During the 19th century French insurance companies invested in a pedagogical enterprise devoted to making life insurance understandable to everyone. A number of little pamphlets, smart stories and instructive novels were written and published by writers, artists and journalists, as well as by professionals of the insurance world, to teach and explain the forms and benefits of this kind of insurance. In fact, as well as being a new insurance product, life insurance was also a new concept. For sure, these contributions testified of the opening of the secrets of the law to the citizens. At the same time, they proved the instauration of new economic balances in a changing society.