ABSTRACT
Inequalities in the Pyrenees during the Ancien Régime were the result of particular customs which aimed at maintaining the family house and the traditions of the house system intact. These fifteenth and sixteenth-century customs – called fors – established rules protecting the family house, the household and its lineage. The rules reflected cultural values that served the interests of the house rather than the individuals within it. 1 The idea was that the house and dependencies remained unchanged to be transmitted to one child from one generation to the next. The customs thus regulated family life and defined the rights and obligations of each member of the household. The inequalities which emerged out of this system mostly related to the order of birth rather than to gender. Indeed, Pyrenean customs imposed single inheritance rules which favoured the first-born child and excluded other male or female children (Zink 1993). While one or perhaps two of the younger children received a dowry to marry into a propertied family of similar socio-economic status, the others were forced into permanent celibacy and their only compensation was to receive care and lodgings in the family house. Exclusion was not only the lot of women, neither was that of celibacy. Yet in most mountain regions – both the Pyrenees and the Alps – women were more often excluded from the family inheritance and from becoming head of the household. 2
