On Marriage

Abstract

Abstract This chapter explores women moralists’ views on the institution of marriage, a noncanonical topic in the moralist tradition. By the early eighteenth century, a new emphasis on equality and natural rights, as well as a valorization of affectivity and personal happiness, brought the legal and moral foundations of marriage increasingly into question. Women philosophers such as Gabrielle Suchon and Louise Dupin critique marriage from legal and philosophical perspectives; moralists offer different approaches. In an implicit critique, Madeleine de Puisieux and Anne-Thérèse de Lambert reveal the inherent inequality in the institution. Marie de Verzure and Marie-Geneviève-Charlotte Thiroux d’Arconville are explicit in their critique. Suzanne Necker, however, offers a strong defense of marriage in her arguments against the 1792 French law permitting divorce. The chapter concludes by setting the moralist critique of marriage in the larger context of women philosophers’ views on liberty.