Between dishonor and death: infanticides in the causes célèbres of eighteenth-century France

Abstract

Sentimental reconstructions of motherhood in legal cases, and editorial representations of those legal cases, contributed to a decrease in the number of women convicted of infanticide in late eighteenth-century France. Couched in the language of natural law, this European-wide phenomenon suggests the degree to which infanticide trials enabled the articulation of a temporary insanity as women benefited from the application of Enlightenment ideas to jurisprudence.The day will undoubtedly come ... when the cry of the nation's enlightened men will be raised up against the opinion which seems to place a girl between dishonor and death, and bring this important issue before the attention of the legislator.A woman has made a mistake: she counted on the faith of a man who should legitimize a premature engagement and protect her from the suspicion that she is concealing a pregnancy: how many such monsters, after have sacrificed victims to their passion, finish by betraying them? [1] In the mid-eighteenth century, Lawyer Robin defended his client against charges of infanticide by castigating both the man who wronged her in the first place and the society which forced a victimized woman to face dishonor or death, to bear the shame of an illegitimate child or the guilt of causing her infant to die. In this article, I offer a close reading of popularized accounts of infanticide in Les Causes célèbres, curieuses et intéressantes de toutes les cours souveraines du Royaume avec les jugements qui les ont décidées, edited by Nicolas Toussaint le Moyne des Essarts and published in Paris between 1773 and 1789. As representations, these trials shed light on the evolution of the crime of passion defense in the context of eighteenth-