Married Women and the Law
eBook - ePub

Married Women and the Law

Coverture in England and the Common Law World

  1. 328 pages
  2. English
  3. ePUB (mobile friendly)
  4. Available on iOS & Android
eBook - ePub

Married Women and the Law

Coverture in England and the Common Law World

About this book

Explaining the curious legal doctrine of "coverture," William Blackstone famously declared that "by marriage, husband and wife are one person at law." This "covering" of a wife's legal identity by her husband meant that the greatest subordination of women to men developed within marriage. In England and its colonies, generations of judges, legislators, and husbands invoked coverture to limit married women's rights and property, but there was no monolithic concept of coverture and their justifications shifted to fit changing times: Were husband and wife lord and subject? Master and servant? Guardian and ward? Or one person at law? The essays in Married Women and the Law offer new insights into the legal effects of marriage for women from medieval to modern times. Focusing on the years prior to the passage of the Divorce Acts and Married Women's Property Acts in the late nineteenth century, contributors examine a variety of jurisdictions in the common law world, from civil courts to ecclesiastical and criminal courts. By bringing together studies of several common law jurisdictions over a span of centuries, they show how similar legal rules persisted and developed in different environments. This volume reveals not only legal changes and the women who creatively used or subverted coverture, but also astonishing continuities. Accessibly written and coherently presented, Married Women and the Law is an important look at the persistence of one of the longest lived ideas in British legal history. Contributors include Sara M. Butler (Loyola), Marisha Caswell (Queen's), Mary Beth Combs (Fordham), Angela Fernandez (Toronto), Margaret Hunt (Amherst), Kim Kippen (Toronto), Natasha Korda (Wesleyan), Lindsay Moore (Boston), Barbara J. Todd (Toronto), and Danaya C. Wright (Florida).

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Yes, you can access Married Women and the Law by Tim Stretton,K.J. Kesselring,Krista J. Kesselring in PDF and/or ePUB format, as well as other popular books in Law & Legal History. We have over one million books available in our catalogue for you to explore.

Information

Publisher
McGill-Queen's University Press
Year
2013
eBook ISBN
9780773590144
Topic
Law
Subtopic
Legal History
Index
Law

Table of contents

  1. Cover
  2. Half title
  3. Title
  4. Copyright
  5. Contents
  6. Figures and Tables
  7. Preface
  8. : 1 : Introduction: Coverture and Continuity
  9. : 2 : Discourse on the Nature of Coverture in the Later Medieval Courtroom
  10. : 3 : Coverture and Its Discontents: Legal Fictions on and off the Early Modern English Stage
  11. : 4 : Poor Law, Coverture, and Maintaining Relations in King’s Bench, 1601–1834
  12. : 5 : Coverture and the Criminal Law in England, 1640–1760
  13. : 6 : Women and Property Litigation in Seventeenth-Century England and North America
  14. : 7 : The Sailor’s Wife, War Finance, and Coverture in Late Seventeenth-Century London
  15. : 8 : Written in Her Heart: Married Women’s Separate Allegiance in English Law
  16. : 9 : Tapping Reeve, Nathan Dane, and James Kent: Three Fading Federalists on Marital Unity
  17. : 10 : “Concealing Him from Creditors”: How Couples Contributed to the Passage of the 1870 Married Women’s Property Act
  18. : 11 : Coverture and Women’s Agency: Informal Modes of Resistance to Legal Patriarchy
  19. Conclusion
  20. Contributors
  21. Index