ABSTRACT
Encompassing the 1870s within the historical phase cuts across the neat political dividing line of 1871 and the origins of the Third Republic, but clearly the period of ‘moral order’ in the 1870s belongs to Victorianism. If the focus is on the debate on divorce and homosexuality, then it is prefaced by some brief sketch of Victorian attitudes in France to the family and to marriage, of the relevant sections of the Civil Code, of prostitution in France, and of attitudes towards sexuality. In France the omission of any reference to homosexuality in private in the Civil Code has led to the wrong conclusion that post-revolutionary France tolerated homosexuality. On balance, a study of the debate in Victorian France on divorce and homosexuality suggests that the consequences of the repressive sexual morality were frequent adulteries and covert homosexual promiscuity; guilt was the order of the day.
