Arts and humanities
Thursday, April 3, 2025 - 12:30 p.m.
Interview with Aïcha LIMBADA, PhD in contemporary history, who will present her book "La nuit de noces. Une histoire de l'intimité conjugale" (TheWedding Night: A History of Marital Intimacy)
The wedding night was both a commonplace and unique event for women and men in 19th- and early 20th-century France: although the ritual was imposed on almost everyone, it was a decisive personal experience for each individual. The norm required newlyweds to wait until the first night after the ceremony to consummate their union, but also not to delay the moment any longer. Although these first few hours of married life took place behind closed doors and propriety dictated that they be kept secret, powerful family, religious, and social expectations weighed heavily on their smooth running.
To reveal the imagination and realities of the wedding night, this book draws on surprising sources and exceptional archives. Legal proceedings initiated by couples wishing to separate provide access to the testimonies of the spouses themselves: their accounts of the words exchanged, the gestures made, and the emotions felt offer unique insight into nuptial practices, which are usually kept secret, and into the ignorance in which young girls are kept until their wedding night. The "legal rape" denounced by some adds historical depth to current reflections on consent.
Aïcha Limbada shows that the wedding night is experienced by spouses as a real ordeal, during which women must prove their virginity and men their virility, but that it is also viewed by thinkers and doctors as a major health and social problem. Its success determines the couple's happiness and the perpetuation of society, whose order is based on male domination, which female initiation helps to establish.
