Feminism, Marriage, and the Law in Victorian England, 1850-1895

Feminism, Marriage, and the Law in Victorian England, 1850-1895 PDF Author: Mary Lyndon Shanley
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691215987
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Bridging the fields of political theory and history, this comprehensive study of Victorian reforms in marriage law reshapes our understanding of the feminist movement of that period. As Mary Shanley shows, Victorian feminists argued that justice for women would not follow from public rights alone, but required a fundamental transformation of the marriage relationship.

Feminism, Marriage, and the Law in Victorian England, 1850-1895

Feminism, Marriage, and the Law in Victorian England, 1850-1895 PDF Author: Mary Lyndon Shanley
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691215987
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Bridging the fields of political theory and history, this comprehensive study of Victorian reforms in marriage law reshapes our understanding of the feminist movement of that period. As Mary Shanley shows, Victorian feminists argued that justice for women would not follow from public rights alone, but required a fundamental transformation of the marriage relationship.

Religion and Marriage Law

Religion and Marriage Law PDF Author: Russell Sandberg
Publisher: Policy Press
ISBN: 1529212804
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 164

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Book Description
Successive governments have made progressive, but ad hoc reforms to marriage law in Britain. This book provides the first accessible guide to how contemporary marriage law interacts with religion. It reveals the need for the consolidation, modernisation and reform of marriage law and sets out proposals for transformation.

Married Women and the Law

Married Women and the Law PDF Author: Tim Stretton
Publisher: McGill-Queen's Press - MQUP
ISBN: 0773590145
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 347

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Book Description
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).

Uncertain Unions

Uncertain Unions PDF Author: Lawrence Stone
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780198202530
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 308

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Book Description
In the highly acclaimed Road to Divorce, the first of a three-volume history of marriage in early modern England, renowned historian Lawrence Stone explored the different ways in which marriage could take place, and analysed the confusion and uncertainty surrounding the legality of the institution in its various forms before the Marriage Act of 1753. Now, in Uncertain Unions, Stone presents a multitude of case-studies showing just how these courting and marrying couples were able to maneuver around the ambiguities of marriage law in England, and the many reasons they did so. Based on a massive archive of court cases that illustrate the extraordinary variety of legal, quasi-legal, and illegal ways of making a marriage, here are stories of forced marriages, clandestine marriages, prenuptial pregnancies, unwise courtship, and other situations in which people often became entangled in a web of moral and legal contradiction that could, and often did, lead to personal catastrophe. Stone shows how, as a result of glaring defects in the laws of marriage, very large numbers of people in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries could never be quite sure whether they were married or not. For instance, in Elmes v. Elmes, we see a wife by ecclesiastical marriage, and a wife by clandestine marriage fight over a man and his inheritance--in this case, each woman could rightfully claim legitimacy as Mr. Elmes's wife. Other cases reveal how a parish easily pinned the blame of fatherhood onto an innocent man and thus the financial burden of a bastard child onto another parish, and how a married man threw the blame for a bastard child onto a fellow townsman, among many other intriguing schemes. Lawrence Stone illuminates the ways in which, during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, demands by individuals for love and affection were starting to take precedence over family interests in the search for a spouse. The studies he has drawn on for Uncertain Unions enable us to see this moral transition played out in the lives of the men and women within these pages. Revealing various types of marriages, and the different levels of sexual liaisons, Uncertain Unions is vivid human history, from the leading historian on family life. Praise for Road to Divorce: A New York Times Notable Book of the Year, 1990: "There are many...gems to be found in this volume...from the current spectacular levels of illegitimacy to the increased economic dependence of women...Road to Divorce offers a sure-footed and fascinating commentary."--New York Times Book Review "His energy and his achievement are stupendous....Stone's book...breathes new life into an old subject by advancing fresh hypotheses and much fascinating new material."--The New York Review of Books

Family and Succession Law in England and Wales

Family and Succession Law in England and Wales PDF Author: Rebecca Probert
Publisher: Kluwer Law International B.V.
ISBN: 9403547278
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 401

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Book Description
Derived from the renowned multi-volume International Encyclopaedia of Laws, this concise exposition and analysis of the essential elements of law with regard to family relations, marital property, and succession to estates in England and Wales covers the legal rules and customs pertaining to the intertwined civic status of persons, the family, and property. After an informative general introduction, the book proceeds to an in-depth discussion of the sources and instruments of family and succession law, the authorities that adjudicate and administer the laws, and issues surrounding the person as a legal entity and the legal disposition of property among family members. Such matters as nationality, domicile, and residence; marriage, divorce, and cohabitation; adoption and guardianship; succession and inter vivos arrangements; and the acquisition and administration of estates are all treated to a degree of depth that will prove useful in nearly any situation likely to arise in legal practice. The book is primarily designed to assist lawyers who find themselves having to apply rules of international private law or otherwise handling cases connected with England and Wales. It will also be of great value to students and practitioners as a quick guide and easy-to-use practical resource in the field, and especially to academicians and researchers engaged in comparative studies by providing the necessary, basic material of family and succession law.

Marriage in Medieval England

Marriage in Medieval England PDF Author: Conor McCarthy
Publisher: Boydell Press
ISBN: 9781843831020
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
A survey of attitudes to marriage as represented in medieval legal and literary texts.

Marriage, a History

Marriage, a History PDF Author: Stephanie Coontz
Publisher: Viking Adult
ISBN:
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
Just when the clamor over "traditional" marriage couldn't get any louder, along comes this groundbreaking book to ask, "What tradition?" In Marriage, a History, historian and marriage expert Stephanie Coontz takes readers from the marital intrigues of ancient Babylon to the torments of Victorian lovers to demonstrate how recent the idea of marrying for love is - and how absurd it would have seemed to most of our ancestors. It was when marriage moved into the emotional sphere in the nineteenth century, she argues, that it suffered as an institution just as it began to thrive as a personal relationship. This enlightening and hugely entertaining book brings intelligence, perspective, and wit to today's marital debate.

Women and Marriage in Nineteenth-Century England

Women and Marriage in Nineteenth-Century England PDF Author: Mrs Joan Perkin
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1134985630
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 303

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Book Description
The 'bonds of matrimony' describes with cruel precision the social and political status of married women in the nineteenth century. Women of all classes had only the most limited rights of possession in their own bodies and property yet, as this remarkable book shows, women of all classes found room to manoeuvre within the narrow limits imposed on them. Upper-class women frequently circumvented the onerous limitations of the law, while middle-class women sought through reform to change their legal status. For working-class women, such legal changes were irrelevant, but they too found ways to ameliorate their position. Joan Perkin demonstrates clearly in this outstanding book, full of human insights, that women were not content to remain inferior or subservient to men.

Cohabitation and Religious Marriage

Cohabitation and Religious Marriage PDF Author: Akhtar, Rajnaara
Publisher: Policy Press
ISBN: 1529210852
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 188

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Book Description
Cohabiting couples and those entering religious-only marriages all too often end up with inadequate legal protection when the relationship ends. Yet, despite this shared experience, the linkages and overlaps between these two groups have largely been ignored in the legal literature. Based on wide-ranging empirical studies, this timely book brings together scholars working in both areas to explore the complexities of the law, the different ways in which individuals experience and navigate the existing legal framework and the potential solutions for reform. Illuminating pressing implications for social policy, this is an invaluable resource for policy makers, practitioners, researchers and students of family law.

Marriage Law and Practice in the Long Eighteenth Century

Marriage Law and Practice in the Long Eighteenth Century PDF Author: Rebecca Probert
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139479768
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages :

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Book Description
This book uses a wide range of primary sources - legal, literary and demographic - to provide a radical reassessment of eighteenth-century marriage. It disproves the widespread assumption that couples married simply by exchanging consent, demonstrating that such exchanges were regarded merely as contracts to marry and that marriage in church was almost universal outside London. It shows how the Clandestine Marriages Act of 1753 was primarily intended to prevent clergymen operating out of London's Fleet prison from conducting marriages, and that it was successful in so doing. It also refutes the idea that the 1753 Act was harsh or strictly interpreted, illustrating the courts' pragmatic approach. Finally, it establishes that only a few non-Anglicans married according to their own rites before the Act; while afterwards most - save the exempted Quakers and Jews - similarly married in church. In short, eighteenth-century couples complied with whatever the law required for a valid marriage.