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.

Feminism, Marriage, and the Law in Victorian England

Feminism, Marriage, and the Law in Victorian England PDF Author: Mary Lyndon Shanley
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691024871
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.

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).

Married Women and Property Law in Victorian Ontario

Married Women and Property Law in Victorian Ontario PDF Author: Anne Lorene Chambers
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 9780802078391
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 1388

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Book Description
A meticulously researched and revisionist study of the nineteenth-century Ontario's Married Women's Property Acts. They were important landmarks in the legal emancipation of women.

Wives & Property

Wives & Property PDF Author: Lee Holcombe
Publisher: University of Toronto Press
ISBN: 1487590180
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 490

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Book Description
In the 1870s Millicent Garrett Fawcett had her purse snatched by a young thief in London. When he appeared in court to testify, she heard the young man charged with 'stealing from the person of Millicent Fawcett a purse containing £1 18s 6d the property of Henry Fawcett.' Long after the episode she recalled: 'I felt as if I had been charged with theft myself.' The English common law which deprived married women of the right to own and control property had far-reaching consequences for the status of women not only in other areas of law and in family life but also in education, and employment, and public life. To win reform of the married women's property law, feminism as an organized movement appeared in the 1850s, and the final success of the campaigns for reform in 1882 was one of the greatest achievements of the Victorian women's movement. Dr Holcombe explores the story of the reform campaign in the context of its time, giving particular attention to the many important men and women who worked for reform and to the debates on the subject which contributed greatly to the formulation of a philosophy of feminism.

Fertility, Class and Gender in Britain, 1860-1940

Fertility, Class and Gender in Britain, 1860-1940 PDF Author: Simon Szreter
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521528689
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 734

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Book Description
This book offers an original interpretation of the history of falling fertilities in Britain between 1860 and 1940. It integrates the approaches of the social sciences and of demographic, feminist, and labour history with intellectual, social, and political history. It exposes the conceptual and statistical inadequacies of the orthodox picture of a national, unitary class-differential fertility decline, and presents an entirely new analysis of the famous 1911 fertility census of England and Wales. Surprising and important findings emerge concerning the principal methods of birth control: births were spaced from early on in marriage; and sexual abstinence by married couples was a far more significant practice than previously imagined. The author presents a new general approach to the study of fertility change, raising central issues concerning the relationship between history and social science.

Between Women

Between Women PDF Author: Sharon Marcus
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400830850
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 369

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Book Description
Women in Victorian England wore jewelry made from each other's hair and wrote poems celebrating decades of friendship. They pored over magazines that described the dangerous pleasures of corporal punishment. A few had sexual relationships with each other, exchanged rings and vows, willed each other property, and lived together in long-term partnerships described as marriages. But, as Sharon Marcus shows, these women were not seen as gender outlaws. Their desires were fanned by consumer culture, and their friendships and unions were accepted and even encouraged by family, society, and church. Far from being sexless angels defined only by male desires, Victorian women openly enjoyed looking at and even dominating other women. Their friendships helped realize the ideal of companionate love between men and women celebrated by novels, and their unions influenced politicians and social thinkers to reform marriage law. Through a close examination of literature, memoirs, letters, domestic magazines, and political debates, Marcus reveals how relationships between women were a crucial component of femininity. Deeply researched, powerfully argued, and filled with original readings of familiar and surprising sources, Between Women overturns everything we thought we knew about Victorian women and the history of marriage and family life. It offers a new paradigm for theorizing gender and sexuality--not just in the Victorian period, but in our own.

Feminist Interpretations and Political Theory

Feminist Interpretations and Political Theory PDF Author: Carole Pateman
Publisher: Penn State Press
ISBN: 9780271007427
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
This volume brings together exciting and provocative new feminist readings of famous classic and contemporary texts from Plato to Habermas. The collection also includes examinations of the writings of Mary Wollstonecraft and Simone de Beauvoir that are usually excluded from the works conventionally held to comprise &"Western political thought.&" The essays raise fundamentally important questions about the significance of sexual difference in the great works of political theory and draw attention to neglected arguments and silences in the texts. No single feminist view of either the texts or the theoretical way forward informs these essays. A wide diversity of feminist approaches and theoretical frameworks are represented, forming a rich variety of interpretations and argument about such questions as the patriarchal construction of central political categories, the relation between public and private life, and the problem of equality and difference, including differences among women. This refreshing and stimulating collection will be indispensable for students of political thought and offers all those interested in the connection between the classic writings and current political discussions as accessible introduction to feminist argument.

Feminism, Marriage and the Law in Victorian England, 1850-95

Feminism, Marriage and the Law in Victorian England, 1850-95 PDF Author: Mary Lyndon Shanley
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
ISBN: 9781350189072
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 220

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Book Description
“Important both for political theorists and for women's studies. She explores with great care and thoroughness the connections between nineteenth century feminist argument and activism on the one hand, and familiar liberal principles of justice and equality on the other” - Nannerl 0. Keohane, Wellesley College Traditional studies of the women's movement in Victorian England focused on the battle for suffrage and other public rights. In this new study, however, Mary Lyndon Shanlev explores how Victorian women campaigned to reform the laws which related to marriage and the married state. Arguing that without a fundamental transformation of the marriage relationship there would be no justice for women, they fought a series of campaigns to change laws governing divorce, married women's property, infanticide, protective labour legislation, child custody, wife abuse, marital rape and the “restitution of conjugal rights”. Women involved in these campaigns exposed the connection between the privileged position of men in both public and private life and the reluctance of Parliament to enact the reforms women sought. In a series of case studies Shanley explores the demands of the reformers, and the response of Parliament. In an Epilogue, Shanley warns of the dangers to liberal feminism in relying exclusively on equal rights in the law as a formula for change.

The Summary Jurisdiction (married Women) Act, 1895 (58 & 59 Vict. Cap. 39)

The Summary Jurisdiction (married Women) Act, 1895 (58 & 59 Vict. Cap. 39) PDF Author: Sydney George Lushington
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Domestic relations courts
Languages : en
Pages : 152

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Book Description