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Napoleonic Code: Laws
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The Napoleonic Codes were a series of laws that were very favorable to the people. These laws dealt with civil law, criminal law, and commercial law, and all contributed to improving the lives of every person living in France. In addition, the codes were adopted in the countries that France occupied. The result of the incorporation of the Napoleonic Codes throughout Europe led to the enlightenment of common people. This would lead to a belief among the common people throughout Europe that they should not be subject to an absolute monarch.
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The Napoleonic Code was in three volumes, printed as tiny as a traveling sewing kit, with paper thinner than a pocket Bible. It took so long to go through them all, squinting at the tiny words and sometimes tedious legislation before getting to more interesting parts; then I had to find all the legislation that had been passed since then and go through it, to make sure nothing had changed in those particular years when the novel took place and James had lived in France. Luckily, though sadly in many instances, the biggest changes in the law only occurred in the 1970s.
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The Napoleonic Code consists of 36 laws and 2,281 articles. In a way, these statutes changed the status of women –if only to give husbands rather than fathers control over their legal status and property rights. Citoyennes (female citizens) did not even have the right to choose their own professions. Fathers had authority over any “children” under the age of 25 and could even send them to correctional institutions. A child whose father was not French did not hold French citizenship if born in France (the mother’s nationality did not matter).
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The intention behind the Napoleonic Code was to reform the French legal system in accordance with the principles of the French Revolution. Before the Code, France did not have a single set of laws. The vestiges of feudalism were abolished, and the many different legal systems used in different parts of France were replaced by a single legal code.
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Napoleonic Code was ... adopted in 1864 in Romania (with some modifications), which is still in force as of 2006 (articles 461 to 1914). Other codes with some influence in their own right were the Swiss, German and Austrian ones, but even there some influence of the French code can be felt, as the Napoleonic Code is considered the first successful codification. Thus, the civil law systems of the countries of modern continental Europe, with the exception of Russia and the Scandinavian countries have, to different degrees, been influenced by the Napoleonic Code. (The legal systems of the United Kingdom other than Scotland, as well as Ireland and the Commonwealth, are derived from the English common law rather than from Roman roots. Scots law, though also a civil law system, is uncodified; it is strongly influenced by Romano-Dutch legal thought, and after the Act of Union 1707 by English law.) The Code has thus been the most permanent legacy of Napoleon.
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The Napoleonic Code is famously referenced in Tennessee Williams's play and Elia Kazan's filmed version of A Streetcar Named Desire. The Code is cited as an excuse by Stanley Kowalski to search through his sister-in-law's things. It is ... referenced in James Clavell's "Whirlwind" (p155) as an excuse for consumption of alcohol on a Muslim (Iranian) oil rig; it being French managed and therefore subject to the "Code Napoleon". In the novel, and subsequent film, Maurice there is mention that nations with the Napoleonic code did not make homosexual relations between consenting adults in private a crime.
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