Everyday Life in Sixteenth Century France

The lifestyle in France, just like in all other European countries, has changed dramatically since the early 1700’s. People went from farmers to factory owners to all of the professions of today’s society. The main reason for the great changes in lifestyle that occurred in France was the Industrial Revolution, which urbanized most of France. But the Industrial Revolution was not the only thing that changed France. The monarchy fell the church changed, and the role people had in their jobs and family life change drastically.

In the sixteenth century France was mainly a farming country. People lived in small communities and rarely died in a town other than where they were born (Gildea 42). Family life was quit simple, men married when they inherited land from their fathers or if a women’s family had land to give him. Women were around the ages of twenty-six to twenty seven when they married, men where a bit older. Family’s usually lived all together, grandparents, cousin; all under one roof. A woman had about six kids and it was understood that about half of the children would die in the first three years of life (Davis 65). Life was not sanitary and there was really no type of real medicines. A typical day consisted of getting up when the sun rose and going to work in the fields and everyone helped. Women and their children worked just as long as all the men did. When the sun went down it was time to go back to the house and eat a meal of bread, beer, and sometimes vegetables. Meat was eaten on very rare occasions, maybe only twice a year. Bedtime was soon after the sun went down. This was the routine everyday. All of the villages had a church, which kept precise records of all births and deaths. Most of the churches were Cathol...

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... the government realized they needed to do something about cleaning the cities up because it was obviously making people ill. Sewage systems were put in, along with roads coming in and out of the big cities.

Life changed greatly since the early 1700’s. People no longer stayed in the villages where they were born, people moved and traveled, discoveries were made about our world and the people living in it, the monarchy fell apart and changed the lives of the French forever. The sixteenth century in France was a time of change and development for all that lived there.

Bibliography

- Davis, Natalie. Society and Culture in Early Modern France. Stanford University

Press. Stanford, California 1975.

- Gildea, Robert. The Past in French History. Yale University Press. London 1994.

- Turner, Frank M. The Western Heritage. Prentice Hall, New Jersey 1998.