Did the War Break Couples?: Marriage and Divorce in France During and After WWI

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Did the War Break Couples?: Marriage and Divorce in

France During and After WWI

Sandra Brée

To cite this version:

Sandra Brée. Did the War Break Couples?: Marriage and Divorce in France During and After WWI.

Brée, Sandra; Hin, Saskia. The Impact of World War I on Marriages, Divorces, and Gender Rela-

tions in Europe, Routledge, pp.155-191, 2020, 9780367198503. �10.4324/9780429243684-9�. �halshs-

02397674�

175

Chapter 6. Did the war break couples?

Marriage and divorce in France during and after WWI

Sandra Brée – CNRS, LARHRA (Lyon, France)

Introduction

The First World War greatly disrupted couples and families in France because of the long-

term separations associated with sending men to the front, and consequently the

reorganization of homes in the absence of men that changed the position of women in within

households. Couples who had gradually learned to live far from each other – while having

many epistolary exchanges

– had, at the end of the war, relearn to live together. The women,

who had tasted a certain form of independence and had asserted themselves in the

management of the homes, had to ‘return to their place’ of wives and especially of mothers

whiles the men regained their position of head of family even though they still have the

horrors of war in mind

. Most separations were undoubtedly painful and made readjustment to

family life generally difficult

even if they did not necessarily lead to a marital breakup. But

some couples experienced more difficulties returning to their married life and eventually

divorced. The conflict was for many couples a sentimental and sometimes a marital

catastrophe

This paper aims to understand the impact of the First World war on marriages and divorces

and eventually on the gender relations. It will first summarize the findings of Louis Henry

about the low effects of the war on the marriage rate thanks to compensation marriages. The

latter result from the more frequent unions of women with widowed or divorced men, and

with foreigners, as well as the modification of the crossing of the generations and the decrease

in men's celibacy.

Then, the movement and characteristics of divorces will be studied to understand the

consequences of the war on couples who had been separated during the conflict but also to

know if the ‘compensatory marriages’ had a greater risk of divorce than the others. The

grounds and the plaintiffs of divorce will be studied, as well as the socioeconomic

characteristics of the divorcees (profession, family situation, nationalities etc.) to deepen the

analysis and give more clues to answer our three hypotheses that are the following.

Our first assumption is that the First world war has led more couples to separate or divorce

than in “normal times’ for two main reasons. First, the long separations of the couples and the

176

remoteness between fathers and children

. The enforced separation of husbands and wives –

even those married for a long time - can have weakened marriages. Indeed, husbands and

wives lived different wartime experiences during several months or years. These ‘divergent

experiences must have affected them in different ways such that they developed more

individually, and less in tandem, than they would had they not been separated’.

As to

children, some grew up, and even were born, when their father was at the front and sometimes

did not recognize or even know them

. Paternal distance from family life may also have led to

the marriage breakdown. War experience may also have changed men’s personalities or

preferences on the one hand, but they also might have returned to more independent wives

who might also have changed substantially. Second, the traumas and the psychological effects

of the war on soldiers, such as what we now called posttraumatic stress, anxiety and

depression, inability to feel emotion and closeness to others

may also have had a strong

impact on couples and family relationships.

According to our second hypothesis, marriages entered during the war may concern only

the oldest, at least the men too old to be at the front. There is no specific reason why these

marriages would have higher risks of divorce and Pavalko and Elder

do not find such

evidence for the United States. However, marriages of the war can also have been contracted

quickly before the departure to war, during a permission or even by procuration

. The rush of

these marriages may have resulted in hurried weddings that had higher risks at divorce

Our third hypothesis concerns the “compensatory marriages’. Women married men that

they probably would not have married in peacetime

. In consequence, it is possible that these

marriages have less chance to last than “more chosen’ marriages.

The “couples of the war’ were confronted with a very specific period made of separations,

reunions and new good-byes, waiting for letters and news from the front, fear of adultery,

abandonment and treason and obviously death

. Through the history of their marriages and

sometimes divorces, this article will try to bring new knowledge about the impact of the First

World war on conjugal and gender relations.

177

The impact of the war on marriages

France suffered heavy losses during the First World War. The number of civilians and

soldiers killed was extremely high

. Most of these were young men, a phenomenon which

can have a strong effect on nuptiality and fertility

. According to the last estimates, 1 300 000

to 1 450 000 French soldiers were killed during the First World war

, representing 17% of

men born in 1881-1885, 19 % of those born in 1886-1890 and 24.5 % of those born in 1891-

1895, the cohort the most affected by the war

. This excess of male deaths naturally led to an

imbalance of the sex ratio that should in turn have led to a strong increase of female

permanent celibacy. However, the increase is low

and the share of women forced to celibacy

is fewer than excepted

Figure 6.1. Marriages and first marriages (left axis) and marriage rate (‰, right axis), 1900-1939.

Sources: Mouvement de la population, 1900-1939; Population censuses (Statistique générale de la France).

Since the beginning of the First World war, the number of marriages decreased

tremendously (Figure 6.1), especially during the four last months of 1914 and the four first

months of 1915

. Despite the catch-up of marriages during the immediate post-war period

(1920-1922), only 2 116 000 marriages were celebrated between 1914 and 1922. They

represent 75% of the 2 760 000

that could be expected taking the 1910-1913 period as a

178

reference. The marriages that had been postponed because of the absence of men during the

war were not all concluded after the war because a lot of young men were killed or wounded

during the war

. The losses of men during the war could thus have led to a very strong

increase of single women and the women of the most affected cohorts indeed remain single

more often than in the other cohorts (Figure 6.2). However, in comparison to what could have

been the consequences of the war, singleness among women at age 50 was not very high in

France after World War I.

The lack of men only forced 12.5% of women of these cohorts to remain single whereas 15

to 20% of the men they could have married died during the war

. According to Henry

, four

compensatory elements compensated the loss of men (Figure 6.2). His work is based on a

longitudinal analysis that, by definition, does not provide cross-sectional data. To complete

his analysis, some elements will be given by years to make the following cross-sectional

analysis on divorces more revealing.

Figure 6.2. Women celibacy to be feared, men and women observed celibacy (cohorts 1881-1885 – 1906-

1910)

Sources: Henry, 1966; Chasteland and Pressat. 1962 (for men celibacy).

Lecture: For women born in 1891-1895, the expected celibacy was 9,9% without the war and 19.6% with the

war. The observed celibacy rate was 12.5%. The difference between celibacy to be feared and actual celibacy is

due for 11.3% to marriages with strangers (decrease from 19.6% to 18.8%), for 20.6% to supplementary

marriages with widowers and divorced men (from 18.8% to 17.3%), for 19.7% to a diminution of men celibacy

(17.3% to 15.9%) and for 48.5% to changing in generation crossing (15.9% to 12.5%).

179

The four compensatory elements that compensated the loss of men according to Henry

are

summarise in Table 6.1 for the cohorts of women born between 1881 and 1910 and explained

below.

Table 1.1. Distribution of 100 additional marriages according to the compensation mechanism.

Cohorts

marriages with

foreigners

Supplementary marriages with

widowers and divorced men

decrease of

men celibacy

changing in

generation crossing

Total

1881-1885

8,3

78,3

13,3

0,0

100

1886-1890

11,1

49,4

39,4

0,0

100

1891-1895

11,3

20,6

19,7

48,5

100

1896-1900

14,0

9,5

12,7

63,7

100

1901-1905

20,7

2,4

17,6

59,3

100

1906-1910

20,8

2,9

24,2

52,1

100

1. The modification of generations crossing: more than half of the gap between celibacy to

be feared and observed celibacy is filled by the modification of generation crossing for

women born between 1891 and 1910 (Table 6.1). The modification of generation crossing

means that women married with men older or younger than in ‘normal’ times. Thereby,

women born between 1891 and 1910 married more often with men of their age or younger

men and less often men significantly older than them than women born between 1881 and

1890. In consequence, the age difference between spouses decreased by almost one year

between 1907-1913 and 1925-1935 (Appendix A1).

2. The marriage of women with immigrants of whom large numbers came to France during

and after the war for reconstruction

compensated for around 15 % the loss of men. This

element has an increasing importance: from 11% for the cohort born in 1886-1890 to 21% for

the cohort born in 1906-1910 (Table 6.1). ‘After the brutal decrease caused by the outbreak of

the Great War, a frank rebound for unions of foreigners with French women appeared since

1915, due to the lack of men (held at the front, dead or prisoners), but only since 1919 for

unions of foreign women with French men’

. Marriages including at least one foreigner were

more than twice as frequent during the war than in the pre-war period (Appendix A2). The

number of marriages between a French woman and a foreigner increased considerably

between 1915 and 1919 because of the presence in France of the Allied soldiers

. American

and British husbands are numerous in 1920 (Appendix A2) but their number rapidly decreases

during the interwar period. In the immediate afterwar, marriages between two French are

more frequent than in 1914 but their share is falling to lower levels than in 1914 (94%) since

180

1923 (93,4%) and even to lower levels than in 1915-1916 (91.1%) since 1927 (90.8%)

(Appendix A2). Therefore, from 1920 to 1931, the share of marriages with a foreigner (3.7 to

5.3%) and especially between two foreigners (1% to 4.5%) is increasing

. It is also

interesting to note that spouses come less often from the same town after the war than before

(61.1% in 1907-1913; 60.4% in 1914-1919 with a peak at 73.7 in 1915 and a minimum of

53.9% in 1919; and 56.4% in 1919-1931). The war seems to have gathered people who may

not have met without it.

3. Supplementary marriages with divorced and widowed men have also contributed to

reduce the impact of the losses of the war on female celibacy. This compensatory mechanism

is especially important among women who formed part of the oldest marriage cohort during

the conflict, born between 1881 and 1890 (Table 6.1).

During the war and the years just after, women marry more with widowed and divorced

men (Appendix A3). Marriages involving one or two persons who had already been married

were numerous during the war because most of the single young men were soldiers

. The

lack of single men can still be seen up to 1925 when the share of two-singles marriages

returned to almost the same levels as before the war (about 85%). From 1925 to 1933, the

share of single women marrying widowed or divorced men was at the same level as before the

war (about 6% of marriages), as the share of single men marrying widowed or divorced

women (about 4%).

4. The decrease of male celibacy. It is a well-known fact that ‘In a normal situation,

whether they are aware of it or not, some people are prevented from marrying because they

are in competition with others’

. During WWI, French women married men they would not

necessarily have married in peacetime. Indeed, 10 to 11 % of men never married in the

cohorts born between 1850 and 1870

. The decrease of male celibacy means that some of

them who would not have married actually did.

These marriages compensate generally less than a quarter of the lack of men and, in

consequences, the surviving men were one of the cohorts with the lowest rate of permanent

celibacy (figure 6.2).

Single women managed to marry thanks to these ‘compensatory marriages’, but without

preventing widows and divorcees from marrying

. Actually, widows’ remarriages were much

181

more numerous between 1919 and 1925 than before the war (Appendix 6.A3) and divorced

women no longer encountered bigger obstacles to getting married than widows

In resume, thanks to these compensation mechanisms, observed celibacy is much lower

than the extent of celibacy contemporary sources feared would occur among the generations

of women who were most affected by the war (figure 6.2).

However, the rebalancing with marriages of women with younger or already married men,

immigrants or widowed or divorced men may have had an impact on the relationships

between men and women of these cohorts. Indeed, these ‘compensation marriages’ are

possibly less preferred than the marriages of previous cohorts, even if love marriages that

mainly spread since the end of the 19

century

are put forward during and after the war

However, a less strong social and cultural homogamy could also have benefited these couples,

especially those who needed more independence after the war. The decrease of the age

difference between men and women may also have changed the gender relations. The analysis

of the movement and characteristics of the divorces that occurred during and, especially, just

after the war will enhance our understanding of these changes.

A short history of separations and divorces in France

In the wake of successive political regimes, divorce legislation has undergone many

changes. During the Middle Ages, marriage was an ephemeral institution that was made and

discarded at the mercy of alliances between families. Since the end of the eleventh century,

the catholic Church began to impose its norm of marriage and finally advocated for

indissolubility and prohibition of divorce in 1563 (Council of Trent). At the end of the Ancien

Régime, the voices of the Enlightenment philosophers (notably Montesquieu and Voltaire)

rose up to condemn the indissolubility of marriage that only separation could break but

without allowing for remarriage

. Marriage was desacralized and secularized by the

revolutionaries on September 3, 1791 (introduction of civil marriage) and the law of

September 20, 1792 then established divorce, including by mutual consent, because ‘the

faculty of divorce results from individual freedom and including an indissoluble commitment

would be its loss’. Legal separation was suppressed. However, the 1792 law was quickly

criticized for its excessive liberalism and the Civil Code (1804) limited the possibilities of

divorce: divorce was maintained but the procedure was strict, and the formalities were more

rigorous, rendering divorce henceforth exceptional (only those divorces on the grounds of

182

‘fault’ continued to be allowed). On the other hand, legal separation was reintroduced.

Finally, the Restoration reaffirmed the indissolubility of marriage by abolishing divorce by

the law of May 8, 1816. The royalty, returning to power, wanted ‘to return to marriage all his

dignity in the interest of religion, morals, monarchy and family.’

From 1816 to 1884, many petitions demanded changes in the legislation and the

reestablishment of divorce. Hopes of reestablishment were frequent – especially in 1830,

1848 and 1871 –, but it was not until 1884 (law of 27 July 1884, known as the Naquet law),

that the divorce is re-established and only for fault

. This law is part of the spirit of a sanction

imposed on the spouse who has not respected his commitments

During the first half of the 20

century, it is therefore possible to divorce and to separate.

This paper will mainly focus on divorces because they represent 85 to 92% of all the judicial

disunions at that time

Data and method for the study of divorce

The main source for studying the evolution of divorces is the Compte général de la justice

civile et commerciale (General Account of Civil and Commercial Justice) that publishes

detailed data on separations and divorces. They provide the number of requests

complainant (husband or wife), according to the family situation (with or without children)

and the ground (main and counterclaims combined); as well as, for the period 1884-1933, the

applicant's occupation and the duration of the marriage. This data concerns all applications for

divorce and not only the accepted ones, which represent about 15 % of the applications.

We are interested also in requests for divorce that did not materialize. First, because they

provide a better idea of the behavior of individuals at a given moment, while judgments can

occur several months or even years after a request. Second, because the information about the

complainant, the family situation or the ground are only given in the requests’ statistics and

not in the judgments, at least not for every year. However, some details that do not appear in

the Justice accounts, such as the nationality of the spouses or the marital status of the spouses

before their marriage, are given in the Statistics of the movement of the population or in the

Statistical yearbooks. These statistics will also be used to complete the analysis.

183

The divorces of the war

Divorces are few during the war, but there is a sharp increase in divorces after the

armistice (Figure 6.3). More than 109,000 divorces were pronounced between 1919 and 1922

but only 56,750 during the four years preceding the war (and 19,000 during). Are these

divorces a consequence of the war or are they only a catch-up of those who did not take place

during the conflict? If we stick to the numbers, the number of divorces between 1919 and

1921 is higher than the number of divorces of 1913 multiplicated by 4, for the four years of

the war

. So, there are more divorces during the immediate after war that they would have

been without the conflict and this high number is not only the 'catching up' of war-divorces

But, when looking at the long run, the divorce rate increase of the interwar is finally lower

than during the 1900-1913 period (hatched lines, Figure 6.3).

Figure 6.3. Number of divorce requests (left axis) and divorce rates for 100 000 married women (right

axis) in France, 1900-1938.

Sources: Civil Justice statistiques (Compte général de l'administration de la Justice civile et commerciale en France et en

Algérie (1837-1932), Compte général de l'administration de la Justice civile et commerciale et de la Justice criminelle

(1933-1938).

Note: The dashed lines represent the estimated number of divorces and divorce rate from 1913 to 1939 with the rate of

increase calculated for the 1901-1912 period.

184

The war may have had a significant impact on the married life of couples causing a wave

of divorces after the war, but it cannot be said that the First World War played a role in

accelerating the trend of increasing divorce in the first half of the 20

century

, unlike in

other countries

. It is however possible that a number of divorces did not occur because of

the death of the husband or because it was morally or socially difficult to divorce after such a

deadly conflict. It is interesting to note that despite this finally moderate increase in divorces,

there is a gap between the perception of contemporaries, who have the impression that the

number of divorces is exploding, and reality

. According to Fouchard, this gap is due to the

changes of women’s place during the war that is presented as a threat for the traditional

conjugal balance and the French family. She also hypothesis that this collective impression of

the massive number of divorces can also be explained by the ‘the painful surprises of the

return’

and the actual difficulties faced by a lot of couples, even if they do not necessarily

lead to a divorce.

The analysis shows an increase of marriages duration during and just after the war

followed by a strong decrease between the mid-1920s and the mid-1930s (Appendix A4). By

going into more details, it appears that two categories of couples divorce more frequently than

usual during the immediate post-war period (1920-1922): couples married for five to nine

years, that correspond to marriages contracted between 1910 and 1917 and couples who

married very quickly after the end of the war and whose marriage lasted only a short time –

less than a year or one to five years on the other hand (figure 6.4).

To understand more precisely the evolution of divorces, it is necessary to know which

generations are divorcing. To do this, we combine cross-sectional analysis (by years or

periods) with longitudinal analysis (by cohorts). Divorces by duration of marriage are used to

redistribute divorces according to the years couples were married. It is then possible to refine

divorce rates by relating the number of divorces to the number of marriages of the year

couples married rather than marriages in the year of divorce as is generally done (figure 6.5).

185

Figure 6.4. Duration of marriages before divorce by duration groups (%), 1900-1938.

Sources: Civil Justice statistics (Compte général de l'administration de la Justice civile et commerciale en France et en

Algérie).

By relating divorces to the corresponding marriage periods, it appears that war brides (who

constitute a particular group as we have seen) had higher risks of divorce. Couples married

before the war also faced strong risks of divorce, even if much less strong than the war brides.

One can notice a slight increase of the risk of divorce since the end of the 19

century. But,

even considering this increase it appears that marriages that took place just before the war had

higher risks of divorce than the only consequence of the ‘normal’ increase of divorce rates.

Eventually, even if it is not possible to analyze the total divorce risk of the marriages

occurring between 1920 and 1924 because our data coverage ends in 1933, it seems that, at

least for the ten first years of marriages, couples married just after the war had the same risks

of divorce as the ones which married just before.

186

Figure 6.5. Frequency of marriage durations according to the period of marriage (1890-1924 marriage

cohorts).

Sources: Civil Justice statistics (Compte général de la Justice).

Note: This figure gives the frequency of marriages durations according to the period of marriage. The sum of the frequencies

is therefore equal to the rate of divorce for 1000 marriages of the period. Only 0 to 19 years-old marriages are considered and

even less for the youngest generations because data for 20 years-old marriages were available only for the oldest generations.

Birth cohorts are estimated with a 29 years-old mean age at marriage.

For instance, 46 marriages for 1000 contracted between 1905 and 1909 have ended by a divorce (only considering divorces

before 20 years of marriage). Of these 46 marriages, 18 have lasted less than five years, 13 less between five and nine years,

7 between 10 and 14 years and 9 between 15 to 19 years.

By associating the estimated birth cohorts to the marriages’ periods

, different stories are

revealed. The men of the youngest cohorts affected by the war (born between 1891 and 1895)

were often single at the time of the conflict and the survivors marry actually more than the

other cohorts thanks to the ‘compensation’ marriages (figure 6.5). In the cohort the most

affected by the war in terms of mortality

(born between 1886 and 1890), many survivors

also managed to get married, but they had significant divorce rates, especially after zero to

four years of marriage. Eventually, the cohorts born between 1876 (and especially 1881) and

1885 were also strongly affected by mortality (although less than the youngest) but also by the

separations from their families imposed by the war. Indeed, in these cohorts, the men sent to

the front were 29 to 38 in 1914, so a high proportion of them were already married and

fathers. These men and families have therefore probably suffered the most from the separation

and the traumas of the war when reunited – even if these traumas may also have prevented

187

younger men to fall in love or to marry and start a family after the war. The First World war

has had a double impact on the men, the couples and the who were of marrying and

childbearing age during the conflict: first, in terms of mortality and mourning, but also for

their family life.

Who asks for divorce and why?

The weight of the marital institution is very different for men and women. The latter are

under the authority of their father until their marriage from which they come under the

authority of their husband

. The Civil Code (1804) inscribes and institutes the paternal and

marital power and the legal incapacity of the married woman, placed under the tutelage of her

husband

. During the period we are studying, women are therefore judicially dependent on

their husbands. But, even more than this judicial dependence, it was the economic incapacity

of women that compelled them to live with a father, a companion or a husband. Without a

man’s salary, women could not survive

. This economic and legal dependence of women

should logically have motivated them to stay in a couple in order to benefit from the salary of

their companion or their husband. By asking for judicial disunity, they ran the risk of putting

themselves in a situation of economic distress, especially women who sought divorce rather

than separation because the husband no longer had the obligation to support his wife. Yet,

women formed the majority of those asking for separation and divorce

. Nevertheless, during

our period of observation, the share of women asking for divorce for the first time fell below

50%: from 1919 to 1921, and once more in 1925, men were more often the demanding party

for a divorce than women (Figure 6.6).

188

Figure 6.6. Women asking for divorce, 1900-1938.

Sources: Civil Justice statistics (Compte général de la Justice).

The same pattern occurred in England

after WWI and in the US and Australia after

WWII

. Several explanations can be put forward to explain why. First, by producing more

widows, the deadliest wars would free more women from seeking divorce, in comparison to

the situation in which the husbands of these widows would not have died

. According to a

second explanation, men being away during the war, the wives would be unfaithful to their

husbands more frequently than usual (or their husbands would suspect them more), which

would lead men to ask more often for divorce than at other times

. Indeed, in France during

the First World War, applications for divorce on the grounds of adultery by the wife increases

(Figure 6.7). Moreover, the number of illegitimate births increased from 8.5% in 1914 – and a

mean level of 8.8% between 1901 and 1913 – to a mean level of 13.2% during the war

. The

share of illegitimate births decreased quickly after the war as it was already at the same level

as before the war in 1922. A third explanation may lie in the trauma of men - both physical

and psychological – a trauma which they did not necessarily want to share with, or have their

wives suffer from. As researches on WWII has shown, heavy combat left a substantial

number of soldiers with symptoms of posttraumatic stress, including an inability to feel

emotion and closeness to others; immobilizing anxiety; and depression

189

Figure 6.7. Plaintiff and grounds of divorces, 1884-1938.

Sources: Civil Justice statistics (Compte général de la Justice).

Who divorces?

To understand if some couples were more likely to divorce than others during and after the

war, the socioeconomic characteristics of the divorcees (profession, family situation,

nationalities etc.) are now studied. The idea is not only to understand who has more chance to

divorce but also if the couples who had higher risks of divorcing during and just after the war

have the same characteristics than before or if we can identify some changed that could be

seen as consequences of the conflict.

Fertility

Data from the Mouvement de la population also give information about the presence or the

absence of children (Figure 6.8). First, we notice that a lot of divorces (more than one third)

concern couples who did not have children

. Second, couples who divorced during the

immediate afterwar more often had children than those who divorced before the war. But one

can also notice an increase of childless divorces in the 1930s. With an offset of twelve years,

these divorces correspond of the marriages of the immediate afterwar years. Yet, fertility

190

declines during the interwar period (Figure 6.8), as childlessness increases

. The evolution of

the share of divorces without children can thus be partly explained by the movement of

fertility. But we may still wonder whether the marriages that ended in divorce were less fertile

than the others, and whether childlessness can explain some of the divorces of the interwar.

Researchers have shown that venereal diseases such as gonorrhoea and syphilis can cause

miscarriages, stillbirth and temporal or definitive infertility

. And we know that a lot of

soldiers had sexual relations with prostitutes during the First World war

. In consequence, the

rise of childlessness could also be a consequence of the diseases soldiers brought back home.

Eventually, the traumas caused by the war may also have caused psychological or physical

infertility among soldiers. Moreover, it might be that some men or women no longer wanted a

child after the traumas of the war. Deeper analysis would be necessary to understand the

impact of the war on couples’ sexuality after the war. But what we know so far is that for the

era between 1884 and 1975, the interwar period is the only one during which the share of

divorces without children increased.

Figure 6.8. Share of divorces with and without children, 1905-1939.

Sources: divorces : Compte général de la Justice, 1905-1913 ; 1919-1939; number of births per woman: Daguet,

2002.

191

Professions

We also have information on the professions of divorced people (Table 6.2). One can notice a

decrease of the share of workers and servants after the war, whereas the share of rich people

and especially shopkeepers increases. Therefore, it seems that the interwar divorces concern

more often than before the richest part of the population than the poor. Is it because divorces

were expensive and because poor people, during the post-war period, did not have money to

spend on divorce? Studies on post-WWII divorces have shown that men with more schooling

were at lower risk of divorce than the others. If we associate the level of instruction with the

socioeconomic levels, it seems that the opposite appears in the France after WWI

Table 6.2. Profession of the person who asks for divorce (%)

Divorces

Owners,

annuitants, liberal

professions

Shopkeepers

Farmers

Workers

Servants

Eff.

data

1890-1899

10,7

17,2

9,7

55,3

7,1

86.673

7.954

1900-1909

11,2

14,6

10,4

55,4

8,5

126.451

12.682

1910-1913

12,1

14,2

9,5

56,2

7,9

71.177

7.672

1919-1924

12,8

18,4

10,6

52,9

5,3

174.854

22.579

1925-1929

11,8

18,6

10,4

52,7

6,4

127.937

28.357

1930-1933

12,4

18,7

10,3

52,9

5,7

83.481

17.906

Source: Compte général de la Justice, 1890-1913; 1919-1933

Age

The Compte general de la Justice does not provide more information about couples who

requested a divorce, but we can find more data in the Mouvement de la population such as the

age of the divorcees, the marital status, and the nationalities of the divorcees. As a reminder,

this data concerns divorces that were accepted, not all requests.

As already mentioned, the divorces of the war concern some specific groups of the

population. The analysis of the age of the spouses show that, logically, when the young men

were at the front, the age at divorce increased (Figure 6.9). It is also interesting to notice that

since 1925, the age at divorce decreased which is consistent which the decline of the duration

of marriages (Appendix A4). The divorcees of the 1930s are the youngest of the first half of

the twentieth century but it is probably more an effect of the beginning economic crisis than

of the war, since the decrease of the age at divorce is mainly due to the increase of young

people who divorce during the first five years of marriage, so at the earliest in 1923.

192

Figure 6.9. Age at divorce (1900-1939).

Source: Mouvement de la population (1913-1939). Accepted divorces only.

Marital status

By analysing the marital status of the divorcees at the time of their marriage, one can first

observe the peak of divorces during the war that included at least one widowed person or one

already divorced person. It appears that those few divorces (Figure 6.3) that occurred during

the war concerned more often than usual people whose marriages had already been broken

once before (by death or divorce). These marriages appeared to have lasted longer than the

others (Appendix A4).

What is probably more interesting to notice is the increase of couples who already lived

separated when they filed for divorce. This increase occurred during the 1920s for widows in

a second marriage, and during all of the interwar period for divorced people who were in a

second marital union. (Figure 6.10). If we consider an average duration of marriage of twelve

years plus one or two years

, the increase of divorces involving one or two widows

corresponds to marriages that occurred between 1910 and 1917, thus during the war.

Therefore, they can correspond to the increase of marriages involving a widow(er) observed

in the beginning of the conflict (Appendix A3). The increase of divorces among people who

193

had already divorced once can also be a simple consequence of the increase of marriages with

divorced people during all the interwar (Appendix A3).

With our quantitative data, it is very hard to know if the explanation of the rise is only

numerical (more marriages of that type causing logically more divorces of that type) or if

marriages with already separated people lasted less than marriages between single partners.

Figure 6.10. Widowed and divorced husbands and wives (1913-1939).

Source: Mouvement de la population (1913-1939). Accepted divorces only.

Nationalities

The Mouvements de la population also include the nationalities of divorced people from

1914 to 1931 (Figure 6.11). Unfortunately, such data is not available before the First World

war, so we cannot compare what happens after the war to what was before.

During the war, a lot of the few couples who divorced included one or two foreigners: a

quarter to almost half of the divorces. In comparison, after the war, they represented only 10

to 17 % of the divorces. Among these divorces including at least one foreigner, couples

composed by a French husband and a foreign wife constituted the majority: 75 to 85%. These

figures probably point to strong rejection of foreigners during the war, which made it

194

impossible to remain married with a wife or a husband who had the nationality of the enemy.

As a reminder, 20% of foreign wives were German at the end of the nineteenth century

(Appendix A2). The high share of marriages between two French in the immediate afterwar

points in the same direction (figure A22, Appendix 2). This is probably why these divorces

appear to be overrepresented: people did not divorce during the war except when there was a

hurry, like in this case.

Figure 6.11. Nationalities of divorced people (1914-1931).

Source: Mouvement de la population, 1914-1931. Accepted divorces only.

Conclusion

Despite the extremely significant losses that decimated several cohorts of young men, the

Great War had rather limited effects on the nuptiality levels of the French. Its main effect was

that women married or remarried men they would not necessarily have married during

peacetime. These ‘compensation’ marriages consisted of unions of women with widowed or

divorced men, and with foreigners who often came to France for the reconstruction), as well

as marriages of women with men younger or older than usual (i.e. the modification of the

crossing of the generations). Finally, there was a decrease in men's celibacy

195

Many of these marriages lasted, limiting ultimate celibacy rates (at age 50) of the men and

women the most affected by the war. During the interwar period – after a peak of divorces

just after the conflict – the overall number of divorces was even than could be expected had

there been no war

. But, by looking more closely at the data, it appears that different cohorts

did not have the same risks of divorce. Indeed, the risk of divorce of the couples married just

after the war, during it and just after is higher than for the other cohorts, which implies that

couples which married longer before the war probably divorced less than expected. This held

true especially for the cohorts of soldiers in their thirties during the conflict, who were often

married, or even fathers.

This pattern validates our first hypothesis: couples that suffered from separation invoked

by the war had a higher risk of divorce. In addition to the absence of the husband and father

and the traumas due to the war, it appears that the distance also caused fears about, or actual

infidelity. The divorces of the immediate afterwar years took place more often at the request

of men and with adultery of the wife given as a motivation, than during any other period

before the 1970s

As to our second hypothesis, the couples married during the war were the most likely to

divorce. These couples form a specific group because they were generally older than couples

who had married before the war, and more often widowed or divorced. French people,

especially women, also more often married foreigners during the war, and more often people

from the same town. But the marriages of the war also concerned young couples that married

before the groom’s departure to war, during a permission of leave, or even by proxy. The rush

of these marriages could explain why so many of them ended in divorce. Unfortunately, our

data does not allow to investigate the causes underlying these patterns further.

As to the ‘compensatory’ marriages, they seem to have provoked as many divorces as the pre-

war marriages affected by the war, which validates our third hypothesis. First, these marriages

concerned women who married men they would not necessarily have chosen in peacetime.

Second, these marriages concerned mainly the cohort the most affected by the war in terms of

mortality (born between 1891 and 1895). It appears, moreover, that even though many

survivors managed to get married, they had significant divorce rates, especially during the

first four years of marriage. These soldiers may not have suffered from separation from their

spouses or children because most of them where not married or fathers at the time, but this

does not mean that they did not have girlfriends or even fiancées from whom separation was

probably as hard. Those who were in their late teenage years or their early twenties may not

196

have had romantic relationships, but the war took them in their ‘best years’. A high number of

the young men of their age class died and a high share of the survivors were wounded,

handicapped, or had ‘broken faces’. These young men were psychologically and physically

traumatised and even if they managed to marry, the impact of the war seems to have had

strong repercussions on their romantic, marital, and family lives. While the women of their

age had not fought, they had also suffered from the separation. Moreover, after the war,

whereas men were few and were in and advantageous position of strength to get married,

women were in strong competition with each other. This is demonstrated, for example, by the

way they were supposed to advertise their quality in the matrimonial classified ads

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Appendices

Appendix 1. Age at marriage and age differences (1900-1938).

Table 6.3. Age at (first) marriage, men and women, 1900-1938.

Periods

Age at marriage (all)

Age at marriage (first)

women

men

age difference

women

men

age difference

1900-1906

25,1

29,4

4,2

23,7

27,8

4,1

1907-1913

25,7

29,6

3,8

23,9

27,8

3,9

1914-1918

27,6

31,3

3,7

25,1

28,5

3,3

1919-1924

26,4

29,8

3,4

24,4

27,6

3,2

1925-1935

25,6

28,5

2,9

23,6

26,3

2,7

1936-1939

26,4

29,6

3,2

24,0

27,1

3,2

Source: Mouvement de la population, 1900-1938.

Figure 6.12. Age difference between spouses for first (1st) and subsequent (sub) marriages (1900-1939).

Source : Mouvement de la population, 1900-1939.

200

Appendix 2. Marriages with foreigners

Figure 6.13. Foreign husbands, 1907-1931.

Source: Mouvement de la population, 1907-1931

Figure 6.14. Foreign husbands (details), 1891-1931.

Source: Mouvement de la population, 1891; 1914-1931 (between 1891 and 1914 and after 1931, there is no

statistics about spouses’ nationalities except between 1907 and 1913 where nationalities are given but not

crossed for the two spouses, see below). For the period 1914-1919, French statistics don’t consider the ten

invaded départements of the north and the east of France. The estimations for the 90 departements we use were

made by Munoz-Perez and Tribalat (1984) who have adjusted the figures of the 77 departements.

201

Table 6.4. Nationalities of foreign wives and husbands, 1891-1930.

Wives

1891

1920

1925

1930

German

20,5

19,4

12,2

9,3

Belgian and Luxembourgish

42,6

33,8

28,0

23,8

British

2,0

1,4

1,5

Spanish

4,7

6,4

10,8

13,4

Italians

14,6

26,2

27,8

29,9

Polish

0,0

0,7

2,4

7,6

Russian

0,0

0,9

0,8

1,1

Swiss

9,6

6,7

8,3

7,1

Other Europeans

0,0

3,6

6,5

4,8

American

0,0

0,8

1,2

1,0

Other

6,1

0,1

0,4

All

100

Husbands

1891

1920

1925

1930

German

12,8

6,8

4,7

3,5

Belgian and Luxembourgish

40,8

37,1

22,3

18,5

British

2,1

5,8

2,2

1,8

Spanish

5,6

9,5

11,9

13,1

Italians

21,0

15,9

30,2

31,8

Polish

0,0

1,5

2,8

4,4

Russian

0,0

2,5

3,4

4,9

Swiss

11,8

8,0

10,6

8,3

Other Europeans

0,0

6,5

8,1

10,1

American

0,0

5,3

1,4

1,5

Other

5,9

1,2

2,2

All

100

Source: Mouvement de la population, 1891; 1920 ; 1925 ; 1930.

Figure 6.15. Husbands coming from the same or a different town, 1907-1931.

Source: Mouvement de la population, 1907-1931.

202

Appendix 3. Marriages with divorced or widowed (1900-1938).

Figure 6.16. Marital status of the new spouses 1900-1939.

Source: Mouvement de la population, 1900-1938.

Figure 6.17. Men and women marrying divorced or widowed, 1900-1939.

Source: Mouvement de la population, 1900-1938.

203

Appendix 4. Duration of marriages

Figure 6.18. Duration of marriages, 1900-1938.

Source : Mouvement de la population, 1900-1938 (accepted divorces only).

Vidal-Naquet, 2014.

Perrot, 1984; Rebreyend, 2008.

Fouchard, 2013.

Vidal-Naquet, 2006.

Henry, 1966.

Hill, 1949; Stolz, 1954: Campbell, 1984; Phillips, 1988; Audoin-Rouzeau, 1993.

Phillips, 1991, 188.

Studies on more recent conflicts have shown a higher risk of divorce for the veterans than for the non-veterans

(Pavalko and Eder, 1990).

Brittain, 1933; Brill and Reebe, 1955.

Pavalko and Elder, 1990, 1213–1234.

French soldiers were authorized to marry by procuration by a law of 1915 (Vidal-Naquet, 2006).

Phillips, 1988. Phillips specifies that if increased war marriages may have played a role in the post-war divorce

rate in some countries, this hypothesis doesn’t help to explain the post-war increase in countries like France or

Germany where there was no rise in marriages during the war.

Henry, 1966.

Vidal-Naquet, 2006.

Rohrbasser, 2014.

Festy, 1984; Brée, Eggerickx and Sanderson, 2017.

Rohrbasser J-M., 2014.

Henry, 1966.

Chasteland and Pressat, 1962.

Henry, 1966.

Dupâquier, 1988.

The average number of marriages per year is about 306 700 for the period 1910-1913.

204

The decline of nuptiality during the 1930s (Figure 6.1) can be explained by the arrival on the marriage market

of the small cohorts born during the war (Bardet, 1999; Sardon, 2005); but also, by the economic crisis.

Henry, 1966.

Idem.

The detail of the nationalities of the foreign spouses is only given in 1891 and between 1920 and 1931 but is

interesting to analyse (appendix 2). Logically, German spouses are fewer in 1931 (9.3% of the foreign wives and

3.5 % for the foreign husbands) than in 1891 (respectively 20.5 and 12.8) but what is surprising is that the

decrease only appears in 1925 for the wives (still 19.4% in 1920). The predominance of Belgian (more than 40%

of the spouses in 1891 and more than a third in 1920) decreases during the interwar. The Belgian immigrates are

then edged out by new immigrates who came for the reconstruction: Spanish (twice more husbands in 1930 than

in 1920), Italian (wives especially) and, above all, Polish (who are five times more in 1930 than in 1920, even

ten times when only considering the wives).

Munoz Perez and Tribalat. 1984.

Dupâquier, 1988.

In the thirties, the departure of foreigners linked to the economic crisis, the more numerous naturalizations

since the law of 1927 that facilitates them and the overall decline in the French nuptiality reduced all foreign

marriages except for the two-foreigners unions (Munoz Perez and Tribalat, 1984).

Marriages between two singles are especially low for the four last months of 1914 and the four first months of

1915. Then, from 1916, soldiers had more permissions and were therefore more likely to marry (Dupâquier,

1988) which increased a bit the number of two singles marriages.

Henry, 1966, 312.

Chasteland and Pressat. 1962.

Henry, 1966.

Sohn. 1996.

Rebreyend, 2008.

Sardon, 1996.

Mutual consent to divorce will only be re-established in 1975. To know more about separations and divorces

and the couples who disunite since the French Revolution, see Brée, forthcoming.

Ronsin, 1990.

Brée, forthcoming.

For this study, only the main applications will be used (not the counterclaims).

Fouchard, 2013.

It should be noted that there is no such peak for legal separations. The latest don’t allow remarriage so it seem

that couples who choose to divorce after the war wanted to be able to remarry.

Fouchard, 2013.

Phillips, 1988.

Fouchard, 2013.

Mollier, 1930.

We consider an average age at marriage of 29 years old for men (source: Mouvement de la population).

Héran, 2014; Vallin, 1973.

Perrot. 1998.

Schweitzer, 2002; Guillaumin, 1978.

Fauve-Chamoux, 1981; Battagliola, 1995; Perrot, M. 1998.; Tilly and Scott. 1987.

Brée, forthcoming.

Thane, in this volume.

Friedman and Percival, 1976.

Mignot, 2009.

Boigeol and Commaille, 1974; Desforges, 1947; Rowntree Carrier, 1958; Sohn, 1996.

205

11.2% in 1915; 13.8% in 191; 14.2% in 1917; 13.8% in 1918; 13.3% in 1919 (source: INSEE, Statistiques de

l’état-civil). The period 1915-1919 corresponds to the out of wedlock relationships of the war since there is a 9-

months period between the conception and the birth.

Pavalko and Elder, 1990.

For information, ever-married women that remain childless at 50 were 13-14% for the cohorts born in the

1860s and 16 to 18 % for the cohorts born in the 1880s and 1890s (Brée, 2017).

Brée, 2017.

Szreter, 2014; Cahen and Minard. 2015.

Le Naour, 2002; Benoit, 2013; Cronier, 2013.

Pavalko and Elder, 1990.

In addition to a delay of 6 months between the pronouncement of the divorce and the transcription in the civil

registers – and thus in the Movement de la population, the delay between the request and the pronouncement can

also take several months (Ledermann, 1948).

Henry,1966.

We must remember here that we can only see a little part of the impact of the First World War on couples and

families as we only analyse divorce. Legal separations are about 3300 per year during the interwar period. But

most of all, a part of actual separations may never have ended in an actual judicial separation or divorce.

Brée, forthcoming.

Gaillard, 2018.