Marriages by the Petites Affiches”: Advertising Love, Marital Choice, and Commercial Matchmaking in Napoléon's Paris
Andrea Mansker
French Historical Studies (2018) 41 (1): 1-31

Abstract

Founder of the most widely known matrimonial agency in postrevolutionary France, Claude Villiaume proved his talents as an enterprising ad man who exploited the uniquely commercial format of the Parisian Petites affiches to establish a virtual monopoly on the business under the Empire. Offering to serve as a conduit for men and women who pursued love anonymously in the Petites affiches, he skillfully marketed his “marriages by the classifieds” to lonely, uprooted individuals throughout imperial France. Villiaume pitched his unions as part of a new commercial and social world of movement in Paris. He sought to facilitate the circulation of capital and people by forging family alliances and love matches across multiple social and geographic borders. By linking marital choice and courtship to the vagaries of consumer capitalism, the agent transformed marriage into a form of commercial exchange associated with the new urban values of abundance, pleasure, and social mobility.

https://read.dukeupress.edu/french-historical-studies/article-abstract/41/1/1/133064