In French, the concept of dependency underlies the semantic distribution of some basic lexical items: the female is strictly defined in her relation of dependency to the male, as a daughter or as a spouse.

Let’s first consider two pairs of English nouns and their French equivalents:

1. English: ‘son’ ↔ ‘daughter’ — French: ‘fils’ ↔ ‘fille’
2. English: ‘boy’ ↔ ‘girl’ — French: ‘garçon’ ↔ ‘fille’

In English, in the same manner as a ‘son’ is also identified as a ‘boy’, a ‘daughter’ is also identified as a ‘girl’. But, in French, while a ‘fils’ is also identified as a ‘garçon’, a daughter remains a daughter, a ‘fille’ remains a ‘fille’, identified by her filiation. While the ‘garçon’ is an autonomous individual, the ‘fille’ remains identified in terms of dependency—in this case, dependency to her father, who will traditionally, on her wedding day, take her to the altar in order to give her away (and she will traditionally, on that occasion, give away her own ‘patronyme’—cf., below, the origin of the noun ‘patronyme’).

There is, however, in French, a feminine form of ‘garçon’ (or, more accurately, of ‘gars’, translating as ‘bloke’), which is ‘garce’, but it is extremely derogatory since it translates as ‘slut’: it seems that, if a ‘fille’ dare act as an autonomous individual, her way of life is seen as dissolute and licentious.

The French equivalent of ‘tomboy’ also alludes to female inferiority since it is ‘garçon manqué’, literally ‘failed boy’…

Let’s now consider two more pairs of English nouns and their French equivalents:

1. English: ‘man’ ↔ ‘woman’ — French: ‘homme’ ↔ ‘femme’
2. English: ‘husband’ ↔ ‘wife’ — French: ‘mari’ ↔ ‘femme’

In English, in the same manner as the ‘man’ becomes a ‘husband’, the ‘woman’ becomes a ‘wife’. But, in French, while the ‘homme’ becomes a ‘mari’ (thus acquiring a social status), the ‘femme’ remains a ‘femme’, a female, identified in terms of biological functions: she is viewed as a means for her husband of obtaining sexual gratification, and as the procreator of his children.

The French equivalents of the English noun ‘spouse’ are ‘époux’ (masculine) and ‘épouse’ (feminine)—but they are rarely used, and only in formal contexts.

In addition, whenever a married woman must prove her identity in France, she has to provide her ‘nom de jeune fille’ (her maiden name—cf. the English use of the French ‘née’, i.e., ‘born as’). Not only does this take us back to the inferiority of ‘fille’, a sign of female subjection, but this also shows that the female has to submit to the male whom she marries since she must traditionally adopt his ‘patronyme’—or would it be more accurate to say that the male adopts the female? The noun ‘patronyme’ itself refers to male domination since it is derived from Greek ‘πατρώνυμος’, literally ‘named from the father’.

In conclusion, through the French language, the female is considered as depending on the male for her own identity and existence, and, as such, inferior in the social scale of value.

Cf. also:
– ‘the second sex’: meaning and origin
– Sex, Dependency and Language, by Bernard Saint-Jacques, published in La Linguistique (Paris: Presses Universitaires de France), Vol. 9, Fasc. 1 (1973)

Notes:

1 The French nouns ‘fils’ and ‘fille’ are derived, respectively, from the Latin nouns ‘fīlĭus’ (son) and ‘fīlĭa’ (daughter).—Cf. English words such as ‘filiation’, ‘filial’ and ‘affiliated’.

2 In Old French, the word ‘garçon’ was the objective-case form of ‘gars’, the subjective-case form whose feminine was ‘garce’. (The objective case is a case of nouns and pronouns serving as the object of a transitive verb or of a preposition. The subjective case is a case of nouns and pronouns used for the subject of a verb.)

The nouns ‘garçon’, ‘gars’ and ‘garce’ are from an unattested Germanic ‘*wrakkjo’, meaning ‘vagabond’, and are related to the English words ‘wretch’ and ‘wreak’. In Old French, there were two categories of nouns referring to a young man. One category emphasised youngness, with ‘damoiseau’ (a young man of gentle birth, not yet made a knight) and ‘bachelier’ (a young knight who followed the banner of another knight—the original sense of English ‘bachelor’). The other category emphasised the social background, with ‘valet’ for a noble child, and ‘garçon’ for a child of inferior social status. The noun ‘garçon’ was often used as a term of abuse, ‘garce’ was already used in its current derogatory sense of ‘slut’, and ‘gars’ in its current familiar sense of ‘bloke’.