In a groundbreaking book that challenges many assumptions about gender andpolitics in the French Revolution Suzanne Desan offers an insightful analysisof the wa... » 

In a groundbreaking book that challenges many assumptions about gender andpolitics in the French Revolution Suzanne Desan offers an insightful analysisof the ways the Revolution radically redefined the family and its internaldynamics. She shows how revolutionary politics and laws brought about a socialrevolution within households and created space for thousands of French womenand men to reimagine their most intimate relationships. Families negotiated newsocial practices including divorce the reduction of paternal authorityegalitarian inheritance for sons and daughters alike and the granting of civilrights to illegitimate children. Contrary to arguments that claim theRevolution bound women within a domestic sphere The Family on Trialmaintains that the new civil laws and gender politics offered many womenunexpected opportunities to gain power property or independence. «