe: Thecase of Rheims in France

Antoinette Fauve-Chamoux ⁎

Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales, Paris, France

Abstract

Manywere the European towns where remarriage frequency declined, especially for widows, in the 17th and 18th centuries. This articleinvestigates how remarriage models evolved in France, basing our analysis on vital events collected for the fourteen parishes of the town ofRheims in Champagne. A large set of Family Reconstitution Forms for the period 1668-1802 allows the study of remarriage among urbanwidows andwidowers. Through four successive periods of time,we observe changes in remarriage behaviour in this preindustrial center as acase study, in a gender comparative perspective. In urban surroundings, in the late 18th century, strategies of remarriagemay have beenmoreflexible than in rural areas. Women were less exposed to family and social pressure preventing them to remarry, discouraging or delaying anew union. The presence of dependent childrenwas always a problemwhen awidow tried to choose a new partner. It was easier for aman toremarry. Awidower used to take a newwife quickly and a younger one, if possible without children at charge. A specific aspect of the urbancontext was population geographical turn-over and changing labour markets. It would explain, at least partly, the decreasing proportion ofremarriages in Rheims. Female urban surplus was a constant, affecting the chances for remarriage, particularly in large European cities.© 2010 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Keywords: Remarriage; Widowhood; Nuptiality; Viduity; Early-modern Europe; Gender differences; Family reconstitution method; Rheims; Ruralurban differentiation

1. Introduction

The fate of widows in the past, which historians neverignored, aroused some renewed interest in the last 30 yearswhen historical demography studies and statistical corpusappeared, giving new types of information about widow-hood and potential remarriage in the times of AncienRegime (Bideau, 1980; Cabourdin, 1981; Dupâquier,Hélin, Laslett, Livi Bacci & Sogner, 1981). Remarriagewas recognized as widespread in those times when deathaffected marriage as much as divorce does today. Butgender affected chances to remarry, more or less, of course,according to place and time and type of communityconsidered, with a permanent feature: widows remarried

⁎ Maître de conférences EHESS, 2, rue E. Faguet, 75014 Paris.Tel.: +33 1 45 39 64 73; fax: +33 1 45 43 89 27.

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less than widowers. There might be one of the reasonswhy the fate of West European women “alone”, be theywidows or unmarried, childless or not, due to theirimportant proportion in the population, especially urbanpopulation, did attract historical attention (Wall, 1981;Fauve-Chamoux, 1981a, 1983; Lundh, 2002;Bourdelais&Demonet, 2007; Wintjes, 1982). Let us remember,concerning marriage, that European societies do differfrom others, for instance Asiatic societies, where tradition-ally marriage for women was early and universal andremarriage a matter of family or customary not individualdecision (Fauve-Chamoux, 2005; Kurosu, 2007).

Research on single women and widows covereddifferent aspects. Some authors studied the type of workopen towomen “alone” –without a spouse–, their income,types of cohabitation, mobility and life course; they notedhow relative and often difficult was their independence

2 The Rheims data bank, build in the 1970s and updated in the 1980s,included nominative detailed parish registers information about births,marriages and deaths concerning individuals having a surname beginningwith B [including Le B., De B., de la ., de le B. etc.] in the 14 parishes ofRheims (for the period of marriage 1668-1802) and in the hospitals. Taxlists and censuses information were added to vital events and were studiedseparately. The computerized sample covered 12.8% of the population,

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from any conjugal framework; they pointed out how mucha good social level was a necessary condition for a decentstandard of living (Lorcin, 1981; Diefendorf, 1982;Pellegrin, 2003). Others recorded how influential werethe family structures and networks; they also observed theslow building in the various Western societies, of mutualaid and assistance systems, of retirement and social securitybenefits, particularly in Northern Europe (Lynch, 2003;Moring&Wall, forthcoming). In France, it was particularlyclear that, legally as well as customarily, marriage settle-ments and types of inheritance could be different accordingto the regional long history, cultural traditions and familytransmission systems, with a necessary impact on potentialfemale remarriage (Fauve-Chamoux, 2009). Besides, thepresence or not of dependent children appeared as playingan important role in remarriage decision. Two other factorswere also considered: the duration of thematrimonial unionwhich the spouse's death interrupted and the age of thesurviving spouse when widowhood occurred1.

Our aim here is to clarify how remarriage modelsevolved in France, basing our analysis on data collected inRheims for the period 1668-1802, as a case study. Weobserve remarriage behaviour in this preindustrial urbansurrounding, in a comparative perspective. Since I didalready examine numerous features of this Rhemish urbancommunity ofNorthernChampagne–with studies on birthcontrol, children out to wet-nurse, fertility trends, illegit-imacy, family structures, migration models and domesticservice - (Fauve-Chamoux, 1983, 1994, 1998, 2002, 2004),the present study of remarriage may integrate some usefulknowledge about demographic and socio-economic para-meters. Previously and in linewith our present concern, weexamined how and how much, in this regional main city,widows could effectively work, support themselves,become household heads after their husband's death,live alone or with their children if they had some, and howthey could face old age during theAncienRegime (Fauve-Chamoux, 1994, 1998, 2000, 1981a). «Husbandless»households were usually small-sized: lack of moneycompelled widows not to support their children, puttingthem in apprenticeship, leaving them in some institution's

1 Ida Blom, twenty years ago, published a bibliographic overview onhistory of widowhood (Blom, 1991), with an emphasis on the periodfrom the eighteenth to the twentieth centuries; historians of old age havebeen also very active on this field and outlined many aspects ofwidowhood (Aubry, 1989; Henderson &Wall, 1994; Kertzer & Laslett,1995). FroukeVeenstra andKirsten van der Ploeg edited another selectedbibliography on "Widows in Western History" (Veenstra & van derPloeg, 1995; Bremmer and van den Bosch, 1995); they noted then thatfew articles dealt with the household conditions of widows during theearly modern period. OlwenHufton gave a view of her previous work oneighteenth century Britain and France (Hufton, 1984; 1995a,b) where sheconsidered also spinsters and other women alone.

care, or even abandoning them, as did so many unmarriedmothers in the 18th century (Chamoux, 1973b; Fauve-Chamoux, 1983, 1993, 2002).

Many questions are raised: how to relate remarriage topoverty orwell-being?How arewe to interpret the notablemistrust of female remarriage by European clergymen orthe hostility against some remarriages that we can read inlocal events like «charivaris»? (Aries, 1981; Burguière,1981; Fauve-Chamoux, 1981b; Segalen, 1981). Our dataindeed bring complements to earlier studies on familystrategies in mating and the choice of spouse (Brunet,Fauve-Chamoux & Oris, 1996; Dickinson, 2005; Fauve-Chamoux & Wall, 1998; Vassberg, 1994; Wall, 2002);they shed some light on questions such as changingwidowhood models with time and family recomposition.We hope that this essay will provide a better genderapproach of main remarriage factors such as age atwidowhood, proportion remarrying, interval betweendeath of spouse and remarriage, rural versus urbanmarriage market, dependent children, living standards,and evaluate how specific was the urban society inNorthern France at the end of the Ancien Regime.

2. Sources

Concerning the town of Rheims, I collected vital eventsregistered in all parishes as well as in hospitals, conductingan alphabetical survey on surnames which covered 12.8%of the whole population and I reconstituted families forcouples married between 1668 and 18022.

During the Ancien Regime, Rheims was a major city.Not only French kings were crown in the famous gothiccathedral, but it was a powerful and lively urban centre of14 parishes with about 18 000 inhabitants in 1560, 30 000

surname beginning with B being the more frequent in Northern France. Afamily reconstitution was successfully completed in the 1970s (seefollowing note onmethods).More than 15 000 family reconstitution forms(FRF) were established manually for Rheims, linking all the nominativeinformation available, parish after parish and finally all parishes together,adding hospital records. Among them, 2450 FRF providing a marriagedate, the age of the woman and an end of union were digitalized andanalysed. The present study is based on this set of family reconstitutionforms (FRF). Events related tomarriages which occurred in the last period,1789-1802 were collected until 1820. The computerized set of 2450Rhemish families (FRF) was sorted by periods of marriage (5 periods of30 years). Sets of socio-professional groups were also established but arenot used in the present study devoted to remarriage.

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in the beginning of the 17th century, even up to 45 000 in1640 – due to wars and crisis, and still 36 000 inhabitantsin 1687 (Fauve-Chamoux, 1997). The end of the 17thcentury was a time of great troubles, plague and starvationwhich deeply affected the city. But it served as apermanent place of safety and refuge for fleeing ruralcivil populations (Fauve-Chamoux, 1995). For 1802, thepopulation is estimated around 30 000.

I present here data from a digitalized corpus of 2450«completed» families, i.e. conjugal families with knowndates of marriage, age of wife and an end of union due toone's spouse death.3For the sample, all marriagesconcluded in the town as a whole were identified andtheir continuity observed, notwithstanding strong popula-tion mobility from one urban parish to another. Of course,in and outmobility of individuals and families explain thatthe main part of the Family Reconstitution Forms (FRF)lacked either a date of marriage (when a couple marriedelsewhere than Rheims), either an end of observation(when it is not knownwho of the two spouses was the firstto die or if the couple moved out of the town).4 To each

3 About “family reconstitution” methods and related techniques ofhistorical demography analysis practiced from the early 1960s to the late1980s, see Manuels published by Louis Henry (Fleury & Henry, 1956,1985; Henry, 1970 ; Henry&Blum, 1988). Henry distinguished betweenfamilies “achevées” (with an end of union) from “completed” (thoseproviding an end of union occurring after thewomen has reached age 45).To study remarriage we consider all “familles achevées”, as soon as thedate of marriage was known as the age of the spouses. We are lucky thatinformation on age was very well recorded in Rheims and rarely missing.Traditional methods are used in this paper, because the author began herresearch in 1969 (before personal computers existed), collecting alonevital events from parish registers, an enormous enterprise for anindividual project. Louis Henry advertised to apply family reconstitutionmethods manually (since no satisfactory computer programs were yetavailable). Parishes were reconstructed separately. This took a long time(Chamoux, 1972; 1973a). Afterwards, a rearrangement of the family fileswas conducted in order to follow each couple moving from one parish tothe other and identify all vital events concerning the same couple and itschildren within the town. We hope that a new project could allow atechnical rearrangement and expansion of the Rheims data bank, in orderto apply a multivariate model on the full sample.4 Individuals and families came sometimes from far away, as various

maps have shown. For out migration, it is extremely difficult - if notimpossible - to reconstruct full family course because we usually do notknow when the couple (with or without children) or the missing spouse,left Rheims. The present study of “familles achevées” means that theanalyse is based here on couples who did not emigrate from Rheims.Both husband and wife are known to have died in the town. Of coursesome widows may have decided to go back to their native village for anew life and remarry there, but in this case they are not included in thepresent sample. The study of out migration for a large sample would needa systematic study of nominative censuses. This is not possible in Francebefore the 19th century census registration. When studying the 19thcentury, historians are able to reconstruct family courses thanks to kind ofsources that do not exist during Ancien Régime. FromRheims, we guessthat the privileged destination was Paris.

FRF - summarizing vital events about a couple and itschildren -, I added data from yearly poll tax registers(registres de capitation), as there existed no registers forthe tax called «taille» which was levied elsewhere inFrance -the town of Rheims, paying for the king'scoronations, had the privilege to be exempted from taille-.I stopped collecting marriages registered after the generalcensus of 1802 was taken, but I conducted a systematiccollecting of the civil registers for the Revolution andNapoleon times, up to 1820. Given the already large sizeof the alphabetical sample, it was out of the question toconsult notarial records for getting information aboutmarriage contracts, wills and other individual familyarchives. But, after a rather difficult but successful linkagemanual procedure – which took three years, before thisproject was conducted before personal computer existed -,I could reach an evaluation of each family standard ofliving and I obtained a better knowledge of its socio-professionalmilieu by using the level of taxes paid by eachhousehold every five years. Lastly, some genealogicalstudies allowed tracing how merchants and textileworkers transmitted their business to the next generation(Fauve-Chamoux, 2002).5

To allow some comparative perspective, I used herepublished nuptiality data concerning 18th centuryBeauvaisis, town and countryside (Ganiage, 1999).6 InPierre Goubert's pioneering footsteps (see Goubert,1960 on 17th century Beauvais and Beauvaisis), JeanGaniage completed a demographic study of Beauvais,based on an exhaustive reconstitution of all familiesliving between 1730 and 1800 in this urban centre northof Paris, but still under Parisian influence7. Beauvaishad 12 parishes and about 12 000 inhabitants. Taxregisters had been destroyed, so Jean Ganiage system-atically studied post mortem inventories and notarialrecords and evaluated the socio-economical level ofthese families. The results of this project were added tothe previous study of villages around Beauvais during

5 I am very grateful to Tamara Hareven who suggested me, in the1990s, to develop my research in this direction and provided mestrong encouragements and advice for tracing intergenerational familyhistories of merchants, fabricants and textile workers.6 Many monographic studies using family reconstitutions Henry's

method were completed in France in the 1970s and 1980s that wouldallow further comparative studies. Unfortunately few of them werepublished and only some of them provide large sets of remarriageswith published tables that may be used for tracing precise comparativestatistics. This is why we made a choice among them for the presentstudy.7 Jean Ganiage supervised twenty master theses on 18th century

Beauvais and Beauvaisis between 1970 and 1982 (Ganiage, 1999, p.277).

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the 18th century (Ganiage, 1988), so the author couldpropose interesting comparisons between urban andrural behaviour, in particular concerning remarriagestrategies.

Rheims, the royal city, the coronation city, moredistant from Paris, was a larger town than Beauvais, andwas considered a regional capital. It was an autonomouscentre for cultural, university and clerical activities withsome genuine weight in the King's state. Anyway,comparing Rheims with Beauvais makes sense. Bothregions – Champagne and Beauvaisis - were wheatgrowers, and the two cities provided important cerealand other markets; economic and merchant activitieswere numerous and similar, with a dominating proto-industry of wool and linen. Beauvais was famous, allover Europe, for its royal tapestry workshops, Rheimsfor its sparkling wines. Both towns experienced thesame economic and sanitary crises during the 17thcentury, and endured the awful 1709 winter, etc.Whatever their social standard, urban couples did limittheir descendance (Ganiage, 1999; Fauve-Chamoux,2004). We have here a good opportunity to comparefamilies, in their behaviour concerning remarriage, andespecially remarriage of widows - a form of nuptialitywhich now seems to attract some new historical interestat the European level.8

3. European demographic systems and evidence ofdecline in remarriage trends

In September 1979, an international seminar washold in Norway, at Kristiansand, in the frame of theInternational Union for the Scientific Study of Popula-tion/IUSSP. Contributions to this meeting were editedby J. Dupâquier, E. Hélin, P. Laslett, M. Livi-Bacci andS. Sogner (Marriage and Remarriage in Populations ofthe Past, Dupâquier et al, 1981), this publicationremaining today a major reference book. Hence cameto light various analyses of remarriage models in pre-industrial European societies, which attested a general

8 About revival of interest towards remarriage, besides the sessionon “Widowhood and remarriage” that I organized at 7th ESSHCsession, Lisbon, I was able to arrange previously two sessions in theframe of the 32nd annual meeting of Social Science HistoryAssociation/ SSHA, Chicago, November 2007, one on «Remarriageand socio-differentiation » and the second on « Comparative westernmodels of partnership in marriage and remarriage ». See also thespecial issue of Continuity and Change, 22, 3, 2007, on “Remarriagerisks in comparative perspective” (Kurosu, 2007; Lundh, 2007;Breschi, Manfredini and Fornasin, 2007).

decline of remarriage frequency during the 18th century.Many of the authors used parish registers data fromfamily reconstitutions, following Louis Henry's meth-ods mentioned above (Fleury & Henry, 1985, 1956;Henry, 1970; Henry & Blum, 1988). Nowadays,statistical approaches are more sophisticated, givenpossibilities offered by event history analysis, digitali-zation of statistical data and other facilities. But ourRheims data, as they are (until now not fully exploited),may still teach us much and I shall comment some of myresults concerning marriage and remarriage models in acomparative perspective, considering a larger Europeancontext.

Most investigations of nuptiality in early-modernwestern Europe focused on the relatively late entry intofirst marriage for both men and women and high levelsof celibacy, comforting pioneering studies by JohnHajnal, Peter Laslett, Roger Schofield and E.A. Wrigleywho pointed out the specific European marriage patternsof the past (Hajnal, 1953, 1965; Laslett, 1977; Schofield& Wrigley, 1981). Philippe Ariès considered that theeffects of remarriage were « the reverse of those of latemarriage. Late marriage and high mortality act as abrake on reproduction and may lead to a dangeroussituation for the community. Remarriage on the otherhand compensates for high mortality and is an incentivefor fertility » (Aries, 1981, p. 31). Remarriageconstituted one element of the traditional demographicpattern of Europe and there was a full agreement on thisaspect during the 1979 Kristiansand meeting. Howeverparticipants noted then that remarriage, in its traditionalform, disappeared in Europe mostly during the demo-graphic transition of the 19th century, but we know nowthat a substantial decline in the proportion of marriagesinvolving people remarrying occurred at a muchearlier period.

For instance, Schofield and Wrigley showed, forrural England, that, while 25 or 30% of those marryingin the 16th c. were remarrying later in life, thisproportion declined to around 10% by the 19th c.(Schofield & Wrigley, 1981, p. 212). For femaleremarriage, this decline was clearly confirmed byJeremy Boulton for 17th and early 18th c. London(Boulton, 1990) as may be seen in Fig. 1.

Boulton showed that, in the early years of the 17th c.,nearly half the brides in a relatively poor parish ofLondon were already widows, but they were only abouta quarter of the brides in the last years of the samecentury. This study added a further dimension to thegeneral pattern evidenced by the Cambridge group(Schofield & Wrigley, 1981; Wrigley, Davies, Oeppen& Schofield, 1997, p. 172). Boulton showed that lack of

Fig. 1. Proportion of brides described as widows at marriage, in East London, parish of Stepney, 1617-1718. Percentages.

9 The "marriage squeeze," is the effect on marriage of an imbalancebetween the numbers of males and females in the population. It hasbeen seen as having a great influence on marriage behaviour.Nonetheless, the demographic literature does not contain a cleardefinition of this concept, or estimates of its impact on marriage(Schoen, 1983).

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wealth did not always prevent widows from remarrying.In his work, he was challenging some of VivienBrodsky's previous conclusions concerning theprivileged position of craftsmen and tradesmen widowstowards remarriage, in late Elizabethan London(Brodsky, 1986): for Boulton, before declining, remar-riage was rather active at all social levels.

Barbara Todd brought further interesting evidenceof the long trend concerning the declining propensityfor widows to remarry in 16th and 17th c. Abingdon,Berkshire (Todd, 1994), as may be seen in compar-ative Fig. 2. For widows, the mean interval betweendeath of husband and remarriage (when it occurred)was longer and longer, as time passed, in ruralEngland.

Similar trends were attested for 18th and 19th c.Germany (Knodel & Lynch, 1985; Knodel, 1988) andfor France (Cabourdin, 1978, 1981; Bideau, 1980).

4. Rheims nuptiality within a largerdemographic context

In such a European nuptiality context, Francepresented some specificity. Demographic transitionwas an early phenomenon in French cities, and lifeexpectancy did grow between 1700 and 1800, even inthe most disadvantaged urban sectors. But economiccrisis and changes in population parameters affectedaccess to first marriage: a rural exodus attracted youngsingle people of both sexes to towns. We cannot besurprised then that age at first marriage did grow duringthe course of the 18th c. in Rheims: for marriagescelebrated in the period 1668-1699, mean age was 27.7for men, and 24.3 for women; for unions celebrated inthe period 1775-1791: for men, mean age at firstmarriage was 28.2 and, for women, 26.7 (Fig. 4).

For whole France, we have an INED survey allowingtracing a general secular trend of ages at first marriage

between 1670 and 1910 (Fig. 3) – with this originalgraph, I ignore the usual historical dichotomy before/after the 1789 Revolution -. Of course 1789 was apivotal period, but such a longue durée curve is useful tosee and understand the deep mutations in demographicbehaviours, looking at age at first marriage by gender,on a long term period. Striking is the fact thatdemographic mutation concerned especially womenwhose age at first marriage, after a long increase,dropped back to younger ages in the course of the 19thcentury. To understand the reasons why this happened –was it an effect of the “marriage squeeze”? -9 is anotherquestion still opened to debate. When confronting ourRheims data to this INED trend concerning France as awhole, we do not see any major discrepancy in ourtrend: an age at marriage growing until the end of the18th century, as Fig. 4 shows. Let us only note that girlsin Rheims marry a bit later than the French mean andthat age difference between spouses tended to diminishduring the Revolutionary period (male mean age at firstmarriage dropped then to avoid conscription in the armyand kept later a rather stable level.

How long lasted first marriages before the death of aspouse? The case of the Beauvais area (Beauvaisis)helps once again to illustrate the general conditions ofthese early modern times (Goubert, 1960) and to precisehow long lasted marriages when celebrated in a smalltown parish between 1656 and 1735 (Fig. 5).

It is striking to observe that men were often earlywidowers before 1735 (more than 40% were widowers

Fig. 2. Mean intervals in months between death of spouse and remarriage, males and females. Comparing rural England (1600-1837) with 16th and17th century Abingdon, Berkshire.

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after less than ten years of marriage), while womengenerally lost their husband after more than ten years ofunion.10 We saw above that women married later andlater, in consequence they becamewidows (when they didnot die before their husband) at an older age. As well asmean age at marriage, mean age at widowhood variedmuch according to gender. Let us now examine this point.

5. Age at widowhood according to gender

On the whole, gender difference was minimal whenconsidering age at widowhood, as it appears from the18th c. Beauvais urban data (Fig. 6); in Rheims,conditions were more differentiated and changed withtime (Figs. 7 and 8). In 17th century Rheims, accordingto Fig. 8, 13% of women widowed very young and menrarely widowed before age 34. In the second half of theAge of Enlightenment, men widowed much sooner intheir life course and women later, although, as we sawpreviously, age at first marriage for both sexes, andespecially for women, was later (Figs. 3 and 4). We mayguess, for lack of more precise explanations, thatmortality for women did not diminish as much as wewould have expected and above all that economic crisesfor urban textile workers made probably young adultwomen more vulnerable, with an overloaded with workin a unhealthy surrounding. Childbirth remained a riskyevent (even if birth control made it less frequent). But

10 It would be interesting to compare Rheims in detail with anothercase study, as the one provided by the Vernon project. Vital eventswere computerized for a set of 40 parishes near Vernon in Normandyand family reconstitution was realized. Two periods of marriage werecompared, 1700-1749 and 1750-1789 (Beauvallet-Boutouyrie, 2001,p. 156).

age at widowhood clearly changed in Rheims after1760. Did widowhood occurring between 1760 and1789 bring about remarriage patterns differing fromthose attested before?

6. Gender differences in remarriage

6.1. Proportion remarrying: rural vs urban nuptialitymarket

What was the overall proportion of widows remarry-ing during the 18th century? In Beauvaisis, largely 60%remarried, with more doing so in town (64.2%) than inthe countryside (59%) (Table 1). This differencebetween town and country is noticeable elsewhere.

For women, in Beauvaisis, the difference town/countryside was weak, as well as gender differencewhen considering remarriage rates linked to age atwidowhood (Table 2). With the 19th century, thedifference town/country seems to increase in Europe.For instance, concerning Italy, Belletini showed that,between 1811 and 1847, remarriage was considerablymore frequent in the town of Bologna than in thecountryside (Belletini, 1981).

6.2. Proportion remarrying by age at widowhood

As we could expect, remarriage frequency decreasedwhen spouses-to-be aged, men or women indifferently,but anyhow marriage strategies could not avoid theafter-effects of demographic change. Gender behaviourdifferentials indeed increased in the late 18th century: inRheims, for late 17th century, widowers remarryingwere overall 31% (Fig. 9), only 22.1% in the early 18thcentury but clearly many more by the end of AncienRegime: after 1760, men experienced widowhood

Fig. 3. Long trends in mean age at first marriages in France, 1660-1910. INED survey.

Fig. 4. Trends in mean age at first marriages in Rheims & INED survey, 1668-1815.

11 Louis Henry, when studying marriage market, gave importantadvices to avoid statistical bias (Henry, 1969, 1981). Particularly, inthe Portuguese edition of his Manuel de Démographie historique, heproposed a method how to evaluate the numbers of “missingremarriages”, in order to take account of population mobility betweenparishes, when only one parish was under study (Henry, 1988).

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earlier than before, remarried at a later age than theprevious generations but twice more were able to do so.In the pre-Revolutionary period, as much as 52.6 % ofwidowers found a second wife (in Beauvais city, theywere 55.4 %, in Beauvaisis villages 50.3 %). As forwidows, in Rheims, the proportion remarrying in thelate 17th century was 32.2 %, with a clear increase inthe first half of the 18th century, but a trend down (only20.9 %) when the century ended (Fig. 10).

We already indicated that many were the Europeantowns where remarriage frequency declined, especiallyfor widows, in the 17th and 18th centuries (Boulton,1990). Evolution in Rheims appears to have beenmore complex. Examining the decreasing number ofremarrying widows for the whole Ancien Regime ruralFrance, Louis Henry suggested to relate such aphenomenon to the general delayed age of women atfirst marriage (more important for women than for men,

as was shown by previous Figs. 3 and 4) (Henry, 1981).One could also argue effects of rural/urban migration ordifferential mortality for men and women.11

Age at widowhood evidently influences age atremarriage, as well as it explains or acts uponwidowhood duration. In rural 17th century Francewidowhood was frequent for age group 35-40 years.In a French country like Nivernais, where age at firstmarriage was very early, widowhood could affectyounger couples (Cabourdin, 1981). Anyhow widowsand widowers always tried to remarry with a partner of a

Fig. 5. First marriages broken by husband's death or wife's death and time (years) spent in union since marriage. Auneuil, 1656-1735. Percentages.

Fig. 6. Age at widowhood according to gender, in the town of Beauvais, 18th c. Percentages.

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younger generation. When was it possible to materializea new conjugal union?

7. Interval between death of spouse and remarriage

In France, many monographic studies on preindus-trial village communities show that at least half thewidowers (if not three fourths) who remarried did such

Fig. 7. Age at widowhood for widowers, according to perio

as quickly as possible, often less than one year after theirspouse's death. For rural widows, the mean intervalbefore a new union was contracted was of two years.Confronting this observation to our Rheims data(Figs. 11 and 12), could we conclude that remarriagewas easier in urban surroundings? One might expectindeed that the matrimonial market was larger in a town,and better the chances to find a new proper partner. Was

d of first marriage. Rheims, 1668-1789. Percentages.

Fig. 8. Age at widowhood for widows. According to period of first marriage. Rheims, 1668-1789. Percentages.

Table 2Proportion of widowers and widows remarrying, by age atwidowhood, comparing town and countryside. 18th c. Beauvaisis.

Age atwidowhood

Widowers Widows

town countryside town countryside

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it not the reason why, in rural parishes, priests weremore prone to allow marriages between partners havingsome kin relationship (“dispenses de parenté”), puttingforward the village's small size («la petitesse du lieu»)and reduced marriage market ? Anyhow, remarriage wasmuch quicker and easier for men, a point on which allstatistics are concordant.

In Rheims after 1760, as we saw above, widows were20% to remarry, but they did not wait as long aspreviously before doing so. Could we say that, in thisAge of Enlightenment, they had no respect anymore forthe minimal legal period of widowhood (délai deviduité), a common social practice which the Churchnever strictly enforced? We observe indeed that, in thesepre-revolutionary times, widows contracting a secondmarriage were 60% to remarry before 12 monthselapsed after widowhood, a high figure compared to30% at the end of the 17th century (Fig. 12).

There is a change in remarriage practice but is it a realnew remarriage pattern? To start a new life, a widow hadto be young and could remarry quicker than previously.It remains that remarriage was simply not an option formany widows, even if 60% of the remarrying ones werecontracting a new union before 12 months elapsed, weshould not forget that only 20 % of all widows were ableto find a new partner at the end of the Ancien Régime aspreviously shown by Fig. 10.

Table 1Proportion of widows remarrying, comparing town and country. 18thc. Beauvaisis. Percentages.

Town Country

Remarried 64.2 59.0Non remarried 35.8 41.0

100 100

Source: Ganiage, 1999, p. 133.

We have also to take into account social differentiation,if possible: well-off widows could easily remarry, at leastLondonian in the beginning of the 17th century (Brodsky,1986), as shown by Fig. 13. When comparing London andRheims, we note that the interval in months beforeremarriage occurred is much longer in France for women.Probably pressures from the Catholic Church played theirrole in this delay, as Ariès thought (Aries, 1981). But, as wealready said, the Catholic doctrine in itself never imposedany delay to widowed persons; the «viduity» check, forwidows, has no canonical background, it is only a - more orless rigid - social constraint (Fauve-Chamoux, 2001, p.242). Other studies concerningEngland or Italy allow somecomparison of interval length before remarriage (Corsinicited by Cabourdin, 1978 ; Corsini, 1981; Todd, 1994;Wrigley et al., 1997 (Table 3).

Remarriage opportunities for widows were indeedrelated to their age and to their well-being; the numberof their dependant children was also a factor to be takeninto consideration.

20-24 100 100 100 93.325-29 98.0 97.7 71.1 77.730-34 87.2 87.9 59.1 58.035-39 81.5 81.4 50.0 33.340-44 67.4 66.3 30.0 17.345-49 53.2 52.5 11.3 10.450-54 44.4 31.6 7.4 4.955-59 27.3 26.5 3.8 1.860-64 20.3 14.4 1.9 1.265+ 15.6 10.5 0 0

Source: Ganiage, 1999, p. 130.

Fig. 9. Proportion of widowers remarrying, by age at widowhood. Rheims. Marriages 1668-1789.

Fig. 10. Proportion of widows remarrying, by age at widowhood. Rheims. Marriages 1668-1789.

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8. Presence of dependent children

Our data, for Rheims, give the number of children bornduring first marriage but we do not know precisely thenumber of surviving children when widows or widowersremarried, which would be the only pertinent way toappreciate the effective weight of children on remarriage.12

We can only say that, for a better and faster remarriage,advantage was for widowed childless persons or for thosewith four children ormore, as the CambridgeGroup studiesattested concerning rural England (Wrigley et al., 1997; see

12 In a previous article, the author discussed the importance offemale headed households, single or widows (Fauve-Chamoux,1983), using the 1802 census in Rheims. She stressed the smallmean household size in urban context when a woman was head ofhousehold. For widows, the reduced size of their household was dueto departure of children. This could be checked, looking at thecorresponding family forms (FRF). Unfortunately, no longitudinalstudy was systematically conducted on that point. From regular taxlists, the author enlightened later the question of living standardsalong family course during the 18th century (Fauve-Chamoux, 1993,p. 149) and compared Rheims with the town and region ofValenciennes in 1693, where a rich census was available.

Fig. 14). Dependent children were a strong handicap forwomen who wanted to remarry, as it appears clearly in thecase of Beauvais (Table 4). It was not a handicap for mensince they remarried any way.

CarloCorsini evidenced a clear relationship between theage of children (when widowhood occurred) and theduration ofwidowhood, for 18th century Tuscany (Corsini,1981, p. 391, for 1700-1799). Such association was strongfor widowers, playing for them in an opposite directionthan for widows: the more men had children, the quickerand the more often they remarried, while for widows thepresence of children was an impediment to remarriage,slowing it down in case it happened, as may be seen inBeauvais's data (Fig. 14). For widows, the loss of ahusband reduced income and often induced reduction ofstandard of living.

9. Widows, their autonomy and perspectiveof well-being

It was suggested that becoming a widow couldfavour her want of an independence that the statute of

Fig. 12. Reported intervals in years between the death of the husband and date of remarriage of the woman, by periods of marriage. Rheims.Percentages.

13 Normandy was an exemption, where the dowry system prevailed,according to the custom (Dickinson, 2005; Fauve-Chamoux, 2009).

Fig. 11. Reported intervals in years between the death of the wife and date of remarriage of the man, by periods of marriage. Rheims. Percentages.

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married woman could not have given her, so that maybemany widows did not wish to remarry unless they wereunder strong economic need (Segalen, 1981). Studyingcustoms and laws in France since the 16th century, Istressed elsewhere regional differences – particularlyNorthern versus Southern -, noting how variousmatrimonial regimes and family transmission systemswere favouring or not their possible autonomy, whilekeeping their standard of living and providing enoughwell-being for their children (Fauve-Chamoux, 2009).In early-modern France, for widows staying in widow-

hood, well-being and life conditions depended both ontypes of marriage settlements and inheritance systems.

Two matrimonial systems were actually in use inFrance during the Ancien Régime. One, the “jointestate”, was prevalent in Northern France (for instancein Paris),13 it allowed pooling movables and goodsacquired during marriage. For example, a merchant

Fig. 13. Reported intervals between the death of the husband and date of remarriage, by periods of marriage. Comparing London & Rheims.Percentages.

Table 3Intervals in months before remarriage occurred, rural England andItaly. Means.

England Berkshire Italy

Males Females Males Females Males Females

1550-99 13.4 27.71600-49 21.2 32.2 16.1 37.81650-99 25.0 40.8 15.6 31.2 29.4 53.81700-49 26.3 47.6 35.2 42.91750-99 33.6 45.5 28.1 48.01800-37 37.3 55.3

Sources: Wrigley et al, 1997, p. 172, Table 5.14. Cambridge Groupreconstitutions; Todd, 1994, pp. 439-440; Fiesole and San-Godenzo,from Carlo Corsini's family reconstitutions cited by Cabourdin, 1978,p. 317; Corsini, 1981; Henry & Houdaille, 1978, 1979. Notes:Marriages ending less than 10 years before the end of a parishreconstitution are excluded to avoid bias.

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widow could enjoy the prosperity of the family businessor be crippled with debts after a bad management. Bycontrast, the system prevailing in Southern France andPyrenees, “marriage in trust”, excluded conjugal jointestate, the aim being to preserve the continuity of the«house», within a stem-family system. Usually, thebride received a dowry.

In Ancien Régime France, the part of women intransmission or devolution of assets as well as theirresponsibility in the management of their own house-hold when widowed was not homogeneous. Differencesare seen from one area to another, as well as from onesocial group to another. Why few widows remarried inthe past should be considered in the light of what theycould expect to live decently, and of what they wished.

10. Conclusion

Widowhood and remarriage were common demo-graphic events in Western Europe proto-industrialsocieties. Tragic crises affected all social strata andmany marriages were shortened by the early death of aspouse when mortality was high. During the 18thcentury, demographic transition and socio-economicchanges affected the patterns of marriage and remar-riage: mortality was reduced, population was ageing,life expectancy grew, first marriage was delayed for menand women, and migration intensified. Marriage andremarriage markets fluctuated according to socio-economic conditions and local parameters. Genderdifferences in marriage behaviour were also affected,as the case of Rheims demonstrates.

In urban surroundings, in the late 18th century,strategies of remarriage may have been more flexiblethan in rural areas. Women may have been less exposedto family and social pressure preventing them toremarry, discouraging or delaying a new union. Thepresence of dependant children was always a problemwhen a widow tried to choose a new partner. It wasalways easier for a man to remarry. A widower used tochoose a new wife quickly and a younger one, ifpossible without children at charge, this meanspreferring a single woman.

Another specific aspect of the urban context seems tohave been population geographical turn-over andchanging labour markets. It would explain, at least

Fig. 14. Effect of number of dependent children on mean interval to remarriage, by gender. Intervals in months before remarriage occurred, England.

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partly, the decreasing proportion of remarriages in thecity limits. And we ought to note that this mobility led toa growing gender imbalance (Fauve-Chamoux, 1994):female urban surplus was then a constant, affecting thechances for remarriage, particularly in large cities. Weobserve in Rheims, during the revolutionary period, thatwomen remarried less than previously, but if they did,that they remarried younger. For a non well-off widow,remarrying was the best way to maintain somesatisfactory standard of living, but the local matrimonialmarket for women was shrinking. Many widowedwomen were condemned to pauperianization and hadto work hard; they could not keep their children withthem at home, and often faced loneliness and destitu-tion. Such a situation may explain why, all overNorthern Europe, urban communities had to develophealth and assistance services, with the help of theChurch, for poor and ageing widows without a properfamily to take care of them (Lynch, 2003). By contrast,in countries where a stem-family prevailed, for manyreasons, widows remarry still less frequently: they werein a way less free to do so, but they could rely more onfamily networks and support in widowhood and old age.

Table 4Effect of number of dependent children (N) on female remarriage byage at widowhood, for Beauvais town. Widows. 18th c., comparedwith Beauvaisis countryside overall data.

Age atwidowhood

N children atwidowhood

N children atremarriage

Notremarried

20-24 0.5 0.425-29 1.4 1.4 2.930-34 1.7 1.6 2.535-39 2.4 2.2 3.1Town 1.7 1.6 2.9Country 1.6 1.5 3.1

Source: Ganiage, 1999, p. 133; Henry & Houdaille, 1978, 1979.

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