ch as we still find among the men in Southern Italy, in
Spain, and in the Orient. His sisters and Josephine Beauharnais, the
creole, could not give him a more just opinion of women. His fierce hatred
for Madame de Stael indicates his attitude toward the woman's rights
representatives. The great Napoleon did not like intellectual women.

The Code Napoleon places the wife completely under the guardianship of
the husband. Without him she can undertake no legal transaction. The
property law requires joint property holding, excepting real estate (but
most of the women are neither landowners nor owners of houses). The
married woman has had independent control of her earnings and savings only
since the enactment of the law of July 13, 1907. Only the husband has
legal authority over the children. Such a legal status of woman is found
in other codes. But the following provisions are peculiar to the Code
Napoleon: If a husband kills his wife for committing adultery, the murder
is "excusable." An illicit mother cannot file a paternity suit. In
practice, however, the courts in a roundabout way give the illicit mother
an opportunity to file an action for damages.

No other code, above all no other Germanic or Slavic code,[81] has been
disgraced by such paragraphs. In the first of the designated paragraphs we
hear the Corsican, a cousin of the Moor of Venice; in the second we hear
the military emperor, and general of an unbridled, undisciplined troop of
soldiers. No one will be astonished to learn that this same lawgiver in
1801 supplemented the Code with a despotic state regulation of
prostitution. What became of the woman's rights movement during this
arbitrary military regime? Full of fear and anxiety, the woman's rights
advocates concealed their views. The Restoration was scarcely a better
time for advocating woman's rights. The philosopher of the epoch, de
Bonald, spoke very pompously against the equality of the sexes, "Man and
woman are not and never will be equal." It was not until the July
Revolution of 1830 and the February Revolution of 1848 that the question
of woman's rights could gain a favorable hearing. The Saint Simonians, the
Fourierists, and George Sand preached the rights of man and the rights of
woman. During the February Revolution the women were found, just as in
1789, in the front ranks of the Socialists. The French woman's rights
movement is closely connected with both political movements. Every time a
sacrifi