Bourgeois Women in Belle Epoque France: Marriage and Divorce Yuko MATSUDA In Belle Epoque France, the era from around 1890 to the eve of WWI, the indexes of social distinction between the bourgeoisie and the working class were their class consciousness, life style, taste, and especially distinctive roles of sex. In this paper, I try to reveal part of the life style and the consciousness of bourgeois women, focusing on their marriage. I use Femina and L'Illustration, periodicals for the upper middle class, as sources. In general, there was almost no other ways of living for bourgeois ladies than marriage in 19th century France. It was very hard to live as a single woman. Since the most important factor of marriage was the financial benefit for the family, love and happiness were often sacrificed. But the legislation for divorce in 1884 changed the meaning of marriage. Republicans came to consider that marriage had to be a union of two individual people by love. Some male republicans argued for “Union-Libre” or “Polygamy”, but women did not give up the marriage system, because they did not want a collapse of the bourgeois society. Bourgeois women, who had already been well educated, sought to live as individuals within the marriage system. In other words, they chose “ The happy compromise between tradition and emancipation, individualism and subjection” as Helene Miropolsky, a young woman lawyer, said.