A choice not to wed? Unmarried women in eighteenth-century France.

Ever since the conceptualization of the "Western European Marriage Pattern," historians have been aware of the fact that a sizeable minority of the population remained unmarried in early modern and modern Western Europe, possibly between fifteen and twenty percent of the population.(1) In the case of France, the evidence suggests that several million men and women - especially women - of each generational cohort never married in the eighteenth century. And yet, women's historians have focused almost exclusively on married women in early modern times, perhaps influenced by a legal and social system in which "All women are thought of as either married or to be married."(2) The common perception is that the majority of Catholic French women who did not marry entered the convent, despite clear evidence that the majority of unmarried women did not take up the veil or cloister.(3)

This study is an attempt to remedy this neglect of unmarried lay women in pre-revolutionary France.(4) It examines the special case of two unmarried sisters, Marie and Marianne de Lamothe, in an effort to shed some light on the experiences of single women in eighteenth-century Europe. In doing so, it will address several important questions, including: what were the lives of these unmarried women like? Why did they make the choices they did? Where did they fit into their family's household structure and strategies? What were their own goals and aspirations?

One might ask: why is it so important to study single women as a separate group? The short answer is that the experiences of single women were very different from those of married women. To an extent much more dramatic than in the case of men, marital status determined the social, economic, and legal condition of women in early modern times.(5)

Assessment of the quality of spinster life in times past has generally been harshly negative, despite some revision of this view in recent years.(6) Olwen Hufton notes that the unattractive portrait of the spinster was already starting to take shape in the literature of the eighteenth century.(7) But it was in the nineteenth century that the caricature of the spinster was firmly set. The stereotype of the spinster was of an unattractive, slightly hysterical, and often unhealthy female. This image was due at least in part to the perception by the early nineteenth century that the number of unmarried females was growing, even exploding, and that the decision of women not to marry (or their inability to do so) constituted a major societal problem.(8)

The spinster was clearly a social anomaly. Lacking a husband, a man to support and protect her, she was usually dependent upon parents or siblings for her livelihood. Or, if lacking familial assistance, she was forced to support herself on an inadequate salary, garnered through textiles or domestic work if she came from the working class, or as a governess if she was of genteel social origins.(9) Women, generally denied fruitful employment outside the family, were valued primarily as members of the family economy, preferably as mistress of the household. The spinster could seldom achieve this more desirable position, ceding it to either her mother or her sister-in-law. According to Miriam Slater, "Spinsterhood condemned one to a lifetime of peripheral existence: it was a functionless role played out at the margins of other people's lives without even that minimal raison d'etre - the possibility of bearing children - which was supposed to comfort and sustain the married woman."(10)

This is the stereotype. However, few studies have been done that actually explore the lives and choices of the spinster in early modern European society.(11) It seems possible that at least some women may have embraced the single life - whether due to dislike of the idea of marriage or due to a feeling of satisfaction and fulfillment in their roles as sister and daughter. However, to regard this decision as an unproblematic "choice" is risky. Family discipline might encourage a daughter or sister to choose a lifetime of celibacy, leading her to sacrifice a home and family of her own for the good of her natal family. This combination of factors seems to have been at work in the case of Marie and Marianne de Lamothe.

The Lamothe sisters were members of a professional family in eighteenth-century Bordeaux. The Lamothes formed a large and loving family, headed by Daniel Lamothe, a barrister at the Parlement of Bordeaux, and his wife, Marie de Serezac. Three of their sons also became lawyers, one a doctor, and one a priest. Marie, the eldest daughter, and second-oldest child, and Marianne, one of the youngest children of the family, were not the only members of the family to remain unmarried. Of seven children, only the eldest son, Simon-Antoine-Delphin, married.

The warm family life of the Lamothes is illuminated by a rich source of materials, a collection of over three hundred personal letters that were written by the members of the family over a period of twenty-five years. The letters reveal a devoted group, closely bound as much by their deep affection as by their sense of duty to the family, siblings, and parents. These letters form the basis of our knowledge of the Lamothes' family life.(12)

The personalities of each member of the Lamothe family emerge clearly in the family letters, and give us important clues to the values and concerns of Marie and Marianne de Lamothe. The salient qualities of their letters to their brother Victor, a medical student in Paris, are intense religiosity and passionate devotion to their parents and siblings. Marie and Marianne modeled themselves on their much-loved mother and devoted themselves to the care of their father and brothers and the household. Their letters suggest that they were content with their lives, and actively chose their single existence. Their seeming contentment belies the negative image of the spinster.

However, we need to consider more broadly how their choice may have served to benefit their family as well. Far from always being unwanted burdens, single women could play a stabilizing role in family formations, and their families sometimes, in fact, discouraged them from marrying.(13) Single women filled in to smooth the operation of household economies. Early modern households relied upon the contribution of all members of the family, and the mistress, the wife of the master, played a pivotal role in managing the household. If their mother died, or their brothers remained unmarried, daughters and sisters were called upon to serve as surrogate wives in a sense.

Spinsters could also play a stabilizing role in terms of allocating the family's resources. Family discipline could be very strong, especially in the case of urban notable families, who were frequently concerned with either upward mobility or class maintenance. Often, these families carefully planned marriage and career strategies to maximize resources. For example, children of the urban elite frequently deferred marriage in order to avoid excessive division of the family's patrimony.(14) By extension, as several studies now indicate, many daughters of elite or urban notable families were likely to remain celibate because of the potential advantage that their sacrifice brought the family.(15) For this reason, Marie and Marianne, as daughters and sisters of urban professionals, provide a particularly useful case study.

The decision of the Lamothe sisters to remain unmarried, yet to reject the life of the convent, reflects both family discipline and the desire to keep the patrimony undivided. The Lamothes were a restrained, fiscally prudent family, who worked hard to maintain their comfortable financial position, despite the presence of seven siblings who strained family resources. This worldly ascetism, almost Calvinist in tone (despite the conventionally pious Catholicism of the family), is further illustrated in the fact that six of the seven children did not marry.(16)

Examination of the practical role that the Lamothe sisters played within their family may help to clarify why they both chose to remain single, and also underlines their stabilizing role in household formation. Their work around the household was of the utmost importance, and they were well aware of the value of their contributions. Marie and Marianne, along with their mother, strove to create a comfortable home environment for the male members of the family. They contributed fully to the "family economy" with their labor and their careful attention to the household budget.(17) Despite the fact that the family, as members of the Bordelais elite, always employed servants, Marie de Serezac and her daughters were constantly occupied with various tasks. They selected and prepared the family's foods, such as the small delicacies that they sent to their brothers Victor and Alexandre, who lived in Paris. They knitted stockings and slippers. They sewed the family's sheets, handkerchiefs, serviettes, shirts, collars, night shirts and bonnets, and souliers. They constantly inquired as to the clothing needs of Victor and Alexandre, and frequently mailed packages of these items to them.(18) They did the laundry.(19) They went shopping for the family's needs, and searched for the best prices.(20) The important role of the women during the vintage in particular is underscored by the fact that their help was considered essential at the family's country homes during the wine harvest. Marie went to Muscadet, in the outskirts of Bordeaux, with her eldest brother, Delphin, while Marie de Serezac and Marianne accompanied Alexis, the second son, to Goulards, the country home near Sainte-Foy-la-Grande in the Dordogne.

The details of the family's household budget were clearly within the purview of the women's concerns. Marie was always well-informed on the price and availability of food and other items, indicating her active role in helping to manage the family's household budget. In 1758, she wrote to Victor,

There is no fish. Eggs are very scarce and very expensive ... cod is prohibitively expensive, cuttlefish is at 14 sols per pound, butt is at 15 livres peas are at 28 livres and 32 livres per bushel. We sold our wines from this year for 20 livres wholesale ... We're pleased enough with the price, but revenues are small, and there are a lot of expenses. I'm telling you a lot of tedious details, but you know that I am Madame l'econome ...(21)

The double sense of the word econome, which has the meaning of "thrifty and economical," but also refers to the steward, the treasurer, or the housekeeper of an institution, indicates Marie's elevated perception of her role within the household.(22) Marie was always proud of her efforts to maximize the family's resources. She considered it her duty to be aware of the family's finances, stating that "For a long time now, I have taken notice of our expenses and revenues, I find that one cannot know too much about that subject in order to watch expenses."(23)

Still, Marie and Marianne exercised little control over the major financial decisions of the family. While Daniel, the chef de famille, was living, he managed the family purse with a tight fist. When he died in 1763, his eldest sons, Delphin and Alexis, took over the management of the family household and finances, while the sisters received a less than equal share of the family's fortune, a share that they chose not to draw upon.(24)

However, Marie and Marianne were informed and consulted on certain financial matters, especially those relating to the management of the household, in much the same way that a wife would be consulted, and there is every indication that their opinions were respected.(25) In only one instance did a major dispute arise over the management of the family's money, in which the two sisters, along with their mother and brother Jules the priest, opposed their two older brothers. Shortly after Daniel's death, Jules raised objections to several loans at interest that his father had made, and persuaded his mother and sisters that the family was obliged to return the money in order to redeem the sin of usury. More religiously oriented than their brothers, Marie and Marianne supported Abbe Jules' view on "usury." Delphin and Alexis were clearly irritated by Jules' misgivings, but they wanted to avoid the problems that his objections "could give rise to in the family." They felt the need to persuade their mother and sisters to support their point of view by searching out ecclesiastical opinions conforming to their more liberal ideas on investing money.(26) This indicates that Marie de Serezac and her daughters believed that they had the right to intervene in the family's financial arrangements. Furthermore, Delphin and Alexis respected the opinions of the women of the family enough so that they tried to persuade them to support their views rather than simply asserting their authority.

None of the Lamothe brothers married during the lifetimes of their sisters. Delphin, the only child of the family to marry, did not do so until 1772, three years after the death of Marie, and four years after the death of Marianne. This situation apparently elevated the status of Marie and Marianne within the household, allowing them to act as wives to their unmarried brothers.(27) On one occasion, Marie remarked that she had been at Muscadet, "in the company of my fidel epoux," referring to Delphin, and underlining the quasi-marital nature of her relationship with her brother.(28) While their mother retained the position of mistress of the house, the sisters undoubtedly found it more comfortable to remain subordinate to their beloved mother rather than an unknown and intrusive sister-in-law. The unmarried status of their brothers, coupled with their own early deaths - Marianne at the age of thirty in 1768 and Marie at the age of forty-two in 1769 - meant that neither Marie nor Marianne lived to confront the possible burdens of long-term celibacy.(29)

While their elder brothers filled in as surrogate husbands to Marie and Marianne, their younger siblings served as surrogate children, at least for Marie, the eldest sister, who was nearly ten years older than Victor, and thirteen years Alexandre's senior. Marie demonstrated strong maternal feelings for her two younger brothers, writing to them;

I think of you and Alexandre as my two children, I love you with the love of a mother ... my title of godmother, along with my sentiments gives me, I think, much leeway ...(30)

Marianne, who was close to Victor's age, did not manifest the same maternal feelings, but instead referred to Victor and herself as "childhood companions" who had shared almond gateaux.(31) Whether written as mother to son or sister to brother, Marie and Marianne's letters to their brothers were full of love and passionate longing to see them, and indicate that their brothers fulfilled an important emotional role in their lives, perhaps substituting for a conjugal relationship.(32)

Marie and Marianne also played an important role in caring for their elderly parents. Prescribed gender roles dictated that they fulfill this duty to their parents, and they did so unquestioningly. Their regard for their "dear father" and "dear mother" bordered on veneration, and they considered caring for their parents a sacred obligation.(33) In a letter to Victor, Marianne remarked, " ... their age requires the little attentions that we always give them with great pleasure, my dear father appreciates that his children do not neglect him."(34) However, Marianne acknowledged that caring for her parents could be a difficult burden, asking that God grant her "the patience and reason that I need" to carry out her difficult task.(35)

As the only two sisters, Marie and Marianne were especially devoted to each other. Unmarried sisters often shared particularly close relationships, and the Lamothe sisters were no exception.(36) When Marie spent time in the countryside due to a severe illness, Marianne wrote to Victor, "our relationship is so strong that a separation is a cause for distress, and our reunion the remedy." Marie referred affectionately to her younger sibling as "la petite Mariannette," and both worried about the health of the other.(37) They shared many of the same interests, including love for their family and strong religious devotion.

Religious faith was a source of strength and comfort in the lives of the Lamothe sisters. Their letters to Victor were filled with heartfelt religious exhortations.(38) Their piety brought Marie and Marianne into frequent contact with members of the clergy and the female religious orders. The Abbe of Sainte-Foy was a frequent visitor at Goulards. The entire family was close to the Sisters of Saint-Michel, the family's parish church, and Marie and Marianne paid them frequent visits. While much of their religious activity involved quiet prayer and meditation at home, they also participated in communal activities. Marie attended religious retreats for women, and both sisters were assiduous at Mass and vespers.(39) They also lent their assistance to the Sisters of Charity at the hospital.(40)

While their spiritual and charitable endeavors suggest that Marie and Marianne might have been drawn to a religious lifestyle, neither indicated an interest in taking religious vows, any more than they ever indicated an interest in marrying.(41) Perhaps the contemplative life was unappealing, and their health did not allow them to consider a more vigorous life in a working order. At any rate, as Olwen Hufton reminds us, one could certainly lead a pious life outside a convent.(42)

Despite their religious preoccupations, Marie and Marianne do not fit the stereotype of the spinster with few friends, who stays at home and constantly torments family and kin with ill-humor. Rather, they enjoyed their social life, both in Bordeaux, and at Goulards or Muscadet during the vintage. Both wrote of frequent visits back and forth with cousins, neighbors, and friends.(43) They mixed easily with members of both sexes, and counted men among their friends as well as women. However, they were selective in their socializing, choosing to restrict themselves to invitations from close friends. Their strong piety and rejection of certain worldly amusements limited their activities. They refused to appear at a ball hosted by a M. Griau, despite the entreaties of their close friends, the Laloubie sisters, explaining, " ... to spend maybe a night, dine, go to the ball of a stranger ... that would hardly be according to our way of thinking ... "(44) The next year, they refused once again to attend, noting that:

... following our praiseworthy custom, we refused them, for, thanks be to God, for five or six years, we have not gone to balls ... nor have we curled our hair, nor have we been to the fair except when forced ...(45)

Their modesty and religiosity, perhaps mixed with a sense of superiority over more frivolous women, seem to have circumscribed their social activities. Marie and Marianne held high standards for women they considered "of good character," and Marie wrote disapprovingly of the antics of Madame d'Egmont, daughter of the governor of the province of the Guyenne, when she was in town.(46) Marie and Marianne were likely somewhat shocked and critical of the antics of aristocratic women who rejected the religious and domestic values of more "bourgeois" women such as themselves. They were more impressed by women such as the wife of a family friend, whom Marie praised as being "... of very good character, very thrifty and very pious. I believe that must make for a very happy household."(47)

For the most part, Marie and Marianne appear to have been happy with their choices in life. However, there is also conflicting evidence, suggesting that Marie and Marianne were not completely content with their options. While it does not appear that they were coerced into remaining single and staying in the family home, it does seem likely that a strong family discipline, coupled with their love for their brothers, persuaded the two sisters to sacrifice themselves for the good of the family.(48)

It is true that, in return, Marie and Marianne were assured of the deep affection of their brothers and parents. However, their fate and their future clearly did not cause their parents the same concern as did those of their brothers. Daniel de Lamothe and Marie de Serezac worked hard and paid dearly to educate their sons and to place each of them in an appropriate profession.(49) This careful effort to treat all sons equally and to establish each one contrasts with the lack of any kind of similar effort to place their daughters in a "suitable" position. The fact that neither Lamothe daughter married was unusual, for even in the well-disciplined families of the Toulousan nobility and the Montauban elite, at least one daughter usually married, and among the barristers of Toulouse, the majority of daughters married and were generously dowered.(50) The pressure exerted by Marie and Marianne's parents and siblings was strong enough that they chose to remain in the family household, neither claiming nor removing the portions their father bequeathed to them.

The primacy of the interests of the brothers was clear in other ways as well. The sisters did not receive an education on par with their highly trained brothers. They obviously received some instruction, for their writing ability was far superior to that of their mother, who, according to Marianne, could "barely write."(51) Still, in contrast to Delphin and Alexis' elegant compositions, it was a struggle for Marie or Marianne to write a letter. Marie made this clear when she scolded Victor for complaining that the family did not write frequently enough;

... don't you know that my brothers are very busy, and that our correspondence falls on two poor souls who do not regard [writing] a letter as a minor affair ...(52)

She and Marianne apologized frequently for mistakes in spelling and the lack of grace in their writing styles. Their lack of education underscores their second-class position in the family.

Furthermore, their decision to remain in the family home under the tutelage of their parents and brothers placed Marie and Marianne in a prolonged state of dependence on their family. And while they clearly adored their mother, Marie and Marianne may also have chafed at their continued subordination to her. When she began to accompany her brother Delphin to Muscadet for the vintage each year, beginning in 1761, Marie exalted in her position as mistress of the house, writing:

... I am alone here with my brother and a servant ... I command, I govern, no one contradicts me, there you see how pleasing life is at the present, if it continued I would fear for my salvation ...(53)

On another occasion, when her mother and sister left her alone in Bordeaux with her brothers and little cousin, she noted triumphantly that she was the timon [person who steers, directs] of the household, and that she had reclaimed her "former rights."(54) It seems that Marie, the eldest daughter, enjoyed directing the household and taking command, a fact also suggested by her constant advice to her brothers in Paris.

Their subconscious resistance to their roles in life may also have been reflected in the sisters' constant struggle with illness. The two sisters suffered deteriorating health throughout the early 1760s. Marie experienced a particularly debilitating illness that sent her to the countryside to recuperate in the summer of 1764. Marianne confided to Victor that her sister's health never seemed quite the same afterwards.(55) But Marianne was also frequently sick, with headaches and other illnesses, which she chronicled for Victor at medical school in Paris.(56)

It is worth considering whether their ill-health was aggravated by lack of stimulating activity, or perhaps a subconscious lack of satisfaction with their roles in life. In a letter to Victor, Marianne remarked that her family was "full of attention" for her, and "only too attentive to procure relief" for her during her illness.(57) Certainly, poor health invited concern from the family, perhaps making prolonged illness a somewhat attractive option, offering familial sollicitude and a respite from work around the house. Whatever the reason for their illnesses, the effects were real enough. The deaths of both sisters at a young age qualified the full effects of their celibate status and dependency on their brothers.

What can we learn about spinsterhood in eighteenth-century France from the examples of Marie and Marianne de Lamothe? While the particular circumstances of their lives were unique, the choices of all women were shaped by class status. As elite families - of professional, mercantile, official, or noble status - mobilized their resources with a view towards upward mobility or class maintenance, individual family members were necessarily the victims, sacrificed to "the good of the family."

And yet, surely Marie and Marianne would have rejected any description of themselves as "victims." In some ways, we can argue from their example that the lives of spinsters were not uniformly grim and unfulfilling, challenging the unflattering stereotype of the spinster that was shaped in the nineteenth century. They considered their lives devoted to domestic pursuits and religious and charitable activities worthwhile, even without the legitimizing status of wife and mother.

However, the hints that they were not altogether satisfied may well have reflected their enforced dependency on and subordination within the family. It is also clear that at least some people considered their decision to remain unmarried rather strange. Their cousins in Paris demanded to know, "Why haven't the girls been married, do they have a taste for the convent ...?"(58) While celibacy was not uncommon in the eighteenth century, it was still a choice that elicited comment.

But Marie and Marianne never complained openly about their fate, at least not in their letters to their brothers in Paris. And they certainly never complained about their continued single status, suggesting that, unlike the Verney women of seventeenth-century England, Marie and Marianne were not desperately in search of "preferment through marriage."(59) Clearly, more systematic research regarding the lives of unmarried women is necessary before we can make broader claims about their experiences, especially across class lines, but the case of Marie and Marianne Lamothe provides new insight into eighteenth-century spinsterhood, challenging some widely-held stereotypes.

Department of History St. Mary's City, MD 20686

ENDNOTES

This article was originally presented at the 1993 meeting of the Social Science History Association in Baltimore, Maryland. I would especially like to thank Toby Ditz for her comments and suggestions, as well as Tracy Adams, who read several drafts of this essay.

1. John Hajnal coined the term "European Marriage Pattern" in his seminal article, "European Marriage Patterns in Perspective," in D.V. Glass and D. E. C. Eversley, eds, Population in History (London, 1965), pp. 101-43. According to French demographer, Jacques Dupaquier, approximately 14% of the generation born in France between 1785 and 1789 remained permanently celibate. Jacques Dupaquier, La Population francaise au XVII et XVIIIe siecles (Paris, 1979), pp. 60-61.

2. Anonymous, The Lawes of Resolution of Women's Rights (London, 1632), quoted in Merry E. Wiesner, Women and Gender in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, 1993), p. 41.

3. Olwen Hufton found that only about 56,000 women were nuns in 1789, suggesting that only a small minority of single women entered the convent. See "Women Without Men: Widows and Spinsters in Britain and France in the Eighteenth Century," Journal of Family History 9:4 (1984): 355-76, esp. p. 369.

4. There are a few exceptions to this general neglect. See for example, Hufton, "Women Without Men"; and Arlette Farge and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber, eds, Madame ou Mademoiselle? Itineraires de la solitude feminine, 18e-20e siecles (Paris, 1984). An article by Cecile Dauphin on "Single Women" appears in Genevieve Fraisse and Michelle Perrot, eds., A History of Women in the West, Vol. IV: Emerging Feminism from Revolution to World War (Cambridge, MA, 1993), pp. 427-42, but focuses on the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

5. Wiesner, Women and Gender, pp. 30-35 and 41-42.

6. See, for example, Lee Virginia Chambers-Schiller, Liberty, a Better Husband: Single Women in America: the Generations of 1780-1840 (New Haven and London, 1984). Both Ruth Freeman and Patricia Klaus, "Blessed or Not? The New Spinster in England and the United States in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries," Journal of Family History 9:4 (1984): 394-414, and Patricia Jalland, "Victorian Spinsters: Dutiful Daughters, Desperate Rebels, and the Transition to the New Women," in Patricia Crawford, ed., Exploring Women s Past: Essays in Social History (Sydney and Boston, 1984), pp. 129-70, take a more positive view of spinsterhood, while acknowledging the social pressures and difficulties facing unmarried women.

7. Hufton, "Women Without Men," p. 356.

8. See Dauphin, "Single Women," pp. 427-28 and 441-42; Steven Mintz, A Prisoner of Expectations: The Family in Victorian Culture (New York and London, 1983), p. 150; and Priscilla Robertson, An Experience of Women: Pattern and Change in Nineteenth-Century Europe (Philadelphia, 1982), p. 252.

9. See Hufton, "Women Without Men" for a discussion of the various options available to unmarried women.

10. Miriam Slater, Family Life in the Seventeenth Century: The Verneys of Claydon House (London, 1984), p. 84.

11. Patricia Jalland's "Victorian Spinsters" and Lee Virginia Chambers-Schiller's Liberty, a Better Husband do a much better job of getting beyond the statistics at the roles of spinster women and their feelings about their function in life, but focus on the nineteenth century.

12. The collected letters of the Lamothe family are located in the Manuscripts Division of the Library of Congress. This study of Marie and Marianne Lamothe is part of a larger study on the personal, professional, and cultural lives of the Lamothe family. See Christine Adams, "Bourgeois Identity in Early Modern France: A Professional Family in Eighteenth-Century Bordeaux," (Ph.D. diss., Johns Hopkins University, 1993). Hereafter, the letters will be cited simply by the name of the letter writer and recipient, along with the date.

13. Steven Mintz provides support for this view in an interesting vignette from the life of Catharine Sedgwick, a nineteenth-century Englishwoman who did not marry. Her brothers and sisters noted that her present situation was "certainly a singularly happy one" and that her brothers and sisters "would be unhappy if she changed her marital status." Mintz, A Prisoner of Expectations, p. 166.

14. Ralph Giesey's "Rules of Inheritance and Strategies of Mobility in Pre-Revolutionary France," American Historical Review 82 (1977): 271-89 and J. G. C. Blacker's "Social Ambitions of the Bourgeoisie in 18th-Century France and their Relation to Family Limitation," Population Studies 11 (1957): 46-63, are useful analyses of strategies for upward mobility among non-noble families. See also my Defining Etat in Eighteenth-Century France: The Lamothe Family of Bordeaux," Journal of Family History 17:1 (1992): 25-45.

15. See for example, Margaret Darrow, Revolution in the House: Family, Class and Inheritance in Southern France, 1775-1825 (Princeton, 1989), p. 109; and Angus McLaren, Sexuality and Social Order: The Debate over the Fertility of Women and Workers in France, 1770-1920 (New-York and London, 1983), pp. 12-13.

16. For the family's carefully moderate approach to life, see my "Defining Etat in Eighteenth-Century France," esp. pp. 37-40.

17. The concept of "family economy," in which the family operates both as a unit of production and consumption, dependent upon the contributions of each member, has most often been discussed in the context of the working poor and farm families, but seems to apply to the Lamothe family as well. See Olwen Hufton, "Women and the Family Economy," French Historical Studies 9 (1975): 1-22; Louise Tilly, "The Family Wage Economy of a French Textile City: Roubaix, 1872-1906," Journal of Family History (Winter 1979): 381-94.

18. Marie to Victor, 10 December 1757; 4 May 1758; 6 January 1759; 8 May 1759; 7 September 1762; 16 July 1763. Marianne to Victor, 1 April 1758; 10 March 1764. Delphin to Victor, 19 December 1758; 11 August 1759; 8 June 1764; 29 June 1764. Alexis to Victor, 13 November 1764. Alexandre to Victor, February 1766.

19. Marie to Victor, 6 December 1764.

20. Marianne to Victor, 24 March 1761; 23 January 1762.

21. Marie to Victor, 18 February 1758. See also 17 March 1758.

22. Margaret Darrow suggests that French women have traditionally held a more positive view of their function as maitresse de la maison than English women had of "domestic drudgery." Darrow, "French Noblewomen and the New Domesticity, 1750-1850," Feminist Studies 5:1 (1979): 41-65, esp. pp. 57-58. See also Elizabeth Fox-Genovese and Eugene D. Genovese, The Fruits of Merchant Capital: Slavery and Bourgeois Property in the Rise and Expansion of Capitalism (Oxford, 1983), pp. 302-03.

23. Marie to Victor, 23 February 1762.

24. Delpin to Victor and Alexandre, 11 March 1763. Daniel left 92,500 livres in property and liquid assets when he died to be divided among his seven children. Marie and Marianne were bequeathed 10,500 and 10,000 livres respectively, along with their room furnishings, some silver place settings, and other domestic goods. Larger portions were left to their two younger brothers, while their two older brothers were made chief heirs.

25. It is evident that their father and brothers relied upon them to help economize and to persuade their brothers in Paris to spend money wisely. See for example, Marianne to Victor, 20 April 1757. Marie to Victor, 1 December 1756; 24 January 1757; 25 November 1761; and passim.

26. Delphin and Alexis to Victor, Undated 1764.

27. Leonore Davidoff and Catherine Hall analyze brother-sister relations in nineteenth-century England, noting that sisters frequently filled in as substitute spouses to unmarried brothers. Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes: Men and Women of the English Middle Class, 1780-1850 (London, 1987), pp. 348-51.

28. Marie to Victor, 11 January 1763. See also Marianne to Victor, 24 January 1757; 1 March 1757; 2 December 1758; 26 May 1759. Marie to Victor, 28 May 1757.

29. Archives Municipales de Bordeaux, Ms. 684, Fonds Meller, Tome I records the early deaths of the Lamothe sisters. A number of historians have observed the despair that the marriage of a brother could cause for a woman who saw herself as chief caretaker and "surrogate spouse" to that sibling. Mintz, A Prisoner of Expectations, pp. 164-65 and Jalland, "Victorian Spinsters," pp. 142-43.

30. Marie to Victor, 27 November 1760. See also 14 April 1760; 7 September 1762; 11 January 1763; and 22 July 1766.

31. Marianne to Victor, 19 October 1760.

32. This substitution of siblings for spouse and the "romanticization of sibling love" was perhaps not unusual. See Mintz, A Prisoner of Expectations, pp. 161 and 164.

33. Jalland examines the importance of the role of the "dutiful daughter," and notes that many regarded service to a father in his old age as the primary duty of the spinster. "Victorian Spinsters," pp. 137-41. See also Mintz, A Prisoner of Expectations, pp. 158 and 181.

34. Marianne to Victor, 23 January 1762.

35. Marianne to Victor, 7 August 1762.

36. Chambers-Schiller, Liberty, a Better Husband, pp. 127-56; Jalland, "Victorian Spinsters," p. 140-41; Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, pp. 351-52.

37. Marie to Victor, 29 April 1766 and passim.

38. For example, Marie to Victor, 17 January, 1757.

39. Marie to Victor, 28 May 1757; and passim.

40. For example, Marie to Victor, 17 January 1757; 1 March 1757; 2 April 1757; 18 February 1758; 17 March 1758; 16 March 1759; 24 August 1759; 4 March 1760; 23 July 1762. Marianne to Victor, 24 January 1757; 7 August 1759; 2 February 1761.

41. At no point in their letters does Marie or Marianne suggest that she would like either to marry or enter a convent.

42. Hufton, "Women Without Men," pp. 369-70.

43. Marie to Victor, 20 October 1757; 21 January 1758; 22 August 1758; 24 March 1760; 23 February 1762. Marianne to Victor, 6 February 1758.

44. Marianne to Victor, 2 February 1761.

45. Marie to Victor, 23 February 1762.

46. Marie to Victor, 7 July 1760.

47. Marie to Victor, 2 April 1757. This disapproving attitude towards aristocratic women was quite common among women of the middle and even lower classes. Fox-Genovese and Genovese, Fruits of Merchant Capital, p. 330; Darrow, "French Women and the New Domesticity"; and Davidoff and Hall, Family Fortunes, p. 22.

48. See for example, Marie to Victor, 2 April 1757.

49. For a more detailed discussion of the care that went into the career choices of the Lamothe sons, see my "Bourgeois Identity in Early Modern France," Part II, passim.

50. Robert Forster, The Nobility of Toulouse in the Eighteenth Century: A Social and Economic Study (Baltimore, 1960), pp. 125-36; Darrow, Revolution in the House, pp. 105-10; Lenard Berlanstein, The Barristers of Toulouse in the Eighteenth Century (1740-1793) (Baltimore and London, 1975), p. 65.

51. Marianne to Victor, 29 June 1764.

52. Marie to Victor, 11 August 1760.

53. Marie to Victor, 25 September 1761.

54. Marie to Victor, 30 July 1765.

55. Marianne to Victor, 17 October 1764; Undated 1765.

56. See Marianne to Victor, 2 December 1758.

57. Marianne to Victor, Undated 1765.

58. Alexis to Victor, 22 July 1755.

59. Miriam Slater, Family Life in the Seventeenth Century, p. 90.