ABSTRACT
The ‘divorcaires’ were to achieve success of a sort with the Naquet Law on Divorce of 27 July 1884. It was legislation which rejected the 1792 clause on incompatibility, restored the 1803 Civil Code but shorn of its measure for divorce by mutual consent, and saddled France with a divorce law based on the idea of matrimonial fault. A return to the revolutionary legislation on divorce was the only true solution. Amidst such rhetoric, any attempt to liberalize sexual morality, for example, by reintroducing the campaign to restore divorce, was bound to be stifled. A context which makes all the more remarkable such greater enlightenment as did occur on the issues of divorce and homosexuality. Ready divorce would release passion and caprice and marriage would become but ‘a sort of adventure entered into without thinking’. The chapter examines the contents of the new Act and the procedures for divorce.
