POPULAR CLASSES AND COHABITATION IN MID-19TH-CENTURY PARIS

This article aims to show that we do not know what we believe we do ab out the extent and meaning of recourse to cohabitation among popular c lasses in Paris in the first half of the nineteenth century. Discourse on cohabitation and illegitimacy is deconstructed, revealing that ana lyses of popular behavior are based on problematic data and flawed met hods. If cohabitation was widespread, this was because of the legal an d economic constraints imposed on workers, particularly migrants, rath er than a symptom of cultural breakdown or the emergence of a counterc ulture. The article interrogates serial data, and especially marriage records, as well as the archives of charity organizations, to argue th at Parisian workers were anxious to marry, to marry in church, and to marry respectably. It suggests that we should dedramatize cohabitation and recognize that popular-class attitudes and behavior were more con formist and traditional than we have been led to think.