Women, family affairs, and justice: Tunisia in the 19th century

This contribution proposes an examination of the role of women within the family before the confrontation with the great changes of modernity. It focuses on the problematic of the visibility of women and on their efforts to impose their identity and renegotiate their status in spite of the weight of the normative patriarchal culture, enveloped by religious ethics. With reference to several affairs involving women deposing in court against husbands and relatives, it aims to illustrate how strategies used by women were pointing at the paradoxes of the patriarchal system. In this perspective, the court can be seen as a space of the fabric of women's identity and of gender regulation as well as a theatre of daily life, a space where private affairs go beyond their usual boundaries, a space offering Muslim women the unique occasion to impose their rights.