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Audiobook edition · 3 h 51 minPaperback · 6 × 9 in · printing soonHardcover · 6 × 9 in · printing soonAbout this book
What does freedom mean inside a marriage when the law gives one partner power over the other?
In Adam, Eve and Brid'oison, Paul Margueritte explores the bond between men and women in a France divided over marriage. Husbands hold wide legal power over wives. Divorce is possible again, but its terms remain contested. Against this background, the novel asks what fairness can mean when the rules favour one side.
The title brings Adam and Eve together with Brid'oison, Beaumarchais's slow-witted judge. The first couple suggests an old question: what do men and women owe each other? The judge brings stiff, foolish authority into view. Margueritte places private life within the reach of courts, families and churches, where personal freedom meets the weight of social rules.
What you’ll discover
- Marriage under unequal laws Consider what fairness demands when husbands and wives do not hold equal legal power.
- Freedom within a bond Explore the tension between life together and the right to shape your own life.
- Three names with meaning Discover how the title joins the first couple with a figure of foolish authority.
- Institutions close to home See how courts, families and churches press upon the lives of individuals.
- Rights beyond private life Ask whether social freedom can take root without changes to the law.
Who will love it
Readers who enjoy social history, French law and letters, the story of feminism, and sharp, argumentative essays about marriage, motherhood and the vote in the shadow of the First World War.
What’s inside
The key ideas, in the 15-minute summary
- The war has freed women for good
- Ignorance and virginity are harmful myths
- Every child deserves a name and a father
- Marriage must rest on love, not money
- Women should vote and enter public life
- The Civil Code keeps wives in subjection
- Divorce should be freer, faster and fairer
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Adam, Eva und Brid'oison
Margueritte argues the war has freed French women, and that law and marriage customs must follow.
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In short
Imagine a country where women run the farms, factories and offices because the men are at the front. That is France in the last years of the First World War, and Paul Margueritte, a novelist who died in 1918, sees it as a turning point.
From the 15-minute summary · Key idea 1
The war has freed women for good
Margueritte opens with a bold claim. The war, he says, has done what feminist congresses could not. Hundreds of thousands of young women and wives, freed from the guardianship of absent men, now run fields, factories, hospitals, shops and government offices.
He argues that this record cannot be undone. Women who have proved they can manage should vote tomorrow and sit as representatives the day after. Contact with pain in field hospitals has also torn away what he calls the white cloud around young girls.
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What is Adam, Eve and Brid'oison about?
It is a set of essays by Paul Margueritte, written during the First World War, arguing for women's rights. It covers sex education, the dowry, unmarried mothers, the vote, marriage law, motherhood and divorce reform in France.
What does the title Adam, Eve and Brid'oison mean?
Adam and Eve stand for natural human instinct and feeling.
When was the book written and why?
Margueritte wrote it near the end of the First World War, in 1918, the year he died. He believed the war had freed women from old dependence, and he wanted law and custom to catch up.
The author
Paul Margueritte
1860–1918 · French novelist
Paul Margueritte was a French writer who lived from 1860 to 1918. He was born in Laghouat, Algeria, and died in Hossegor, France. He wrote novels and short stories in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. He also wrote books with his younger brother, Victor Margueritte.
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