Daily Life in the Old Regime345Where arranged marriages were still common, the
alternative to divorce was separation. The civil laws in
many countries provided for contracts of separation, by
which the maintenance of both partners was guaran-
teed. Simpler alternatives to divorce evolved in the
lower classes, such as desertion or bigamy. The most
extraordinary method, practiced in parts of England
well into the nineteenth century, was the custom of
wife sale. Such sales were generally by mutual consent,
but they nonetheless resembled cattle sales. Though
the Old Regime was fundamentally an era of indissolu-
ble, life-long marriage, this did not mean a couple lived
together for long periods of time. Given an average age
at marriage in the mid-twenties and an average age at
death (for people who reached the mid-twenties) in the
mid-forties, the typical marriage lasted for approxi-
mately twenty years.
The Life Cycle: Sexuality and Reproduction
Ignorance about human sexuality was widespread dur-
ing the Old Regime, and remarkable theories still circu-
lated about human reproduction, many of them restate-
ments of sex manuals inherited from the ancient world.
Medical science held that the loss of one ounce of se-
men debilitated a man’s body the same way that the
loss of forty ounces of blood would and that a woman’s
menstruation could turn meat rancid. Consequently,
physicians advised people to avoid all sex during the
summer because a man’s body would become dried out.
Similarly, people were taught to avoid sex during men-
struation because a child conceived then would be born
diseased.There were other disincentives to sexual activity.
The strongest came from Christian moral injunctions.
A Christian tradition regarding sex as unclean and
chastity as a spiritual ideal, dated from St. Paul and St.
Jerome. Only marital intercourse was permissible, and
then only for procreation; other sexual activity was un-
derstood to be a violation of the Seventh Command-
ment forbidding adultery. Good Christians were
expected to practice chastity during pregnancy (when
conception was impossible), on Sundays, and during
the forty days of Lent.
In addition to the disincentives of medical advice
and Christian teaching, poor health, uncleanliness,
fears of pregnancy or venereal disease, and repressive
laws also restricted behavior. Laws varied regionally,
but most sexual practices were against the law. Ecclesi-
astical courts in Catholic countries tried priests and
laity alike for sexual offenses; secular courts acted in a
similar manner in Protestant countries. A study of the
archdiocesan tribunal at Cambrai (France) has found
that 38 percent of the moral offenses involved unmar-
ried sex, 32 percent adultery, and 11 percent incest.
Punishments ranged from death (for incest between fa-
ther and daughter) to providing a dowry (for seducing a
virgin). Bestiality merited burning to death, for both
the human and the animal. Pornography (broadly de-
fined) often led to imprisonment, as it did for Denis
Diderot. Sentences to a public pillory, a flogging, or be-
ing paraded through the streets with a shaved head
were also common.
Homosexuality was universally illegal before the
French Revolution (which legalized consenting adult
relationships in 1791). Assessing its frequency is diffi-Illustration 18.5
The Family.Attitudes toward the
family were beginning to change in
the eighteenth century, as indicated by
the increasing habit of the wealthy to
commission paintings of the entire fam-
ily. Note the subtle symbolism of this
painting: The wife sits at the center of
the family, with the husband somewhat
in the background of family matters.
The father relates to his eldest son and
heir, but he is turned slightly away from
his other children.