class chauvinism, so that the proletariat always listened to Bonapartist
propaganda rather than the criticisms of the liberal opposition.
The most reactionary aspect of the Code, however, was its treatment of
women. Until 1794 feminism and women's rights enjoyed halcyon days:
in September 1792 the revolutionaries enacted a law allowing divorce by
mutual consent, with the unsurprising result that for the rest of the 17 90s
one in three French marriages ended in divorce. The Directory had
attempted to reverse the progressive legislation of 1791-94, but the death
blow to feminist aspirations was dealt by the Code Napoleon. The First
Consul's misogyny lay at the root of th is. Always hostile to female
emancipation, he declared: 'Women these days require restraint. They go
where they like, do what they like. It is not French to give women the
upper hand. They have too much of it already.' It is interesting to
observe that the fiercest critic of Macpherson's Ossian, Napoleon's most
beloved book, was Samuel Johnson but that he held exactly similar
sentiments to Napoleon on the 'woman question': 'Nature has given
women so much power that the Law has wisely given her little.'
The extent of anti-female sentiment in the Code Napoleon is worth
stressing. The Code retained divorce by consent only if both sets of
parents agreed also. Under Articles 133-34 the procedure was made more
difficult. Marital offences were differentially defined under Articles
229-230: a man could sue for divorce on grounds of simple adultery; a
woman only if the concubine was brought into the home. Articles 308-o9
stipulated that an adulterous wife could be imprisoned for a period of up
to two years, being released only if her husband agreed to take her back;
an adulterous husband was merely fined. Patriarchy was reinforced in a
quite literal sense by Articles 376-77 which gave back to the father his
right, on simple request, to have rebellious children imprisoned. And the
notorious articles 213-17 restored the legal duty of wifely obedience;
these clauses, compounded by articles 268 and 776, severely restricted a
wife's right to handle money, unless she was a registered trader. Finally,
a woman who murdered her husband could offer no legal defence, but a
husband who murdered his wife could enter several pleas.
The Code Napoleon has been much admired, but it is difficult to see it
as anything other than a cynical rationalization of Napoleon's personal
aims, in some cases cunningly projected into the future. The criticism
that the Code quickly became out of date because it tried to fix the
transitional society of the Napoleonic era in aspic is otiose. Much the
same thing could be said of the US Constitution of 1787, but both
documents proved supremely flexible. The more telling criticism is that
the Code's talk of liberty and equality was largely humbug. The Code
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