Durkheim, Bertillon and Koen Matthijs

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Book Chapter

Reference

Durkheim, Bertillon and Koen Matthijs

ORIS, Michel

ORIS, Michel. Durkheim, Bertillon and Koen Matthijs. In: Jan Van Bavel, David Deconinck, Paul Pusschmann, Bart Van de Putte. Neurotic doubt and sacred curiosity: essays in honour of Koen Matthijs. Leuven : KULeuven, 2021. p. 133-140

Available at:

http://archive-ouverte.unige.ch/unige:156023

Disclaimer: layout of this document may differ from the published version.

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Durkheim, Bertillon and Koen Matthijs

Notes on the history of divorce in the 19th century

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Michel Oris

“Tous les hommes recherchent d’être heureux, jusqu’à ceux qui vont se pendre”²

Blaise Pascal in Pensées (1670)

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his famous statement by Blaise Pascal expresses a contradiction that is only apparent, because for the French philosopher, suicide allows one to escape suffering and seek peace in death. For an unhappy marriage, divorce could be a less dramatic alternative. In this sense, these two ruptu- res, suicide and divorce, share much in common.

In the 18th century, a new generation of philosophers promoted the right for individuals to search for happiness in their lives, without waiting for a hypothetical paradise, and the concept spread throughout political and daily lives, eventually serving as one of the causes of the French Revolu- tion. In the sociological vocabulary of today, French revolutionaries wanted to break the traditional, strong ties of the patriarchal family and promote weaker, less stable ties based on contracts and bargaining among the individuals (Corno, 2009). The law of 20 September 1792 reflected this view. Aut- horizing the formal separation of couples this law revealed a large demand:

a sudden rise in divorce was observed in many places, demonstrating that many individuals had waited for some time for the chance to formalize their separation (Phillips, 1988). It was, however, such an abrupt and major change from the previous social and family orders that, unsurprisingly, a conservative backlash rapidly arose. The Civil Code of 1804 reestablished

1 I am grateful to Paul Puschmann for his careful reading and useful comments. Remai- ning mistakes are of course mine.

2 “Everybody is looking for happiness, even those who are going to hang themselves”.

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to divorce by limiting the number of accepted causes, resulting in an imme- diate decrease in the frequency of divorce. The civil code was maintained in Belgium, the Netherlands, the canton of Geneva and many other areas that were once parts of the Napoleonic Empire, while in France in 1816, just after the restoration of the monarchy, divorce was completely forbidden. It was only 68 years later that the Naquet law reinstated the right to end a marriage in France. This new legislation was also the source of a debate between two prominent figures, Bertillon and Durkheim. Their dispute about divorce and suicide is still seen as a landmark in the history of sociology (Ronsin, 1995). In the last decades, a Belgian sociologist from the University of Leu- ven named Koen Matthijs has revisited this debate.

In several publications, Jacques Bertillon supported the Naquet law through a comparative analysis of divorce. In an 1884 article that is especially eloquent, he made an explicit link between divorce and suicide. Essenti- ally, he wanted to demonstrate that in both cases, laws, and especially puni- tive laws, were inefficient to counteract the impact of living environment (towns opposed to countryside) and culture. Incidentally, he observed the association of suicide and divorce across Europe, emphasizing the higher prevalence of both behaviors in Protestant cantons compared to the Catho- lic regions in Switzerland. This association is, however, questionable from a demographic perspective since only those who are married can divorce while suicide concerns people of all matrimonial statuses (Bertillon, 1884).

Differential risks by gender and matrimonial status were a crucial point for Durkheim. In a famous sociological study of suicide published in 1897, he “argued that the macrosocial insecurity and normlessness that prevailed at that time led to an increase in chronic anomie and subsequently to a rise in the number of divorces (and ultimately in the number of suicides)”

(Matthijs et al. 2008, p. 240). Durkheim (1897, p. 197) suggested the cause was the transition from a family-based society, based on a logic of conti- nuity and reproduction within family lines, to a conjugal society, where – for him – aspirations for love and marriage were too often exaggerated and, consequently, disappointing. Using the limited statistics available, he saw suicide among the young newly married as illustrating that disillusionment (Borlandi, 2004, p. 31). Durkheim also suggested that even maternity (a proxy for family society) was unable to protect women from the nega- tive impact of marriage in a conjugal society, as was reflected in a rise in suicide rates associated with increased duration of union. “Par elle-même, la société conjugale nuit à la femme [”conjugal society by itself harms women»] (Durkheim, 1897, p. 196; Borlandi, 2004, p. 32-34). At this stage, the link between suicide and divorce becomes subtler and depends on gen-

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der and matrimonial status. In the regions like the Protestant ones, where suicide was highly prevalent, Durkheim considers that it was explained by married men’s propensity to kill themselves, while married women had the lowest probability of suicide (Durkheim, 1897, p. 302). Durkheim thought that this result was explained by the right to divorce in the Protestant coun- tries, offering another chance to escape the disappointment and pain of marriage than suicide, thus lowering self-given death but only for the brides and not for the husbands (Zaidman, 2007).

Koen Matthijs highlighted the question of divorce in several important publications. His research is based on a long-term investment into creating large databases to support empirical analyses, which are the cornerstones of historical demography. Koen insisted that major changes were observed during the 19th century, when an original system of late unions and high levels of final celibacy, which marked the history of West European popu- lations since at least the 16th century, was drastically transformed. The decreases of singlehood and in the age at first wedding were rapid from the 1850s onward; age homogamy rose, as did the presence of kin (mainly brothers) as witnesses (Matthijs et al., 2008, p. 241), demonstrating the rise of a peers culture. A more “pronounced emotionalization and romantici- zation of (marital) relations” explained the growing “appetite” for marriage (Matthijs et al., 2008, p. 255; Matthijs, 2002). Koen Matthijs saw the roots of romanticism, of the valorization of love and higher hopes to find happiness in marriage in the transition from a family to a family wage economy, the distinction between public and private spheres and the associated gender roles. Marriage, maternity and domestic life were promoted as the core domains for women’s self-realization, resulting in a valorized relegation of women as home icons (Matthijs, 2002). In the late 19th century Durkheim, observed this gendered division of work, which he saw as “natural,” biolo- gically funded and consequently legitimate. Although he assumed a highly misogynous position, he was also realistically aware that such a live could not fulfill all women’s expectations. For a minority of them, marriage was like a prison. Marital life, “en bornant l’horizon, […] ferme les issues et interdit toutes les espérances même légitimes” [“by limiting the horizon, […] closes the exits and prohibits all hopes, even legitimate ones”] (Durk- heim, 1897, p. 302, 306).

To a large extent, Koen Matthijs agreed with Durkheim when he inter- preted the rise of marriages and divorces as the paradoxical result of the same cause: a search for happiness. That romantic aspirations, followed by the disillusionment of a confined marital daily live, were sources of divorces is confirmed by the high rates of formal separations observed by Koen among the women who married young in 19th-century Flanders (Matthijs

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found in the Netherlands and in Switzerland (Oris, 2020; van Poppel, 1997).

That those who broke the old Malthusian system of late marriage and were the most enthusiastic about a union of love comprised a higher proportion of those disappointed by marital life is coherent. Yet, this does not mean that they were “normless,” as Durkheim said, but that they adhered to the new social norms of romanticism and self-realization. And women were pioneers of this transition (Matthijs, 2002).

Although Koen and many other researchers identified the mid-19th century as a turning point, an original study on the “Calvinist Rome,”

Geneva, had detailed such changes in norms one century earlier, far before the decrease of late marriage. In a fascinating study of criminal records, American historian Jeffrey Watt observed a simultaneous rise of suicides and divorces from 1750 onward. He saw those dramatic moments as revea- ling the growth of romantic love and companionate marriage, especially within the middle class (merchants and artisans), while parents from the elites still severely controlled their children’s choices (Watt, 1996). This pioneering role of a place like Geneva, better known for the austerity of its manners than for passionate expressions of sentiments, may be surprising but is coherent with the presence of divorces in all the Protestant traditions.

Indeed, Durkheim saw the possibility of divorce as already being enough to undermine the family society (Borlandi, 2004, p. 34). For Calvinists, Lutherans and Presbyterians, marriage was not a sacrament but a contract, and the Christian family necessarily had to be ordered. Divorce was consequently a serious decision, a non-normative event strictly regulated by the (religious) law, but it was sometimes recognized as needed to restore the order of a family that had to be united by the love of God. In this vision, divorces implied the identification of a fault and of a culprit, the breaker who had to be condemned. This was clear for situations of adultery and

“malicious desertion” (Mottu-Weber, 1997).

The French law of 1792 was revolutionary, changing the meanings of both marriage and divorce by introducing mutual consent and incompa- tibility. This is not by chance that accepting or rejecting such causes was a core issue in the debates across Europe about divorce all throughout the 19th and most of the 20th centuries (Oris, 2020). In conservative contexts, dis- united couples agreed to circumvent the law. In 1883, the Dutch high court condemned a practice that seemed to be widespread: one spouse would accuse the other one of adultery, which the other spouse acknowledged or simply did not refute, and the uncontested allegation would be enough to obtain a divorce (van Poppel & de Beer, 1993, p. 429-430). In France, after the 1884 law was passed that maintained a fault by one of the partners as a

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condition, those who wanted to divorce did not necessarily submit the real cause but one they thought the court could accept (Ronsin, 1995, p. 294).

In Switzerland, the law of 1874 included a list of faults (repeated violence, adultery, condemnation of one of the spouses or desertion) but added that if none of those causes existed but the conjugal tie was deeply affected, the tribunal could pronounce the divorce. This could was a compromise: when this law entered into force in 1876, the liberal (mainly Protestant) cantons used this half-open window to accept mutual-agreement divorces, while other cantonal jurisdictions refused (Oris, 2020).

As late as 1906, Durkheim himself still advocated against mutual- consent divorces to protect a family order—not the old spiritual Protes- tant order but the bourgeois family model of this time, characterized by a gendered distribution of power and roles. He, in fairness, acknowledged his embarrassment since he saw such functioning as benefitting husbands while increasing suicides among married women (Durkheim, 1906; Durk- heim, 1897, p. 442; Zaidman, 2007). It seems the focus on the (im)possibility of a divorce without fault, without condemnation, had hidden conjugal conflicts, which Jacques Bertillon brutally recalled when he wrote, “Dans la plupart des divorces, on peut dire qu’il y a un bourreau et une victime” [“In most divorces, it can be said that there is a persecutor and a victim”] (Bertil- lon, 1884, p. 36). Both converged in their assessment of women’s conditions but diverged in their conclusions, with Durkheim condemning divorce on the basis of a moral philosophy but Bertillon adopting a utilitarian perspective and supporting legislation easing divorce to reflect new social realities (Serverin, 2011).

From those sometimes-confused debates emerges the importance of considering the diversity of couple and family situations within regional and national contexts of changes in social norms, family life and individual aspirations. At the state level, legislation limited the opportunities for divorce. Until progressivist reforms succeeded, divorce was economically and emotionally highly costly. Through their exploration of 1865–1914 Bru- ges court records, Matthijs and Meulders (1997) offered a clear demonstra- tion of the difficulties faced by those who wanted to break their marital chains. What individuals could do obviously depended on their gender and their socioeconomic position. This is this individual agency-within-structures approach that Koen Matthijs and his colleagues developed in several publications that highlighted the micro-macro interactions in the 19th and 20th centuries, through the study of divorce’s determinants.

The abovementioned costs suggested that elites were the pioneers of the divorce revolution. Analyses of empirical data in Flanders and the Nether- lands showed unexpectedly different behaviors between the cultural elites,

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who were highly resistant (Kalmijn et al., 2011). This reluctance reflects a social culture based on a strong normativity. The 19th-century bourgeoi- sie was deeply imbued with the ideals of order, control, self-representation and, ultimately, respectability (Oris, 2020)—ideals that were central to Durkheim’s moral philosophy.

The question of women’s autonomy associated with professional activities outside the home was also raised (Matthijs et al., 2008, 249), but the resulting hypotheses were difficult to test because of the massive under- registration of married women’s activities, an under-registration illustrating the respectability norms. In 19th-century Geneva, women from the middle class who owned their own sources of income (especially the merchants, in the clothing and other domains) were over-represented among the divorced. And this was even more the case if the analyzed sample is limited to the divorces that were requested by the brides (45 percent of the divorces). Those women could assume the costs of the legal procedure and face the consequences of a formal break without dramatically endangering their living conditions, thanks to their economic autonomy. They were also used to managing their business and were probably more inclined to con- flict with a male authority restricting their empowerment. This could also be the continuation of the middle-classes’ (merchants, artisans) pioneering role in the rise of companionate marriages, as Jeffrey Watt (1996) observed in 18th-century Geneva.

While contemporary family sociology consistently observes a higher frequency of divorce in the lower classes, it was the opposite in the late 19th- to early 20th-century Flanders and Netherlands, as studied by Kal- mijn, Vanassche and Matthijs (2011). The illiterate did not have the admi- nistrative literacy needed to manage a divorce procedure and maybe were not even aware of its existence (Vallgarda, 2017). The financial costs were also prohibitive. However, this does not mean that members of the popu- lar classes had no agency. Their break with the norms needed to be more radical, taking the form of a desertion or a disappearance. This behavior appears in the divorce acts when the cause recognized by the court was domicile abandonment, usually by the husband. Even when the cause was not mentioned, when one spouse was absent with the place of residence unknown, the signification was the same. Matthijs Kalmijn and his colleagues (2011, p. 162) note that desertion was often called “the poor man’s divorce.” Deserters, mainly males, were observed in the 19^th-century Uni- ted States, England, and Scotland. But in Geneva, women from the urban working class (tailors, ironers, linen maids, music box polishers, etc.) acted the same (Oris, 2020). Whatever the gender, those people escaped from

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conjugal conflicts simply by leaving. Going unnoticed, they benefited from the city’s anonymity where the control of inhabitants was not too strict.

Although facilitated by the massive migratory flows in which they were drowned, they perpetuated a behavior that Olwen Hufton (1974) spotted in France and Jeffrey Watt (1996) had seen in Geneva even during the 18th century.

The study of social change unifies history and sociology. Koen Matthijs, as a sociologist, demographer and historian, had always studied social change, especially at the micro-level, in a dynamic life course perspective, to give sense to women’s and men’s lives, reveal their diversity and do jus- tice to their interactions and complexity. Among many other topics, Koen logically scrutinized a specific life course transition, a non-normative event that reveals all of those facets: divorce. Breaking up a couple was – and maybe still is – breaking rules and norms about marriage, family, gender and, ultimately, the social order. This short contribution offers an imagined implication of Koen’s viewpoint in the debates between Durkheim and Ber- tillon on the relationships between divorce and suicide, differentiated by gender and matrimonial status. This exercise has revealed what the two old prestigious thinkers neglected and what Koen Matthijs has demonstrated:

by conducting history (and sociology) from the bottom, he simultaneously highlighted the agency of the individual actors and the power of the social, economic and legal structures.

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