Early Marriage of Women in Eighteenth-Century Bordeaux

Résumé 0

In France, under the Old Regime, marriage was generally late, which does not prevent with some men and women from being very young the day of their wedding. In the xviiith century, this situation concerns a little less than 2% of the wives of the elites of Bordeaux, that is to say a corpus of 98 girls whom we study under three different angles. The first one demonstrates that the very early marriages are increasingly rare, which is the sign of the massive and almost complete rejection of this matrimonial practice in the xviiith century. Besides, it's possible to observe the family and patrimonial strategies which lead to weddings involving girls who are often objects put at the services of interests which exceed them. But most original undoubtedly is to consider the fecondity of these very young married women, a fecondity with a particular rhythm because of their youth but which is often, in that city, synonymous with the birth of many children.