ABSTRACT
Women, while demanding and fighting for more equality in the public sphere, are, despite the fact that by 1985 one-third of American households were headed by a woman, seeing a move towards a repressive return of the old myth of “a woman’s place is in the home.” The Civil Code, a relic of the Napoleonic code, stipulated the total legal incapacity of a married woman, who not only carried her husband’s name but received his nationality as well. Prejudices against hiring women still exist, and certain employers, according to the head-hunter Isabelle Levielle, “systematically refuse to hire a woman for a position which requires a firm hand or authority.” The social mythology of woman as wife and mother which previously structured women’s fiction has given way to a stronger female image which not only challenges the myth of female weakness but also denies the too familiar woman-as-victim syndrome.
