“Certainly the Proper Business of Woman”: Household and Estate Management Techniques of Eighteenth-Century French Noblewomen

“Certainly the Proper Business of Woman”: Household and Estate Management Techniques of Eighteenth-Century French Noblewomen BY Sally Utech Submitted to the graduate degree program in History and the Graduate Faculty of the University of Kansas in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. Leslie Tuttle Chairperson Katherine RP Clark Luis R. Corteguera Marta Vicente Anna Neill Committee members Date Defended: 9/27/2010 The Dissertation Committee for Sally Utech certifies that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: “Certainly the Proper Business of Woman”: Household and Estate Management Techniques for Eighteenth-Century French Noblewomen Leslie Tuttle Chairperson Date approved: 9/27/2010 ii INTRODUCTION This project explores the legal, economic, and social aspects of household and estate management in eighteenth-century France. It investigates two paradoxes surrounding noblewomen and household management. The first involves society’s view of women’s appropriate social, economic, and legal activities. For centuries, philosophers had debated the question of women and their places in society. This debate entered into Enlightenment-era discourses during the eighteenth century, which often concluded that women’s ideal roles in these spheres should be minimal or non-existent. And yet, evidence proves that women exercised significant influence in these areas through their roles as household and estate managers. Noblewomen mediated local disputes, as was custom for provincial nobility. The financial necessities of provincial estate management forced women to contribute to regional and national economies through participation in credit networks. Dwindling finances necessitated that women borrow on credit to pay expenses; women also acted as lenders, especially if they married into influential families. As impoverishment and mounting debt began to erode the reputation of the shrinking provincial nobility, noblewomen concerned themselves with maintaining the honor of their families through keeping their legal problems private and securing new lines of credit. The second paradox centers on women’s preparation for household and estate management. While society expected elite women to become managers, and their families actively sought alliances with noble families, the educational opportunities available to girls did not adequately prepare them for their responsibilities as adults. Legal and financial knowledge, as well as the social skills necessary for managing 3 household staff, did not comprise a girl’s education in eighteenth-century France. Women coped with this discrepancy by forming relationships with notaries, lawyers, or exceptionally capable household employees, who served as close advisors and financial intermediaries who interpreted the complex social economic landscape of eighteenth- century France. These advisors possessed the skills noblewomen lacked, as well as a body of local knowledge indispensable to women unaccustomed to life on a provincial estate. Because many provincial noblemen spent time in Paris or Versailles looking for income and favors, the interaction between women and their advisors was unregulated by a familial male authority. Women shared private family information with advisors and relied on them to assist with decision-making. In these situations, women circumvented social norms and forged uniquely intimate and unmediated relationships with men of a different social class. Through an analysis of correspondence between women and their advisors, as well as legal and notarial documents related to household and estate management, I demonstrate the crucial role advisors played in assisting women locate and operate within credit networks. Advisors became important agents of household construction, as women relied on their advice in hiring household staff and in interacting with employees. This study concludes that provincial noblewomen exercised important influence in the economic, legal, and social spheres of eighteenth century France despite the disadvantages they possessed. Current historiography on eighteenth-century French nobility tends to normalize the experiences of men, implying that either women’s experiences conformed to those of their male counterparts, or that exploring the lives of noblewomen does not reveal much 4 about society. While this implication may not be intentional, scholarship certainly has overlooked how French noblewomen contributed to society and the economy by carrying out their tasks as household and estate managers. Through their involvement in complicated creditor and debtor networks, women contributed to the economy of the Old Regime. Recent scholarship has begun to investigate the roles of elite European women as creditors, debtors, and even investors. Due to their unique relationships with their advisors, noblewomen redefined appropriate social roles, gendered relationships, and modes of household construction. Sources This study began with an exploration of notarial archives, specifically the archive housed in the Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas of the Provençal lawyer and notary Gaspard Gaufridy.1 The unique nature of that collection made the following project possible. While historians have long mined French notarial archives for social, legal, and economic information, collections from notaries typically contain only compilations of the official documents they registered, such as marriage contracts, wills, financial transfers, etc. These documents in and of themselves reveal much, and because notaries kept copies of all registered documents to pass on to their successors, notarial archives tend to be relatively organized and complete, possessing a sense of chronology and continuity. What most notarial archives do not contain, however, is a 1 The provenance of the Gaufridy Collection is as follows: The Gaufridy Collection was purchased by the Spencer Research Library at the University of Kansas on 17 February, 1964, from Joseph Rubinstein, then a bookseller in Tucson. He had purchased it some years before from Jean Hugues, bookseller, 1 rue de Furstenberg, Paris. Hugues had acquired it from an unnamed member of the Sade family. 5 sense of the interactions that went on between notary and client before, during, and after the process of drawing up legal documents and financial transactions. In order to overcome this and to understand more about the notary, historian Claire Dolan has undertaken close readings of notarial documents to demonstrate where the notary’s own opinions are reflected in his official documentation.2 This proved the notary did not function as a mere scribe, but that he helped shape the documents he created, even documents that on the surface seemed to have prescribed formats and left little room for variation. Still, an important issue remained absent in the study of notaries, and that was an understanding of the interactions with and the roles they played in lives of their clients. The unique characteristic of Gaufridy’s archive is that it contains manuscript correspondence from his clients. This collection of letters supplements Gaufridy’s work as a notary, lending insight into his relationships with his clients, the services he performed for them, and the reactions his clients had to his work. One of the reasons Gaufridy’s client letters have survived can be attributed to the fact that he spent much of his career in the employ of the Sade family. The notoriety of the Marquis de Sade certainly played a role in keeping Gaufridy’s client letters intact. However, the overwhelming majority (405 of nearly 600) of the Sade-related letters in Kansas’ Gaufridy Collection were authored by Renée-Pélagie de Montreuil, the Marquise de Sade. This initial observation intrigued me, as it would be expected that Donatien Alphonse de Sade, the Marquis, would have had the most correspondence with Gaufridy. Gaufridy helped with household, estate, and legal matters; in addition, Donatien and 2 Claire Dolan, Le Notarie, La Famille, et La Ville: Aix-en-Provence à la fin du XVIe siècle (Toulouse: Presses Universitaires du Mirail, 1998). 6 Gaufridy had been friends since childhood. This brought up the question of why Renée would have had so much interaction with Gaufridy. The content of Renée’s letters to Gaufridy, as well as an understanding of the life of the provincial nobility in the eighteenth century, revealed that Renée played a crucial, central role in the maintenance of the Sade households and properties. For this study, Renée’s letters in the Gaufridy Collection are augmented by the significant amount of correspondence pertaining to the Sades housed in French archives, such as the Bastille Papers at the Bibliothèque Nationale de France and various municipal and local archives in Provence. Alice Laborde has compiled, edited, and published in printed volumes Sade-related manuscripts.3 This twenty-seven volume set added immensely to the correspondence in the Gaufridy Collection by providing not just Renée’s letters, but the responses of her advisors, as well as direct correspondence among her advisors and family members. Letters from Fage, the Sade’s financial administrator, and Ripert, an experienced estate manager and rentier of Sade properties, appear in Laborde’s volumes. The sources can be pieced together to form a multi-faceted picture of Renée’s household management style, her relationships with her staff and family members, and the state of the Sade family’s financial affairs.

Load more